SHADOWS IN SIBERIA ACCORDING TO KAPUŚCIŃSKI Poem by Sinéad Morrissey

Are upright -
cast not by sunlight but by frozen breath:

we breathe
and are enveloped in an outline

and when we pass,
this outline stays suspended, not tethered

to our ankles
as our sun-shadows are. A boy was here -

fantastically dressed
against the arctic frost like an heirloom glass

in bubble wrap -
he has disappeared into the portico

of himself. Not even Alice,
with her knack for finding weaknesses

in the shellac
of this world, left so deft a calling card.