Starlit flue of pogromed fires
where men have passed,
unable to stay
except as charnel remembrance,
frozen so far
within the borders of this
migratory graveyard.
The thickness of the ice
precludes a sense of falling,
conveying the demented nature
of this world. Outlawed to its vestige
of uncoined wealth (cold in weight),
if medallioned briefly
by transient warmth:
the glinting of a torn lung,
the arctic sun.
Where petrels,
awash in a storm of lights,
had swung wide
at the first glimpse of darkness,
men ventured,
gross with confidence
as though determined
to be made prey.
Mariners ceased to wonder
at the absence of the twins,
no longer settling to breath their apparition
on a trembled mast.
Shadows devoured the ship’s wake,
sailing disappointed and unmanned,
or manned
in a distraction of zeal.
Where the hostage walked
from the galley to the prow,
and walked back emptyhanded
through the hour’s death-rattle.
Over the swept desert of the
growling sea,
mocking the reach
of the keenest eye
for sun or moon or landfall
to break the whale’s bruised back.
Remembering the lonely gull
torn in the wind’s power,
the ice-white sky
rent at the horizon.
Conspiracies of desolation,
the commerce of human error
out of deep cold, the startling revelation
of a world,
spectral music of white wreckage,
settling to a stratum of bones.
Paving the white city,
its vast purgatory
of water and death.