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Cape Evans Hut, Winter 1911
They scour rank bodies with snow —
use bone-handled brushes, thick with grime, to restore their teeth to polar white.
Apprehensive in high-backed chairs
they perch and shear each other’s heads hull bare.
Pipe tobacco threads tight
the lofty necks of their pullovers. On the Captain’s birthday
they eat seal soup, tinned asparagus —
red currant jelly enamels mutton like rime ice.
Each man in his way is a treasure.
They are tired, nauseous, grateful
as they shave on Sundays; their soap is Army & Navy catalogue issue.
They sleep in hammered bunks —
close as children — spines and necks contort and joints mortise and tenon neatly.
Outside, the wind a white fury,
the air is full of drift.
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