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No more is the Arctic everlasting cold.

The death of the ice has driven us south.

We waited until the rain came,

until our snow houses thawed

and everything we'd ever known

blurred into non-existence.

We left in boats,

crouched, small, tight, afraid.

There was nothing above whispers,

the screams of our ancestors

echoing loudly enough

in our ears.

We all left, except the elders.

There was no other place for their souls

than where the ice went.

We left them singing to a weak aurora.

It was due north always.

Now there is no north to go back to.

We first tasted disaster

when birds with red breasts came,

a bird for which the Inuit has no name.

When we saw, for the first time,

fat grizzlies touching noses

with emaciated polar bears.

When flowers bloomed earlier,

when ice broke up before it should.

There were whispers about the permafrost,

that it had been disturbed and there was

no more time to put it to sleep

When the grease from the meat

tasted like chemicals.

When the air was choked with the sound of gulls.

When there was open water everywhere.

Everything ancient went to fast,

Nanook, the moon whale, the walrus.

The north is dead now.

Some say that in the Arctic,

nothing is ever really lost,

but they're wrong.

The cold is never come back.