Peak

How long to climb the mountain?

 

Forty years. The native guides
are dark, small, brave, evasive.
They cannot be bribed.

 

Would you advise
the North Face?

 

                               All the faces
frown, so choose. The travelers describe
their traveling, not yours.
Footholds don’t last in ice.
Read rocks, their word endures.

 

And at the top?
                               You stop.

 

They say that you can see
the Town.
     I don’t know.
You look down. It’s strange
not to be looking up, hard to be sure
just what it is you’re seeing.
Some say the Town, others perceive
a farther range. The guides turn back.
Shoulder your pack, put on your coat.
From here on down no track,
no goal, no way, no ways.
In the immense downward of the evening
there may be far within the golden haze
a motion or a glittering: waves,
towers, heights? remote, remote.
The language of the rocks has changed.
I knew once what it meant.

 

How long is the descent?