Viking Breath

How does it feel to be the Cultural Attaché
for the North Pole, the ice
of the voiceless?
No encyclopaedia will give you shelter.
As life drifts by, the waters ache
and pallid faces stare from every porthole.

Winter is inside us, it's tasty
like a sea onion.
Who will get the first bite?
Crunchy things surround us:
the shore, the bleak frosty sun,
the clouds glistening like Santa's beard.

Amundsen has sailed into a greater crispness.
Penguins are chanting defiant slogans
outside our red tents.
What are we waiting for?
What is sprouting up
in our hoar-frosted hearts?

- - - Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Siobhán McNamara Translator
From A Night in the Nabokov Hotel