When I Heard the Learn’d Inuit

(after Walt Whitman)

by Maggie Sawkins

When I heard Aqqaluk the leader of the Inuits,

when I heard him tell how his brother fell

through the field of ice

while hunting for walrus and whale;

when I heard him tell how their ice-cellars

were melting,

of their houses swallowed by the rising sea;

when I heard his plea,

I abandoned my short haul trip

on the no-frills carrier

and booked instead a b & b

for Milo and me

under the feckless British sky

next to the bustling Portsmouth sea.

Mr Aqqaluk Lynge argues that the effects of flying from Stansted, where 80 per cent of flights are on no-frills carriers and eight out of 10 passengers are travelling on holiday or for leisure, are felt far beyond Britain in the vast Inuit ice fields stretching from Russia’s Bering Straits to Greenland. The Independent, 30 May 2007