Hyborean

All extra-human characters
Have their own species distinction—
That they speak in lyric measures.

Therefore the Hyperborean,
Huge, abominable, rank-furred,
Speaks in Yeatsian jeweled flames.

Nothing lyrical to his look,
His sunken golden irises,
His arms that crack polar bear spines.

He has adapted to the ice
On the cliffs where he sleeps through suns,
Active only in Arctic night.

Frankenstein saw him, thought he was
His own dear monster on the ice.
(He wasn’t.) Early explorers

From the Erebus and Terror
Foolish enough to wander off,
Became acquainted inside out.

Inuit learned to avoid him,
Not to think about him too much,
Schooled him out of seal-hunting dreams.

He’s not so lonely as you’d think.
As a myth, he is immortal;
As immortal, fond of himself.

He worries now, about the ice.
It troubles him to think some night
He will leave his cave for the dark

Of his happy months under stars
Only to find a vast black sea
Instead of glowing, moonlit white.

Nearing spring bedtime as he fed
On a rare large bear and her cubs,
He watched overhead satellites

And composed his antique verses,
Meters unknown in human tongues,
A green fire climbing numbered rungs.