The Terror

Rudderless Vessel To Storm — A Sightseer’s Poem

Come hinging on Mount Erebus, Fountain Shelf Supreme To Board And Plating Ice

William Bradford — Scene in the Arctic

More sanguine the truth

The more rudderless it's gnashing

Of yellowed teeth, by tobacco juice

And spittal so green

Mounted words jolted down by

Frozen digits, losing inks, and spilled spleens

For a passage beyond the dominion total

Of man upon this Earth;

The Cold — oh aye, the cold —

The Terror — oh so it be, the terror —

The more blood that has been spilled

The more useless the triage will be

When it finally comes to

Splitting the Right whale apart;

Like newly stitched linen for the

Vessels sail, arriving but the crew

Have been slayed by festering hunger

By all means, by the compact of the ice.

Someday, I may go silent — plains and pangs

Of crowded three eyes