Come Three Hunched Days Poem by Philip Housiaux

Four fanged cream wives lined up, gut chewing, farewells
and empty oil pot gums – like toothache compels
a third whale in season ties tongue and rebel.

Three hunched days in sled and dogs teethe grind and smell
dog tongue leaks dry out but red swelling mouths tell
the whale men to extremes, where empty a yell
and complaints of men sound but echoes to yelps.

These Inuit left tundra bog filth and fly frost
for yellow red urine that kidneys yield lost
when muscle and blood boil in driven toil scoff.

Here water sand files stone and Inuit skin off
and dead men like faeces, yet endure don’t cost.
These worship ancestors, but stares may not cross
yet silent grim purpose eyes survive dry rot.

From whalers’ land camp, of bone, blubber and mess
hard fixed mud snow jaw banks, and white world greyness
for where the days orange glow seems to care less.

Their igloos now dots, found by stars that sly guess
as whalers search night sky for Southward’s caress
Home’s scented oils sniffed out, by dogs in harness
home is where whale carcass is without death’s rest.

One creature pull-pushes ribs lengthwise in sway
as first men then dogs walk in foot holes that say:
walk safely here – those with us punched through this way.

Both bound to life’s sled, breath frost panting each day
the cycle of dog and man – rhythmic relay
sure gripping ahead, for the Sun’s last thin ray.
These rushing joint fates – as if vastness at play.

From above is best seen how nothingness saps:
a needle straight threads in a fabric torn taxed
by crush, freeze and gust – the soil itself now lax.
The waxed sled and fur skin twine prints – frail string facts
when above the arctic night severs with axe.

Their delicate straight trace, void splits – though not cracks
the horizons nothing white - lives in wet tracks.
Until the nourishing land itself turns back
and searching for footing sounds brittle yet slack.

Edinburgh 2008 Please note that the author does not support modern commercial whaling.