Billows the fog, cloaks
Choces, Mère and Père, undreaming even of fields
With a hand freed from weight,
Between the vertex that the far-lit gray
Only a fox whose den I cannot find.
Your red cheeks radiant against the wind,
It’s snowing, it’s returning to a town
At these masses the snow hides from me.
They move against, or through, or by, or toward.
I do not betray you, I still go forward,
How can they get the point of how a world
Reshaping magnified, each risen flake
I seek, above all, in the wandering
Onto my frozen fingers.
Only a fox whose den I cannot find.
Introduction by Vilhjalmur Stefansson
visitors’ dugout. The osprey whose nest is atop
Come, swallows, it’s good-bye.
VI. Smeerenburg and the Whale-Oil Rush