Where should we find pleasure,
dwelling in the north? Amid the stunted,
perverse, desperate plant life clinging
to its edges, animated by atmospheric
animosity or neglect, of two moods,
fragile and invasive, gaze out to sea

but character bent inland?
Why defend our poignant attempts
at agriculture, our futile
entrepreneurial nerve? The defining
midwinter festivals performed
in a somnolent rage? The leisure class

proclaims the value of hard work
above all else, and we labor under
frost-cramped statutes, the black
letters of legislation, in hog-reek
and land-driven slag, middle-aged
from birth and, given our devotion

to slander this place, illogically
xenophobic. We could as soon move
south as rise above it. Is character
inseparable from what one does
to stay alive? What is a self
but that which fights the cold?