They gamble on you,
and it is not your fate, graceful one, to rest calmly at all.
You will run long, very long.
You will run from thicket to thicket,
lake to lake,
carrying slain game in your mouth, across the water,
rousing the ducks and hens of the field within range
of the hunters' arrows.
Pampered, favored with choicest food ...
But one day, in pity, they will take aim at you — that day when your lungs, which once sniffed out the hiding places of trembling game, or your slender legs, will let you down.
For a long time after you, flocks of birds shall live on in fields untread by masters following their dogs.