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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781910392188 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Enitharmon Press |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2016 |
| Edition description: | None |
| Pages: | 64 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Disko Bay
By Nancy Campbell
Enitharmon Press
Copyright © 2015 Nancy CampbellAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-910392-95-9
CHAPTER 1
DISKO BAY
The bird of prey flies with its wings backwards when it carries a feast
Traditional
UMIARISSAAT / THE SEAL PEOPLE
I watch four shadows pass the sun.
They are not men, those bearded ones
with fat, stooped heads and shining skin
aboard a boat with no beginning.
What brings such beasts? I do not know
their stooping forms; their short, fat arms that row
the endless boat; their long, white claws;
their round, black eyes that look to shore.
They row so close I see still more.
The round, black eyes that look to shore
have seen me watch. They are not men.
The boat will disappear again.
ASEQQUKU / FRAGMENT
A raven's wing at rest on the deep snow
remembers sunrise, the slow warm light
that grows behind the crags. Remembers flight
– plummet, beat and drift – and the low
confusion of wind in a distant nest.
No covert feathers could be blacker,
and frozen sinews do not fester
once the stained bone they cling to has lost
its body, sliced at the scapular.
Never to breed, never to scavenge
on scarlet seal hearts by the ice edge
KINGULERUTTUI / THE SURVIVORS
We settled here, scarcely believing our fortune
no more to skull the seas. The island was safe but
there were many deaths: driven by the darkness
men killed their kin; others drowned in shallow water
before they could reach the sea. The island was safe but
there was no earth to cultivate, nowhere to bury those men
killed by their kin. Bodies float in shallow water.
Corpses were left to rot, covered in rocks to hinder beasts:
there was no earth to hold them. Where could we hide the dead
when our sons were buried alive on the barren rock?
They were left to die, smothered in stones to keep them still;
the winter was their warder. Snow blew over the bones
of the firstborn buried alive on the highest rock.
The ice on those cairns was as good as a key in a lock:
the winter, their warder. Wind blew between the stones
and if sometimes it sounded like a child crying to be free
the ice on each cairn was as good as a key in a lock.
And so we settled, scarcely believing our fortune,
although it might sound as if we were crying to be free,
crying for a death to deliver us from darkness.
MALINGUARTOQ / THE DANCE
The hunter is a drunken fool;
he bets, but rarely pays.
To win, he will break every rule
in every game he plays.
The hunter wears a coat of skin
and picks his blistered nose.
He won't remove his thrice-lined boots
or change his underclothes.
He fumbles with a fraying cord
to keep his temper calm.
The ends are knotted together,
encircling his palm,
and his torn black nails weave in and out
tangling the oily yarn.
Sometimes he sits so silently
I forget that he is there
and I laugh and sing and sigh for him
and unbraid my long black hair.
They say he was born too early,
a caul upon his head.
I know his blood and mine run close,
too close by far to wed,
yet I have lain all night with him
in the narrow iron bed.
The animals watch for the hunter,
but last night I saw him throw
the gloves of skin I sewed for him
down to the dogs in the snow.
The old wounds open and start to weep
on the hunter's hairless hands.
I ask why blood continues to seep
though I staunch it with a band,
but he only mutters in his sleep
those words I don't understand.
He travels miles across the ice
yet never leaves his bed.
His cheeks are growing hollow;
his eyes stare far ahead.
The animals wait. They are hungry
but they trust he will follow the rest,
with an amulet in place of a gun
clutched to his cold, clean chest.
SONG OF UKUAMAAT OF KAKILISAT THE TERRIBLE MOTHER WHO LEFT FOX PRINTS IN THE SNOW
Ernera, ernilijarsivara
tuugaaning assaqqoruteqanngitserng
Ernera ernilijarsivara
tuugaani nijaqorutaasaqanngitserng
nulijaaning assaarmigakku
taamalli ajunnguvarminaan.
My son, the man I made myself,
has no tattoos on his bony arms.
My son, the man I made myself,
will never wear an ivory crown.
I've stolen his only wife –
that's no mean feat for an old crone!
SONG OF ERLAVEERSINIOOQ A FEMALE SHAMAN KNOWN AS 'THE ROBBER OF MEN'S INTESTINES'
Nailikkaataak sapangall, sapangallin
qivaaqinngivani sapangall
sapangallin
My cunt is hung,
hung with sea urchins.
My cunt bursts,
bursts with bladderwrack.
My cunt drips,
wet as a walrus snout.
My cunt is hungry.
SONG OF A WICKED WOMAN WHOSE KNOWLEDGE KNEW NO LIMIT
Uvijera kiillugu mikkissavan!
Kiillugu mikikkikki,
taana imaats qarsernun naqqulijukkumaarpan,
suuvalijukkumaarpan.
Kiillugu mikissavan, aaverling toqussuunga.
Tassa taamaaligima, toquguma
ummasunu pinaveerlinga mateernijarimaarparma.
Atamijaa ooqattaarimaarpan arn qisivanik.
Tass taamaatimik qarsilijern'jassuuti
taana naqqulijullugu, aataa taamaal
taasuminnga sakkeqalerivin toqukkumaarpan.
There's only one way to kill your enemy:
You must bite my clit off, pull it inside out,
and use it as an arrowhead.
Yes! Bite off my clit and pull it inside out,
but I warn you, I will bleed to death.
Hurry up! Blunt but hard,
it is the best blade for killing.
When I have bled to death,
cover me, for beasts will want to eat me.
Haft the head in soft driftwood
and fletch the shaft with folds of skin.
Yes, that's the arrow you need!
Only my weapon can kill your enemy.
ERSULLERAAPPOQ / HIDE AND SEEK
Towards the north of the island
the hunter lives with his son
in a shed on stilts with a sunken roof.
I live one house further on.
The sun sets behind the mountain.
Dusk bleeds into the snow
and the shade cast by the hunter's house
reaches my bare window.
From the harbour to the hillside
only two transoms shine
and the wind slips like a knot between
the hunter's house and mine.
My windows face the water
frost grows across the glass.
I watch my own reflection drown
in a deep lead of dark.
I cannot see around corners.
I cannot see in the dark.
I cannot tell what moves beyond
these brittle panes of glass.
Is it a restless iceberg
the tides have washed ashore,
this thing that intercepts the wind
which suffocates my door?
The hunter draws a heavy blind
as soon as day is done,
for his lamp would coat the moon with smoke
and scorch the distant sun,
and in his single, sunken room
he waits with his silent son,
but he tells no-one what he waits for
though all know what he has done.
AJAKKAT / STICK AND PIN
Old leg, play the game.
The story changes every time
and is every time the same.
Tell your fortune hole by hole,
play the game of the hangman's tool
with an animal killed in June.
Tell it until there is nothing in the room
but a bone with ten holes drilled through it
and an antler hanging by a sinew from it
and a man who waits before he aims his throw:
he will hit the stab hole;
he will hit the whip hole;
the hole of healed wounds; the hole of crutches,
the lame, the fatally ill.
He who hits the stab hole must stab himself to death.
He who hits the whip hole may whip his wife to death.
And this is the hole where you may catch your breath.
And this the hole where you are put into the earth.
There is the hole of the crushed man
and the hole of the decomposing corpse.
The hole for the demolished home.
The hole of rust. The hole of steel.
The hole that allows you to remain in the game
and take another throw.
It is the game that no one desires to play.
It is the game we do not dare push away.
The company falls out, but he plays on.
Tonight he will capture the bride and bring her home.
AASAQ / SUMMER SONG
We'll feast on roseroot and bitter dandelion,
stems of fresh green angelica,
fine fresh angelica found in the shade,
dried capelin, dried cod and grey mattak:
a feast of fish and fruit to make us fat.
Those smoky silver fish will make us fat.
NAKUARSUUVOQ / THE NIGHT HUNTER
I am a poet. I am writing about Aua, the night hunter
and how his feet compact the snow and leave deep traces
as he passes my door destined for the harbour
where his boat is moored. I never see him. He might be a ghost
but that his feet compact the snow and leave deep traces.
When he is sleeping, as if by agreement I go to the shore
where his boat is moored. He might be a ghost. I never see him
emerge from the long darkness. In the brief daylight,
when he is sleeping, as if by agreement, I go to the shore.
I see drops of blood, and strange soft ochre things
emerge from the long darkness in the brief daylight.
The ice shelf bears the mark of sled and knife –
I see drops of blood, and strange soft ochre things.
All through the night none may yawn or wink an eye.
The ice shelf bears the mark of sled and knife.
The shaman tells the village, bound to him by hunger:
'All through the night none may yawn or wink an eye.'
I am a poet. I am writing about Aua, the night hunter
who is bound to the water, as I am bound to him by hunger.
I hear him pass my door, destined for the harbour.
THE HUNTER'S WIFE BECOMES THE SUN
'Don't go without this.' Isabel handed me a small white box
which held a candlestick and four attendant angels.
Jingling clichés punched from sheets of tin,
the angels turn, propelled by heat rising from a candle,
and hooked by their haloes from wires as if the darkness
were a deep pool for fly-fishing, and my window
delicate as ice upon its surface. Spinning by the window,
this carousel recalls a childhood blessing: Four angels
at my head. If they came to life, like the small white angels
who fought the Snow Queen's snowflakes, would their tin
armour frighten bears back to the polar darkness?
Whose are the gifts they grasp: tree, star, trumpet, candle?
Only the undertaker sells the right kind of candle
to suit these angels. At home, he wreathes a small white coffin
with plastic lilies, but says nothing. His window
overlooks crucifixes buried in snow; there are no angels
on the graves of the Danes, who came to barter tin
for ivory and sealskin. Their eyes brimmed with darkness,
you see it in old photographs. Sleepless in the darkness,
I read their letters home, those 'tragic accidents'. Green candles
burn beyond the hills: the dead are dancing. The window
between the worlds grows thin. A solar wind blows its low tin whistle
and fire draws closer. Soon Earth will be a small white dwarf,
a revolving toy abandoned by its guardian angels.
The candle gutters. Lynched in their own light, the angels
hang still. Each holds her gift before her as if the tin
scorched her fingertips. Heat has melted the small white stump
to nothing. Once, they say, this land was lit by candles
made of ice, when water burned, glazing the darkness
of endless night. Day had not dawned on any window.
The hunter spoke. His cold breath quenched a candle:
'In darkness we are without death.' His wife listened
and replied, 'But we need more light, not darkness,
while we are alive.' She seized a shard of incandescent ice
and rose into the sky, scattering a vast white wake
of stars, which some might say were angels,
if, in temperate darkness, we still believed in angels.
The small seal and the white whale know we're just tin gods.
At the world's last window, I light another candle.
ALAGASSAQ / THE LESSON
I place my fingers round his neck and feel
his gorge rise – or is he swallowing
his tongue? He wants to teach me the word
for 'welcome'. Suddenly, he's trembling:
his larynx rumbles, then his breath is gone.
He asks me to remember those vibrations,
and, anxious as a nurse who takes a pulse,
touches my throat to judge its contortions.
Will I ever learn these soft uvulars?
I'm so eager, I forget that the stress
always falls on the second syllable.
My echo of his welcome is grotesque.
He laughs, an exorcism of guillemets,
dark flocks of sound I'll never net, or say.
SEVEN WORDS FOR WINTER
ukiigatta last winter.
ukioq the winter; the whole year.
ukiukkut in winter; during the year.
ukiuuppaa the winter came upon her before she reached home,
or finished building her house.
ukiorippoq she has a good winter; it is a good winter.
ukiorpoq the winter has come.
ukiortaaq the new year.
OQQERSUUT / THE MESSAGE
Since I can't post a letter this far north,
I'm sending you an Arctic snowstorm,
the worst weather London's ever known:
deep drifts resisting shovel, salt and thaw.
Since I can't touch your winter skin
I appoint the most delicate snowflakes
to fall into your arms, kiss your cold face
and silence the city I loved you in.
I can't judge your heart's temperature,
although I lay out the last glacier
over the miles between us. Don't you hear
the wind? It calls to know your nature.
It's warmer than you think, for I have dressed
that wild inquisitor in my own breath.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Disko Bay by Nancy Campbell. Copyright © 2015 Nancy Campbell. Excerpted by permission of Enitharmon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
I. DISKO BAY,II. RUIN ISLAND,
III. JUTLAND,
Notes,
Acknowledgements,