The Penguin Anthology Of Modern Verse
A brilliant concept, if I may say so:
Who better to explore, in words,
the stark realities of an Antarctic wasteland,
overlooked for so long in contemporary poetry,
than its own feathered citizens – those
monochrome minstrels of the ice.
I can almost see one of them now,
sitting to a desk, wincing
as he pulls a quill from his body with his beak
and, pausing only to dip it into the ink sacs
of the squid left over from supper,
he writes.
He writes of the lost gospels of Penguin thought:
the visions, epiphanies and revelations
of his 65 days fasting in the wilderness -
not only as novelty egg-cosy,
but as mystic and mortal observatory;
He writes of the moon, hanging,
cold white weather balloon
in the Polar night;
Of the liquid light of the Aurora,
glowing in the flaws in the floes
like the fluorescent bones
of starships, long buried;
carefully balances the most evocative
of the four-hundred Penguin words for “snow”
with their single word for “love”.
Translated into English,
by skilled ornithologists, it has become
one of the most beloved of all books -
A popularity unparalleled in a world of poetry:
Given as gifts and shared among lovers,
Black and white and read all over…
