Bettering

I could have wept to see

The world at such a stretch performed below me

Or largely frozen for me:

Peaceful flanks and banks of

Chipped and hardened rock;

Gentle waves of forest lower down

And vulnerable townspieces

In a haze of secrets and modesties.

 

This one reluctant beginning

By a climber who is driven more

Through the lack of action, not

The desire for it; by the consanguinity

Of sun and space:

Wrenched earthwards, wet and weary

Later that afternoon when the world changed

And sought to prevent my return.

 

I am losing sight of the beginnings

That have lost their way before midday,

Put paid to by my bad form,

Or have petered out like a nameless path

Or made a nonsense of

By what has already been achieved

And need not be again.

 

I will weep to see

The heights I will not have reached

The exposures to which I will not be subjected,

The intimacy with an open expanse

That is the private joy of the mountain climber.

Every broken beginning may be little more

Than talk into a void,

May require more tenacity than

A five-hour climb

But will wrench the emotions clear

Into a more lucid dimension

 

That will stir the sinews to raise the arm,

Bid the spirit to flame.