Ice
Maidens by Srinjay Chakravarti
'To Melt your Cold, Cold Heart'
(Title of an abstract sculpture at an ice gallery)
The only comfort they can give
is, well, cold comfort.
A dancing fairy, curved from ice
in a Tokyo departmental store pageant.
Or a snow sculpture of a ballerina
at the St. Petersburg Ice Festival.
Harbin's Theme Park,
where giant Chinese empresses
cold-shoulder warriors and wizards.
Or Diana Ross in freeze-frame
wins first prize in the celebrities section
at the Ischgler Tirol colour contest.
Only to dissolve
into cold water
after a few weeks.
Ice lanterns illuminate
statues of courtesans in a museum
at Beijing's Temple of the Earth Park.
Tolkien's Liv Tyler
is frozen to life
as the elf princess Arwen
when Toronto decides
to have Designs on her.
So that the ladies can chill out,
Brugge builds a special
thermal enclosure: Permanent -10 degrees C.
Siberian Magic Ice
in Krasnoyarsk
for Olympic athletes
and their cool dudes.
Kiev to Sapporo,
Spittal to Sydney,
Fairbanks' Arctic diamonds
to Ottawa's Winterlude.
The permafrost of imagination
in semblance of stone, mimesis of marble.
Brides and angels
dancers and goddesses
nymphs and nudes
frigid in winter's dark months
only to melt in spring
when colour returns
to the snowscape's monochrome.
Chain saws, blades, ice chippers,
picks and sculpting tools
to mould crystal thrones for carnival queens,
or the queens themselves:
fugacious Galateas, clear blue and translucent
for the sunshine to breathe life into.
Who are these dream women
whom we reify into gelid shapes
so long as the weather holds out?
Ars
longa, vita brevis.
