Where should we find consolation,
dwelling in the north? Amid the stunted
desperate plant life clinging
to its edges, thriving on atmospheric
vengeance or neglect? Of two moods,
fragile and invasive, it gazes out to sea
as its character bends inland.
And why defend our poignant attempts
at agriculture, the gall
of our entrepreneurs? The defining
mid-winter pageants performed
in a somnolent rage? The leisure class
commends the virtues of hard work
above all else, and we labour under
frost-cramped statutes, the black
letters of legislation, in hog-reek
and land-driven slag, middle-aged
from birth and, given our devotion
to slandering this place, illogically
xenophobic. We could as soon move
south as rise above it. Are sympathies
inseparable from what one does
to stay alive? What is a self
but that which fights the cold?
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The Caiplie Caves by Karen Solie is available via FSG.
