INTER NIVES ANTARCTICAS ON AVON

There is sympathetic magic between

Robert Falcon Scott and his statue by the Avon –

frozen stiff and rimed white, absurd as

a waddling tuxedo, a Shetland pony at the pole,

or Bertie Wooster with subzero glacial aunts

on a Boys’ Own adventure that ended badly

when the tea  finally froze solid inter nives Antarcticas.

We all freeze sometimes, sooner or later,

and at the end – a metaphor for unrequited love

for a continent rather than the women

who fell so easily for his shtick and heart-shaped

pendants of polished, black polar rock. His wife

the sculptress, turned a blind eye, erected a titan.

Scott looks disappointed that he has only made it as far

as the corner of Worcester and Oxford Streets

in dowdy, dowager Christchurch, New Zealand,

still some way short of the moral Antarctic Circle,

but forever England,

sort of.