The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1967, Qupperneq 56

54
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Summer 1967
by W. D. Valgardson
ON THE GOLDFIELD S LEAVING
FOR NORWAY HOUSE
The Goldfield’s screw
churns black water from the mud
and brings to light
strange bits of wreckage
foreign to my sight
My neighbour
half a century old
tells stories
NEW EQUIPMENT
all day long
we replaced
wooden floats
handturned and irregular
with precision
made plastic
sectioned by
Japan’s machines
stamped together
with epoxy resin
my neighbour’s neighbour
seventy last May
watched
but did not understand
METRO KOLTAN
Metro
with his rich voice
and his rich life
comes infrequently
to tantalize us
with talk of Tuk Tuk
and McMurdo Sound
having seen the caribou migrate
and having tasted the
eight month isolation
of Hudson’s Bay
he has feasted on life
while I
edge sitting
on my chair
B.A., B.Ed.,
and full of pride
snap ravenously
at scraps
he throws aside
DRAGGING OPERATION
You can tell by the way they handle
the body
Dumping it unceremoniously
Onto the deck
So that it lies stiff-armed
And obviously startled
By its part in the scene
You can tell by the satisfied
Tone of their voices as they say
To their wives on returning home
That they found him
Among the pilings
Below the second chute
You can tell by the way
They complain that it was cold work
And ask for coffee
Hot and steaming
You can tell
It was not themselves
They hauled from the bottom
NAILING BOXES
fish boxes
nailed together at five cents
a box don’t give much money
to thirteen year olds
with drunken dreams
of movies and candy bars
they can purchase for the budding
breasts
in their grade eight room
but still less
do they give
when you are sixty years old
at five cents a box
on B.C. Packer’s dock
hoping the factory will not start
to do their own assembling