some visions draw
us to impossible places.
visions that live
in the heart
of our mythologies.
they pull us like ants, up
into white clouds
at the edge of dream.
how many have perished
in the storm or snow?
their tracks vanished.
whiteness obliterates
the centuries.
but some visions
demand only
snow-eaten feet,
ice-broken hands.
that white stony
visage disdains history.
into the abyss of its mouth
pale generations go
like sleepwalkers.
sometimes a single storm
blots out our elaborate plans.
civilisation climbs its face
and with a breath is erased again.
all dreams lead here.
from this lunar elevation
everything seems clear:
we must either sit still
or overcome ourselves.
we’re the mountains
we need to climb;
we’re our own impossible peak.
everything that we seek
is dissolved by success;
only the trackless path
is worth travelling on.
some dreams do draw us up,
not towards any particular eminence,
but to something of which
this mountain is but a mysterious
symbol, whose meaning eludes us
and ever drives us on, drives us
up, with the blinding sun in our eyes.
it holds up a mirror
to our fevers, our delirium,
our hopes and our need to conquer.
and there we are shattered
there we are made.
it is one of the forms
of the divine, perplexing
the riddle of distance.
is it a call to heroism
or a dream of oblivion?
everyone who ascends
descends into a polar space,
where the far is near
and the near farther
than valhalla.
some visions draw us to
impossible places
where breathing’s a new
language in the wind
where we can climb
higher into the flame of the days
the flowering of the streets
the dim ritual of work
the initiation of sleep
and the clarity of home.
because one person did something
vaguely unthinkable,
perhaps impossible,
because one person did,
others can till their fields
or leap to the moon
dance in a ring of fire
or walk treadmill incarnations
towards the centre of that vast
invisible red rose.
*
you who climb up
and you who sit beneath a tree
and you who at your desk
await a vision, perhaps an annunciation
you who scratch at your thoughts
till your life bleeds
you frozen in fear, or blistered in rage
singing on a vacant stage
you in poverty or in wealth
some vision draws us on
which we must heed
or not be born.