Because it’s there.
– George Mallory
Expect to see the absences
of many alps, their peaks
humbled to tundra. Also the roots
of cold volcanoes, plus the adjacent rocks
they cooked, then the many-faulted, flattened
fold-and-thrust belt, and even the descendants
of molasse deposited offshore. In short
a tale of drastic rise and fall,
like “Ozymandias” or Freytag’s Pyramid,
or Gibbon.
Every valley, Isaiah said,
shall be exalted, and every mountain
and hill laid low. So also fine Old
Testament hyperbole shall be made mundane
as the Weather Channel’s forty per cent
probability of showers.
All this
shall be raised up again
on the exam. Answers
may be carved in granite, writ
on water, or delivered as a lecture
to the air. Because it was, because it is,
because it isn’t there.