Hole in the Sky

Two men came to a hole in the sky.
One asked the other to lift him up…
But so beautiful was it in heaven that
the man who looked in over the edge
forgot everything, forgot his companion
whom he had promised to help up
and simply ran off into all the
splendor of heaven.

— from an Iglulik Inuit prose poem, early
twentieth century, told by Inugpasugjuk
to Knud Rasmussen, the Greenlandic arctic explorer.