“If it comes to this
If one day, you are someone who cannot afford to see what everyone now sees
If some day, everyone is someone who cannot see what everyone once saw
If the wild abandon of our voyaging season
has been brought to its own AIDS-like end
Remember
You can experience this
You can enter the intimate world of your own mind and
See that towering prow of ice
Feel its chill wind
Hear the shocking crack of its calving
And don’t forget
The pinpoint spray of freezing rain on your starboard cheek
The glinting knife of a sun’s ray slicing through cloud
The mournful call of a bird you cannot make out
or the silent flight of the one you can
Don’t forget
The whispering lap of a wave
A sound you can only imagine in the strangely loud emptiness of this place
Against the iron side of your boat
Against the just emerging plane
of an iceberg
Rising from the sea.”
Thank you. (And for your novels too.)
I was obsessed with reading and looking at everything I could find on Antarctica some years ago (when there was much less published). My poems are jejune next to yours, but there is a book list for what it’s worth …
Thank you Karl.
What’s the book list?