Lament of the White Peak Men
We stand in the ages now. Tell them We cannot come back to the trails Level on earth, Nor go again to our birth. The tune in the willow stem Is high and harsh and given to the ledge, The heart is winter’s and the frost assails The Arctic minds we bear. Tell them our pledge Invokes the jasper scarp, the frozen vein, The colder blue, the night Pouring its astral rain.
Say, we shall not be young again— So long has icy light Impaled our vision and our boundaries Exceeded trees.
Early among the junipers we slept On cool bookmosses, But the restless foot, the quick Blood in the body quenched the dawdling wick. From snow to higher snow our blue trail crosses, Our breath empearls upon the clouds of winter, Our candle but a crystal splinter.
On levels long below us march the files Of tamarack, and hemlocks on their knees Reach down where rivers lie In dwarfed unease, Jagged as lightning down the colored miles. There lie the countries where we shall not die Among our native trees.
As rock bereft of moss, are we who ply Our errand toward the everlasting sky. Who measure all our days From snow to snow. Harvests of grain we gave To hearts content with care Plowing their summer praise In ambient air. Gave houses for the mountain’s huddled cave. Foreswore the smile, the breast Easing the storm—we left These for the north star's cleft, To follow a mountain’s wave, To sleep in the blizzard’s nest.
We stand in the ages now. Never for us The green field at the brow, The homely dooryard or the friendly street, The bed of rapture or the altar’s bread. Never our graves up in a granite row, Neighboring with the dead.
Crystal and tumultuous The iron winters rage upon our tread, And where our lost trails go Look for us in the snow.