Ice Wager

Johannes Franciscus Hoppenbrouwers

 The Ice Wager

Snowscape. Shod in tailor’s irons,
Red-hot, with my poundage of weights,
I test the ice of our latest year.
Half the world is out on skates

And the other half watches. Avercamp
Or Brueghel bring the wild duck
Out of the skies, and crowd the river
With yellow leggings, anoraks,

Tobogganing children, and those dogs
More loved around here than people—
The blind or the lonely. Winter trees
Turn gelid in the freezing fog,

The roads are churned to slushy meal
By the horses. Zigzags, figures of eight
Complete the picture. But it is real,
Our wager, so place your bet

With the notary on the bank,
Impartial witness. Hollow rumblings
Out on the ice—the iron quoits,
The games in progress. Will it crumble, 

Our little world, or will it hold?
Upriver from the Netherlands’
Oceangoing space, a man skates in,
A traveller, his clasped hands

Behind his back, his earflaps
Dangling. Has it fallen through,
Our worldview? But he brings no news.
Our mulled wine, our potato schnapps

Are all that concern him. Hurdy-gurdies,
Monkey dances. The Good, the True
Are beyond him, where he is travelling to.
It is down, again, to me and you,

Tonight, when I come off the ice
Which, needless to say, has never cracked
In centuries of changing skies,
To carry out the mandatory acts,

Traditional, for the time of year—
Banquets where the loser pays,
White tablecloths for the ice-floes
Junketing on, in hope and fear.

Harry Clifton 

The Holding Centre: Selected Poems 

 

Has the ice cracked? 

Has our worldview collapsed? 

Will our little world crumble?

I love the questions. Are we ready to make a wager on our answers?

 

 

Under the Ice

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Under the Ice

Like Coleridge, I waltz

on ice. And watch my shadow 

on the water below. Knowing that

if the ice were not there

I'd drown. Half willing it.

In my cord jacket

and neat cravat, I keep

returning to the one spot.

How long, to cut

a perfect circle out?

Something in me

rejects the notion.

The arc is never complete.

My figures-of-eight

almost, not quite, meet.

Was Raeburn's skating parson

a man of God, poised

impeccably on the brink;

or his bland stare

no more than a decorous front?

If I could keep my cool

like that. Gazing straight ahead,

not at my feet. Giving

no sign of knowing

how deep the water, how thin the ice.

Behind that, the other

question: whether the real you

pirouettes in space

or beckons from under the ice

for me to come through.

Stewart Conn

Similar to my post of December 14, 2016 (The Midnight Skaters by Edmund Blunden), this skater is also acutely aware of how close Death is. He almost courts it - except he can't quite, he's a little too nervous, too superstitious perhaps. He wants to be more "cool", like the skating parson in the painting by Raeburn, but he's not sure that guy isn't posing, pretending not to care about the risks he's taking. The last stanza is the one that clinches it. He's not even sure if he's himself, or if the shadow skating on the other side of the ice is him. Is life is that precarious, that uncertain - it may end abruptly and without us knowing if we're even truly ourselves? God forbid. But what a wonderful way to pose the question.

  

 

The Midnight Skaters

Ronald Lampitt. Skating by Moonlight

The Midnight Skaters

The hop-poles stand in cones,

     The icy pond lurks under,

The pole-tops steeple to the thrones

     Of stars, sound gulfs of wonder;

But not the tallest there, 'tis said,

Could fathom to this pond's black bed.

Then is not death at watch

     Within those secret waters?

What wants he but to catch

     Earth's heedless sons and daughters?

With but a crystal parapet

Between, he has his engines set.

Then on, blood shouts, on, on,

     Twirl, wheel and whip above him,

Dance on this ball-floor thin and wan,

     Use him as though you love him;

Court him, elude him, reel and pass,

And let him hate you through the glass.

Edmund Blunden

I appreciate (in a strange way) this reminder of just how close death is. That the people in this poem are dancing and sweeping and swirling on the thinnest of barriers is so true, so real. Anyone who has lived a little will have felt that breathstopping proximity. In the poem Death's presence is a sinister contrast to the mood above the ice. But the poet is not cowed.  "Use him as though you love him." That line is intriguing. What does "using death" look like? I have to think about that.