Years later I saw the man's mercury still running
  when for Piquk's dog-team,
on a nasty and darkening March afternoon,
  they cut, together, snowblocks,
and piled them in a semi-circle for a windbreak:
  and suddenly, the construction done,
he grabbed up some antlers.
  They were lying in the dog-pen in the general clutter,
and he raised them to crown his wool hat and hood-ruff.

I was sorting out the ropes and harness
  and glanced up through the evening snow drift
to see his hat and thick black glasses,
  horns raised above them,
cheekbones queerly twisted and angled,
  and under the antlers,
the Inupiaq laughter.

Then he started to dance
  among the dogs there --
dug now well into their cover --
  hands cupped on ears,
antlers branching from the deer-skull,
  the rack swaying vertically
                 as Uqpik slanted.

It was simply a gag, and didn't go on.
  He chucked off the horns
on an oil drum in a heap of rubbish.
  Nor would I have much noticed
if it had been some other joker.
                 And yet here,
in allusion, his geste, a footnote merely,
was spirit life as sketched at Trois Frères or at Mas d'Azi

the strutting biform -- mixtumque genus --
  in joked shamanistic evocation,
casually abandoned for black tea and seal meat
  and something dry, in Piquk's cabin,
to de-mist his glasses with.