FAR NORTH
Clare MacDonald Shaw

Soapstone people are expensive, dancing,
giving birth, caught by a fish-demon
halfway out of their rock; the walrus lifts
its own ivory tusks, filed to splinters.

This is as north as I go. In the double city
language splits and shifts on the boards -
Buvez Uptown. Bingo tous les mercredis.

Carvings come south, speak a third tongue.
Mine tries it out on place-names. Pangnirtung,
Uvuguvik. The gallery translates stone to loon,
lemming, man riding strange dogs, bird mother.

Lunch with friends. Fiddlehead greens uncoil
in a pan. She's scaling fish, easing out spines.
Woman pulling intestines from a goose,
man holding deux poissons, os de baleine.

Exorcise all sea-beasts, howling spirits
over coffee. Words bounce off granite mass.
Inuit friends, they say, would soon correct
my vision of their own; art has its politics.

Last night everyone sang Alouetteover the beer
to free Quebec, gagged on my foreign tongue.
Harpoon head with face,go silence her.

North without a guide I'll slip on ice.
Get that owl-spirit from the culture shop,
early work, affordable; something to fly
back with me over water, trapped again.

I blame those tales of Andersen,
unpurged, haunting a child's book.
Old steel engravings chilled the breath;
What the Moon Sawput me off travel.

Tonight this Arctic sleeping bag fills up
with skeins of geese, dots in an octavo sky,
distances of glacier and forest. Watch out;
his rivers freeze your eyes for jewels.

Turn the page: a student in wishing boots
jumps the world. Says Travelling would be
all very well if one had no body, or if one
could rest while the spirit went abroad.

Here should be somewhere else. Now always
fails its moment. He's soon tucked in his coffin.

Sun through the blind, and something chirps.
Oiseau.Black stone bird from Inoucdjouac,
a messenger. Crawl out of the stiffening quilt,
Head emerging from icefor the first time.