The Cook and the Cold: Narrative Verse

Apr 27, 2026

Electra Movie Camera image by Joe Haput CC BY-SA

The Cook and the Cold

Cracks the rock, and cracks the ice
Where the snow-wurms croak,
And the hull, as in a vise,
There its timbers broke.

Once it plied the placid seas,
That gilt-ribboned barque,
With a hold of peonies,
And of spices dark.

But they glimpsed a glint of gold—
This them northwards drew
Through the climes where sea-cows rolled:
Captain, cook, and crew.

Late they’d dawdle on the deck
Dancing through the nights,
Each a wild and hatless speck
Under polar lights.

When asleep each man a purse
Dreamt beneath his bed,
Though they woke each morning worse,
Aching in the head.

Bitter were the arctic airs,
Bitter snowflakes taste
To the tongue of him who stares
On those frosty wastes.

Rail-like thin, cold they shiver
Months in sheet-ice trapped.
Craving their captain’s liver—
They his temple rapped.

Plops the old man in the pot,
Pieces, parts and pants;
As the cook unthaws the lot,
Of their trip he rants.

“No gold there is, not a flake,
Only inert lead.
But of me, they’ll say, I stake—
Least he kept them fed.”

So he piled the skulls in heaps
Of his ship-board mates,
Until, alone, off he leaps,
On his shinbone skates.

Still he glides a grinning ghost,
On those frigid floes,
Where ceaseless winds howling boast,
And the narwhale blows.

Every ship which winters fast,
Caught in twilights bleak,
Visits he from first to last,
Sustenance to seek.

When springtime’s melt frees these ships
Empty are their planks,
‘Cept for half-charred chunks and chips
Choking kitchen tanks.

Keep your prow in tropics sweet,
Keep its bearing true,
Or in storms of stinging sleet,
Cook will come for you.