How keen the nights
were, Svensen.
Not a star out,
not a beat of emotion
in the humming snowhull
(now and then an aweful swandive).

It seemed ordained then
that my feet slip on the seal bones
and my head come down suddenly
over a simple rock-cistvaen,
grief-stricken and archwise
Thereon were stamped
the figures of the noble women
I had followed with my closed eyes
out to the central blubber
of the waters.

(There is not a pigeon
or a bee in sight.
My eyes are shut now
and my pulse dead as a rock).

The Swedish mate says he recalls
this fungoid program
of the mind and matter
where the abstract signals
to the abstract

and the mind directs
a final white lens
on the spewing of the waterworm
and the wings of the midsea.

It was not clear what I was after
in this stunted flora
and husky worldcold
until the other flutes arrived. . . .
four masters musing
from one polar qualm to another.