(after Roald Amundsen)

We thought the difficulty was distance.
We were wrong.

Distance is obedient:
it yields to endurance,
to the arithmetic of rations,
to men who mistake horizon
for problem.

What we did not understand
was stillness.

The way land refused narrative.
The way white erased intention.
The way a man could arrive
and remain insufficiently changed.

We planted flags
as if ownership were a language
the ice might learn.

Nothing answered.

Even triumph felt provisional:
like writing your name
on breath.

If you read this,
you have gone further than we did.

Not in miles,
in consequence.

Tell me:

does the ice still pretend
to be permanent?

Or has it begun, at last,
to answer back?

 

*
From Magma 96, The Antarctic 

 

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