The showman’s hands ache as he pulls down the final curtain,
the crowd of one clap to a tune – uncertain.
It’s the coldest it has ever been up in the Yukon mountains.
Travelling has proved the better of those who dared to dream,
all in gold, although much of it unseen.
Eight-thousand left in the autumn
of ’99, the last to go, trudged through the snow.
That rush, which had brought in scores from neighbouring lands aplenty,
What a contrast seeing it now, so vast, so empty.
First nationals were the first to be hit,
their water poisoned, children in fits.
They were the precursors, the origins of the land,
now struggling thanks to a European hand.
An old timer sits, recollecting on the minutes he had spent all those years ago,
“ah, go to the Klondike!” he says, puffing out his words like a cigarette,
inebriated, tobacco stains across his teeth.
As the showman packs up for the evening,
the land has given up on believing.
The night glistens as the stars shine as ever
on Dawson City’s lifeless splendour.
By Sam. J. H. F.
‘What a contrast seeing it now, so vast, so empty’
Parisian Poetry 