In
His Cloak Still Freezing
Deep
in the sea there are currents.
Some
persist for centuries, plunging off of the silty shelves,
and
sweeping before them an unresisting jumble of debris,
which
they take with them into the stygian depths.
A
chill river flows from the glacier's toe,
bringing
with it all the glacier carries,
and
depositing its load where no sun shines.
What
has the river borne, I wonder, in the millennia of its flowing,
and
can any part of its burden ever return to lighted lands?
If a
young man, far from his tent and his warm soft wife,
were
to fall into a crevasse while hunting the caribou,
would
his companions be able to draw him out?
Would
they drag his frozen corpse on a travois
with
them, back to his mourning people?
If
he fell too far, shattering green bones on cliffs of ice,
where
the gentle snow kissed his boots and his
blue,
glistening cheek,
would
the glacier take him to that cold, dark river,
source
of an icy current that has no end?
What
would find him, I wonder, in that fell flowing,
and
can such a man hope ever to return to day's dominion?
There
are no mariners hardy enough
to
ply these frigid currents of the deep, but if there were,
surely
a cold and lost young man might find a berth,
perhaps
as cabin boy on a ship
whose
captain would seek the lightless reefs
where
aberrant creatures build cathedrals
that
no one ever sees.
These
ramparts and towers guard their
owners
from reivers of the depths;
pirates
wild and shaggy, whose
garments
are their own tentacled skins,
and
whose eyes can never close.
What
would become of a cabin boy in these cold dark seas,
and
can a young man find passage back to the world above,
where
a new wife still grieves for her dead first love,
to
return unlooked-for in his cloak still freezing?
Publ.
Strange Horizons, 2003
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