From the Ends of the Earth

The Dogs of Ushuaia

In search of the exotic I had flown

as far as Ushuaia. I would see

the penguin and the lenga, for I’d grown

accustomed to the birch, the chickadee.

I crossed the Beagle Channel, met the prince

who sails upon the air, immersed my mind

in images I trusted would convince

myself I’d left the commonplace behind:

the Southern Cross at midnight, and the way

the cordillera bears from west to east,

how wind and weather shift throughout the day –

a poet’s fodder, at the very least.

And yet, in retrospect, what I recall

most often when I need the proper noun

is not Olivia or Martial,

but intimations of a downhill town:

a bleak, forsaken prison, silent bogs,

a landscape ravaged by the beaver, frail

impromptu housing, countless scrawny dogs,

a monument to the Malvinas, stale

abandoned factories that bear the brunt

of empty promises, a roadside shrine

to plaster saints, a tourist’s waterfront,

complete with tourists from the steamship line.

Though many miles from home, this land would show

that there is really nothing new, indeed,

under the sun, beyond the point of no

return, beyond the calafate seed,

beyond all hemispheres, beyond each pole,

beyond the boundaries nations call their own.

The dogs of Ushuaia hound my soul

and gnaw upon it, as they would a bone.

(Ushuaia, Argentina, January 2004)
Poem by Catherine Chandler, originally published in Umbrella, Summer 2007