Before any of this had ever happened,
before The Vanishing and, now, after it
has gone, if anyone had actually asked
me, not that anyone ever would have,
if there was anything worse than dying,
I would have told them straight to their
human face. No! There is nothing worse
on Earth than not existing. But now,
I am not so sure. After all, what is it
that I have become? What is it that you
have made of me? A strange anomaly.
A polar bear without a territory, without
a history, without a family. A lineage
of test-tubes and Petri dishes. I am in
a new body, but out of my mind. Even
you are unsure of what to call me.
There is talk of reintroducing me to
the what is left of the Antarctic, the Arctic
already gone. In my homeland, I remain
unknown and, in the frozen south,
I shall probably live, and die, alone.
Gordon Meade
Gordon Meade is a Scottish poet based in the East Neuk of Fife. In the past he has been the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Dundee. His most recent collection, Selected Poems: Beyond the Ninth Wave, was published in 2025 by Into Poetry.