halo
One hundred miles above the
Arctic circle
So cold the sun
Will fail to even graze
Skin of men bound in iron and chains
Click of light and dark, tracks and ties
Train.
To a string of gulags
Resembling nothing less than
Rough pearls
Which are surely
The opposite of coal
Torn from the frozen chest
By men whose bone-deep desperation
mix with their fear
As air bleeds out
We all dream of
of fire
Archangel
So far beneath the buried heart
Of this vertiginous stone
Planet