Rebecca Watts: Emperor Penguin

(The Polar Museum, Cambridge)


                This afterlife
is inaccurate: everything here is dry.

                I try to make
a true impression, but the chick

                I've been given
refuses to play the part, persists with its leaning

                as if it could
imagine anything beyond our destiny.

                Before I was seized
my throat was an open channel,

                my beak
a conduit for the sea. It is not shame

                that forces
my head to hang: it is the inured act

                I've grown too stiff
to shake off. Chick – even like this

                you look hungry.
There is no escape. Turn in and face up.


Published 2014. First the poet addresses the reader, then the penguin chick addresses the reader, then the poet addresses the chick – or at that point have they merged? They could be in the museum room ("Everything here is dry"), or in Antactica, the dryest place on Earth.