On a cold winter’s day, a little
lemming came out of his warm hole. He looked about him, shivered, shook himself, and sang:
The sky
like a vast belly,
arches itself
around my burrow.
The air is clear,
no clouds in sight:
icy weather! Aiee!
I’m freezing! freezing!
anonymous Inuit poem, recorded in the
1920s by
Knud Rasmussen and translated by
Tom Lowenstein, from
Eskimo Poems from Canada and Greenland, 1973.