AN EMPTY THREAT

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." 

~ Robert Frost