Arctic Circles

Malemutes stretch taut their leashes,

Brown eyes ensorcelled by the master’s legerdemain,

Leaping to snatch hunks of meat in mid-flight-

A clack of the mandibles, one gulp, all gone.

The head dog stands apart, calmly waiting,

Reprimanding his fellows with tactical nips.


Summer’s smoke soon drifts away.

Fishing-lines sink in salmon torrents.

Children gather huckleberries by the handful.

Seabirds are crying, preparing to leave.

Languid boys stretch out on springy tundra,

Watching clouds in a suspended world.

Offshore, glacier and rock blend in blue expanse.

One freakish night transfigures the world with white,

Iron earth thuds underfoot.


The mountain resounds with harsh inhuman yelps.

A fox trots along the crest, tail extended,

Pace even and brisk, a thing possessed.

He sits and perks triangular ears,

Pointed little head alert to all vibrations,

And, hoarsely, with double-triple quavers,

Calls to his mate, to the empty tundra and the wind...


Sand and stone. Rocks through fractured earth.

Space...space...white pebble valleys...desolate peaks...

Tawny slopes freaked with snow...

Glacier gleaming, king of the wilderness...

Emptiness thrills to odd noises-

Creaks, wingbeats, gullshrieks, muffled crunching,

Gunshot crack of icebergs calving.


An Inuit shaman intones in his igloo,

Fidgets, frets, grimaces, grunts and trembles,

Cries out , panting, in a strange jerky tongue,

Petitioning the stealthy powers of the air.

Down he buckles, a dead heap, dreaming,

Swimming with the goddess under the ice,

Caressing her, untangling her tresses,

Wedded in the holy sight of the dead.

How long, he asks her, will the warm spell last?

When will seals leave and narwhals return?


Happy smell of animal skins and grease...

Thawing earth steams. Excited birds circle.

Obsidian sea without a ripple shimmers

From iceberg to iceberg, mesmeric mirages.

Cheery, the hunters recite each landmark:

Here, one set his traps for triumph;

There, another made love under a tent.

The kayak takes after a red-eyed walrus,

One Eskimo imitating its cry...

One-two-strike! The harpoon shudders,-

A widening blood-circle on the water...


Days draw shorter. The flushed sun, bidding adieu,

Tracks along the dazzle-cliff, sinking at last.

Fleeting twilight. Horizon, emerald-white,

Flares orange-purple. Southwest is yellow sky,

Translucent clouds and weird shadows on cliffs.

Hibernal wind corrugates ferruginous screes.

The ocean contracts in black gelatinous paste.

People languish, morose, enraged over niggles.

Hysterical, a woman runs riot with a knife,

Boggle-eyed with superhuman wrath.

A crazed hound yelps and zigzags, staring blindly,

Collapses, spitting froth, jaw agape.


A sledge flies smoothly along,-gallant malemutes!

Brothers to the Eskimo, their skullbones alike,

The pack united by quarrels and amours-

This bitch venting her menstrual potion,

That dog running his flatulence out...



Polar night. The dogs on their haunches

Tilt their heads towards the moon, eyes half-closed,

And yowl in unison, modulating some desperate

Propitiatory appeal.

Far away, to the south,

A pale solar halo arises. Men moving about

Are silhouettes darker than dark.

Day explodes in multicoloured space,

The ocean unshackled, carousing,

Heated birds shuttling to and fro.

Now let the blood thaw in venery’s season!


The storyteller’s eyes gaze inwards,

Voice grave as he draws listeners

Into the iceblink dream, their secrets

Inscribed on the air.

All men are shapeshifters,

Genies made of ice.


Agile hands flutter in a string game,

Knotting little pictures to tease the air;-

See,-a penis embedded in a tight vagina;

And now-a defecating woman venting a fart.

The strong deride the weak. The lazy are damned.

The winning wrestler pisses on his victim.


A hunter returns, snorting, coughing, saying nothing,

Unharnesses the team, the dogs whimpering with pleasure,

Flattering him with a show of female weakness.

He works alone, weary but proud,

Then trudges to his place amid feigned indifference,

Cherishing his mystery intact within,

He stretches out, putting on a solemn face,

As his canny wife simply hands him a bowl of water.

He slurps, wipes his mouth on his sleeve,

And only then, eyes lowered, does he utter,

Allowing his tale to run forth like a sledge,

Gathering speed on bumpy ice,

As he recalls aloud all the details of his journey,

The changing colours of the land and sky,

And all he saw thought and felt...


A mother licks her newborn child

That cries out to be recognised and named.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,

The big black crow will peck out your eyes...”


The men, clustered together, laugh as they discuss

The women’s vaginas: whose is the best shape,

Which one is best lubricated,

How well this or that one fits.

Meanwhile, their wives, gathered elsewhere,

Gossip about the men just the same,

Scorning this one’s “maggot”, that one’s ineptitude.


The people sniff the breeze, the peaty summer earth,

Appraise the ice-crack’s intonation,

The snow-pile’s dampness, the animals’ moods,

Lunar haloes and the plucked strings of the air...

To be vigilant and furtive, not to force anything,

But serve the moment, part of whatever one witnesses-

That is the way to succeed.


Morbid anxieties haunt the sleeper as he wakes,

Nightmares of sickness, debility and starvation,

Baleful spirits’ machinations...

A man has died and the village dogs are howling,

Muzzles all pointed like guns at the empty sky...

A corpse lies buried, sewn up in a skin,

Head turned towards the sun.

Relatives rotate with the heavens around him,

Fearing vengeful visitations;

Uneasy minds recall slighted taboos,

Murders and malicious tricks, calumnies, deceptions...

These are dangerous days, a blizzard of conscience,

When the heart may lose all pleasure in living.


Expectant, the air hums with spring’s inception;

Fertile steam puffs from ice-breaches,

Slipped rocks thud, jockeying ice-slabs crunch,

Muffled echoes come from precarious snow-slopes.

Barnacle geese cackle down the coast,

Seagulls’ throbbing whistle resonates.

Leprous snow gutters, rivulets trickling, massing,

Diaphanous radiance swells and spangles the air.

Incendiary blossoms flare up all over,

Saxifrage and campion and cochlearia.

White hares caper on a talus.


Sinuous, a polar bear sneaks up on an indolent seal,

Smashes its skull with one immaculate wallop.

A barking, bobbing Eskimo hunter edges

Towards the colony, lulling the plump black prey

As they slumber, too slow to recognise him as a man.


Bluegreen moonlight. Shadows steal over hummocks.

Parallel snow-lashes pummel the quaking ground.

Whirlwinds tower up in white-fumed darkness.

The tragic wind hisses and rattles its grief,

Making free with eerie screens and ballistic rocks.


As the hunter returns from long absence,

The village children greet him with the ritual phrase:

“Are you a spirit or a man?”