You inhabit the mountains, half-way to heaven;
Wind carries your wishes like winged seeds
Over the valley, not sowing in vain:
Breathe rarest air, with the pure red rowan
Have graceful grown and calm as glaciers.
You are proud of the view; on plateau and peak
Rampant your telescopes rake the horizon,
Make nothing of the distance to nearest or next world.
You have made your mark on the stony-hearted massif,
Galleried granite and worked for gold
Till a solid world turned to fantastic tracery:
In snow-line receding your power we see,
Your heraldic pride hewn on the hillface.
Remember the ringed ammonite, running
Crazy, was killed for being too clever.
Impatient grow the peoples of the plain,
They wait for a word, the helio winking
As it talks of truce, the exile’s return.
Labouring aloft you forget plain language,
Simple the password that disarms suspicion:
Starved are your roots, and still would you strain
The tie between brain and body to breaking-point?
Your power’s by-products have poisoned their streams,
Their vision grows short as your shadow lengthens,
And your will walls them in. Beware, for a heavy
Charge is laid against you, Oh little longer
Will the hand be withheld that hesitates at the wire’s end,
And your time totters like a tenement condemned.
Famous that fall, or shall they tell how in the final
Moment remaining you changed your mind?