Arctic Mirage: Words and Music

Outside the dark is endless, shadows me through the door

before the man shuts it out, beckons me to sit. The keening

wind quietens, like a dog dying on the ice. I am awkward,

make jokes – clothes on or off – he smiles lightly but his eyes

are a rebuke. The stove gives me solace, familiarity in this room

of men and foreign words. The Danish one is our go between.

He waits to translate: tell me about yourself, who are your

family, how do you feel about the melt? I say that I am

of this place, that its history has carved my face, the curve

of my ageing back, the claw of my rigid hand – that my father

knew nature in a way that is gone to youths, the boys who

long to leave or stay and spill their blood in desperation.

The artist works quickly, long strokes like my husband’s

fingers that lingered on me many years ago, then urgent,

and I turn my thoughts, think of the ways my world has

lost to the fracturing floes and whisky. We are in silence

now. He sees me as a sketch, not a woman, and I wonder

how I will be remade in charcoal, paper, ice.

Helena Marie

Desolation Point, Greenland

(oil on canvas) by Julian Grater, 2015

Under grey-black water, a history of failures:

split spars, smashed masts, hulls shattered

when the freeze gripped.

So much sky, so little ice – a world dissolving;

monochrome except for the green heart of a berg

floating on what it was.

Here lie the vertebrae of seals, jaws of walruses,

ribs of whales flensed for the try-pots, blurred

by the silt of years.

Four months with no light except from a fitful moon:

the freeze holds, rebuilds. When the sun lifts,

the glaciers accelerate their slide.

Phalanges that carved scrimshaws grope

among skulls that swam with images of children, wives,

that warmed with dreams through endless nights.

Gill Learner

The Long Winter 

after 'Arctic Mirage' – an exhibition by Julian Grater 

Greenland is a misnomer

for he never saw green. 

No midnight sun, 

always dusk to dark repeating.

He chose the cold,

to work white-dazzled,

the icescape almost undetectable 

against sea or sky. Making it all seem 

not quite real. Land, life: 

a disembodiment. I am as orphaned

ice, disconnected, alien – 

experiencing these vast empty tableaus.

In southern England, there's frost 

and a forecast for light snow, 

already I'm struggling in the chilly gloom, 

how would I survive there.

Yet, his charcoals show some folks

find a way, become cryophiles.

Jill Vance

Iceland in mind

after Julian Grater, Arctic Mirage, Exhibition at Reading Museum, 2024

Buses and street life,                                             

a comfortable sitting room

with its looming TV, curtains

stirring, slouching to school,

the rock face of work,

the wet greenness of Spring,

faces at the door – welcome

and otherwise – happiness,

wine, despair, the sumptuousness

of cheesecake, children at play,

hedge cutters, Schubert,

the incessant barking of dogs

dissolve, as whiteness overwhelms. 

Robin Thomas

This is my latitude. I exist on this desolate, remote plane. Abhorring variety - with its constant kaleidoscope of choice, experiences and exchanges, I am drawn to Arctic. Remote, unmapped, forbidding. Merciless and indifferent to us. Above all silent.

It’s like the paper I write this on. Pure, white, tranquil. Poised for me to make the first move.

The vastness of Arctic thrills me as it chills me. By the time God looked to here He was tired of creation - green and vibrant - and left it white and barren.

Permanent. Once. We have changed that (as we change everything). Violating this virgin reserve starting gently but steadily increasing the torture until cracks appear.

Arctic. The last refuge. So old it is still in black and white, or their amalgam -  grey. Neither landscape NOR ocean. Once water but solid and immutable. Just an unsettling flatness. A 2D world once unspoilt save by occasional tentative, hesitant footprints into a world that could erase you with these imprints leaving you preserved nice and fresh forever.

Forever now has an expiry date. This other world is now the last resource to be plundered. Arctic can now be used to keep us supplied comfy and cosy for a little bit longer. And so everywhere will get a little bit warmer. Arctic will get a little bit smaller, its buried treasures a little bit easier to find.

Arctic. It once inched its way almost to the tropics and back painfully slowly to sweep the world clean for the Age of Man. And our golden era will melt it away.

Take photos whilst you can.

Mikhail Franklin

Welcome to the land where sky meets ice,

where history lies unrecorded

and great cities rise and fall, like a chest in breathing.

An ancient land in the modern day

as alien as the moon.

Perhaps we ought to cast

our eyes down to Earth

to address what’s really going on,

for you’ve made it on time

for glacier is on the block:

A unique centrepiece for your home

bluer than the bluest blue.

A natural wonder for the living room –

going once, going twice

and it’s gone

Shakela Begum

Warm drizzle in the street

on a midsummer morning.

Endless winter

in the air-cooled gallery:

snowy landscapes

where land and sea and sky

merge in shades of grey and white

with flashes of ice blue.

In the distance a small figure

appears to be walking away

disappearing into the mist

to offer words of hope

to a family frozen in grief.

Susan Roberts

This is a landscape without colour except for

the hearts of bergs: red light is absorbed

leaving only cobalt blue. Nor is there greenery

or any sign of growing things. There’s not a seal,

musk ox or polar bear to be seen. The sea jostles

pack-ice, moving sluggishly under its weight.

Few people are depicted in these frozen spaces:

a distant priest hurries to an unseen church

to lead prayers at a funeral; a man on a sled

is hauled by huskies. No sound but the hiss

and crackle of snow under sled-skis and the groan

of glaciers as they slither to extinction.

On sullen days, all is pallid – land blurs into sky:

there is no horizon. At such times, Inuit ancients

believed, the deceased can talk to us. The midnight sun

of death shines a cold light on the living. Despite

my need of brightness, warmth, I want to go there

to hear what my dead dear ones have to say.

Gill Learner

The screaming sounds of anything but

Coherent speech. The howling wind

The cracking of the ice

The hissing sounds of vapour forming

I have yet to harness the heat

Escape is what I seek

Yet it is so far from reach

The end draws near,  and yet time

Is of no consequence here

The hundred year war

brings with it fear

 The world looks for a saviour

It looks to me to save them,

Maybe I like it here

Fire can’t touch me here

The world can end for all I care

Atlas

I shan’t judge you by the tint of your skin,

Or the wrinkles on your face, but by the intensity in your eyes

That look of sheer distrust that you clearly cannot disguise

You stare into space, but it seems like you are looking straight at me

Regarding what stands before you

I know that look,

I would recognise it anywhere ,

Anytime I brought back a report card from school,

Or anytime dishes would go missing cause they mysterious broke

Or coming back home from chasing dreams that refuse to be catch

Its disappointment, I know,

But I interpret it as disgust.

What else would you call it when all your hopes,

Are watered down by uncried tears

It’s a gooey mushy mess, Like snow when it rains

Like coals that stain a page, Or soot that blackens the heart

Atlas

The ice is wounded.

In this white-scape, a black, foul scar etches into the cold. Jagged edges lightning scoring snow. One misstep and you will be hurled into the below. Down to grasping shadow. Blank ice.

Here, the horizon has cracked. A slit across the snow, a bloodstain. A cut that runs deep into the veins of frost. Splinters reaching outwards, gulfs that tempt you. Spider's web. Broken glass. An ever-staining mark just like that in your head.

You are wounded too.

Scratches in your scalp, screaming lines in your brain. But here it is different. In this beautiful awfulness: you feel clear. A blank page of vision. No words spiralling. No hypothetical terrors. No “bad feeling”. What can you worry about in the face of this?

There's no oven out on the ice, no hob to check. You couldn't burn to death here anyway. The arctic doesn't judge you, doesn't care about the thought explosions in your head, the constant battles. You are just another human speck blighting its horizon. Delicately balancing above frozen depths.

Do you even have the words to describe this place? Its solemn beauty. Its howling life. This white-out is a gift to you, one unknowingly given. Frantically taken.

A place of blissful nothingness. An “Arctic Mirage”. A contradiction. Islands in the sky. Mountain cities roaring in crags of ice.

This place is hurting. Barbed wire stabs packed ice, fissures. Volcano clouds stumble downwards, streaks of rain and tears. And in the cold silence, you hear the land moan. Glaciers shifting and melting ice out into the sea. Cries of desperation. Desolation. A want to be left alone.

Christina Wallace