This piece, and its accompanying poem, comes from prolific Scottish author and poet Kenneth Steven.
It's thanks to Kenneth that I'm leading my annual retreat on the Isle of Iona for the 17th time this year. Ken, who has long been a dear friend, suggested we co-tutored a weeklong course in 2000. Although we now lead separate courses, still on Iona, we co-led 'Into Blue Silence' for 9 precious years.
Read this (from August 2016), and then you might want to check out Kenneth's website.
'A few days ago I saw an image on the internet that imprinted itself
on my subconscious. It was all the more shocking because I was
exploring something entirely different, and as a result I was quite
unprepared for what I saw. It was a small picture at the bottom of my
screen of a starving polar bear attempting to climb onto a thin fragment
of ice. The bear looked to be a quarter or even less of its normal
weight: there was little left of the creature. It was the remains of a
polar bear.
'A number of years ago I had the privilege of visiting Greenland. It is a wondrous country: the biggest island in the world with just fifty thousand of a population. There are no roads in Greenland: the tiny communities that hug the coast are linked by sea. I have thought of it since as a child’s fantasy kingdom: when you look up at the mountains you can hardly believe the height of them, or the sharpness of the peaks. It is the most hauntingly beautiful place I have ever seen.
'I spoke to a man from one of the villages who remembered his childhood. He said that when he was a boy they drove round to visit friends in winter. Not by road – there were no roads then any more than there are none now – but by sea. They got into their cars and they crossed the sea ice to visit friends. Now, he told us, there is no sea ice. Not that it is too thin for such driving: there is no ice at all. He told us the ice is retreating a full ten miles each year.
'Before I left Greenland I bought one souvenir – a tiny carved polar bear. A long time later I wrote this poem, remembering the precious days of our stay and thinking of the future. I thought of it the other day, when I saw the image of the starving polar bear and all day could not put it from my mind.'
Last year in Greenland I bought it
Under great whales of mountains by a sea of ice,
From a table of things all carved from shining:
Little men threading water, their softstone canoes,
Walrus rearing at harpoons in mid-roar.
Now, all this time later, that place
Remains like some story from a book.
I turn it in the light, my polar bear on a pad of ice,
And think of the world wilting in the sun’s wrath,
And nowhere left for the polar bear to go.
'A number of years ago I had the privilege of visiting Greenland. It is a wondrous country: the biggest island in the world with just fifty thousand of a population. There are no roads in Greenland: the tiny communities that hug the coast are linked by sea. I have thought of it since as a child’s fantasy kingdom: when you look up at the mountains you can hardly believe the height of them, or the sharpness of the peaks. It is the most hauntingly beautiful place I have ever seen.
'I spoke to a man from one of the villages who remembered his childhood. He said that when he was a boy they drove round to visit friends in winter. Not by road – there were no roads then any more than there are none now – but by sea. They got into their cars and they crossed the sea ice to visit friends. Now, he told us, there is no sea ice. Not that it is too thin for such driving: there is no ice at all. He told us the ice is retreating a full ten miles each year.
'Before I left Greenland I bought one souvenir – a tiny carved polar bear. A long time later I wrote this poem, remembering the precious days of our stay and thinking of the future. I thought of it the other day, when I saw the image of the starving polar bear and all day could not put it from my mind.'
Last year in Greenland I bought it
Under great whales of mountains by a sea of ice,
From a table of things all carved from shining:
Little men threading water, their softstone canoes,
Walrus rearing at harpoons in mid-roar.
Now, all this time later, that place
Remains like some story from a book.
I turn it in the light, my polar bear on a pad of ice,
And think of the world wilting in the sun’s wrath,
And nowhere left for the polar bear to go.
© Kenneth Steven www.kennethsteven.co.uk
From Salt and Light, published in 2011 by Saint Andrew Press
Is it too late for the polar bear? This is so, so sad - I'm glad I didn't see the image, I feel it would stay with me a long, long time.
ReplyDeleteAngie, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have long been regaling us with pictures of skinny polar bears adrift on tiny fragments of icebergs. With the widescale icemelt, I think I'm right in saying they are now an endangered, possibly critically endangered, species.
ReplyDeleteAnother cause for heartbreak. Sorry these poems are less than cheerful :-(.