Anne Eyries
Danco Island
Before you came I had no name, unmapped
by bergy bits and growlers that crashed
against my pebbled shore, splashed
like flocks of peevish swans as each swell passed.
When Gerlache stopped to chart my jagged coast
you hiked up penguin highways on my slopes
to record magnetic force, this southernmost
data published posthumously from your notes
because your leaky heart wore out one polar night
while the Belgica was trapped in winter ice;
wrapped in the Belgian flag, your twilight
sepulture was an endless sea of white.
Grief filled the void you left, despair too
as scurvy and insanity beset the crew,
yet after months of hardship they broke through
the ice, sailed home–and named me after you.