An Empty Threat

I stay;

But it isn't as if

There wasn't always Hudson's Bay

And the fur trade,

A small skiff

And a paddle blade.



I can just see my tent pegged,

And me on the floor,

Cross-legged,

And a trapper looking in at the door

With furs to sell.



His name's Joe,

Alias John,

And between what he doesn't know

And won't tell

About where Henry Hudson's gone,

I can't say he's much help;

But we get on.



The seal yelp

On an ice cake.

It's not men by some mistake?

No,

There's not a soul

For a windbreak

Between me and the North Pole—



Except always John-Joe,

My French Indian Esquimaux,

And he's off setting traps

In one himself perhaps.



Give a headshake

Over so much bay

Thrown away

In snow and mist

That doesn't exist,



I was going to say,

For God, man, or beast's sake,

Yet does perhaps for all three.



Don't ask Joe

What it is to him.

It's sometimes dim

What it is to me,

Unless it be

It's the old captain's dark fate

Who failed to find or force a strait

In its two-thousand-mile coast;

And his crew left him where be failed,

And nothing came of all be sailed.



It's to say, "You and I—"

To such a ghost—

You and I

Off here

With the dead race of the Great Auk!"

And, "Better defeat almost,

If seen clear,

Than life's victories of doubt

That need endless talk-talk

To make them out."