90 North

Randall Jarrell

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night--till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.

There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,
The stiff furs knocked at my starveling throat,
And I gave my great sigh; the flakes came huddling,
Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest.

--Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,
The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
At the North pole. . .
And now what? Why, go back.

Turn as I please, my step is to the south.
The world--my world spins on this final point
Of cold and wretchedness; all lines, all winds
End in this whirlpool I at last discover.

And it is meaningless. In the child's bed
After the night's voyage, in that warm world
Where people work and suffer for the end
That crowns the pain--in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land

I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here at the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that i have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live by accident alone--

Where, living or dying, I am still alone;
Here where North, the night, the berg of death,
Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness,
I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness--that the darkness flung me--
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

--Randall Jarrell, 1941

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.