Since arriving in Arctic Norway, I’ve really been immersing myself in local history and culture.
The Bear
Culture does you good.
And I mooch round museums
In cities far flung,
And I respect a country’s way of life,
Symbols of nationhood
Displayed and put on show
Behind glass screens,
and I stroke my chin and nod
So that others in the museum
Assume I understand everything
Which I don’t really
Because basically
I’m a tosser.
And yet this veneer of respectable
Appreciation was today
Obliterated totally
The moment I encountered
In a social history display
Of Arctic artefacts
The crappest taxidermy
I ever did lay my eyes upon.
It was a bear.
A proud and ferocious bear
A fierce and efficient killing machine
It had eyebrows
Do bears have eyebrows
This bear had eyebrows.
Why the hell did it have eyebrows?
The moths had been at it.
It was a shag of a bear.
It smelled of furniture polish and bacon crisps
They were using it to wedge open a door.
There was very little actual bear content
It’s fur was held together by Velcro
If I’d seen that lumbering towards me across the tundra
I’d have just laughed.
Anatomically, it looked more like
My Aunt Janice
Though not quite so fierce.
It was holding a stick
As if it were about to stop the cat
From scratching the furniture.
One of its fake eyes bore deep into your soul.
The other was looking at the gift shop.
It didn’t have teeth, or fangs.
It had lips.
And the lips kind of formed what looked more
Like a slightly irked grimace.
it didn’t look like it wanted to kill you,
It looked more like it had received
A parking ticket,
Or lost the receipt for that duvet
It wanted to return
Or had just discovered that it’s
Brother in law was coming to visit
Who was not only a much more successful bear
But a bit of an arse, too.
That’s what it looked like.
That’s what the poor thing looked like.
On the way out an attendant asked
What I had thought of their museum
And I wanted to say,
The social history displays were fine, but
I mock your bear
I pour scorn on your bear
What does that say about me?
I ridicule your bear
I looked at your bear
And I laughed
Ten quid I paid
To come in here.
It’s not just the bear who’s been stuffed.
But what I actually said was,
Yeah, it was good.
Robert Garnham 