The First Man Born in Antarctica

was a fish-man of a color not yet available
in the Pantone catalog.
His blood is white.
His home address is Lake Vostok,
zip code 00000.

Underneath the ice,
the mailman has to walk exactly 5,000 steps
straight down through four kilometers of ice
and 5,000 steps back up
to deliver the letter.
With the letter in his hand,
the fish-man walks and walks
on the dry riverbed
under the endless ice roof.

The second was a sound,
the sound of the southern lights,
but because there was no one to hear it,
there was no one to record it.

The third was a burst
of fire, fathered by Erebus,
although that is not his real name.

In 1978, a woman seven months pregnant
flew to Antarctica so that the first baby
would be born there, to put a checkmark
in the Guinness Book of Records,
not suspecting
the white-blooded fish-man walking underneath the ice
in the nameless city
of a yet-to-be-discovered
blinding color.