Classic Poem

Week one: our expedition slowed
Faltered, stopped; we set up
Camp and dug in, but still it snowed
And snowed, without let-up,

Until we thought we'd go insane.
We literally lost our sense
Of balance, because sky and plain
Were one omnipresence,

So dazzling white it could blind a man
Or mesmerize his soul.
We lost sight of the horizon.
There was one man, a Pole

Named Szymanowski, an expert on plants
Of the early Pleistocene
Period, who dreamed of giants
In the earth, swearing he'd seen

Them grow from snow like plants from dirt.
We said that such dreams were
The price one pays for being expert,
And laughed, but still he swore,

And still it snowed. The second week
The ceaseless rush of wind
Was in our heads like ancient Greek,
A curse upon our kind,

Or say: in our skulls like the drone
Of bees swarming in a hive.
And we began to know that none,
Or few, of us would survive.

Secretly, we sought the first signs
Of sickness in each other,
Reading between the face's lines
As a spy reads a letter,

But no one complained of fever,
And suddenly the snow
Qui. You couldn't have proved it ever
Fell, but for the wild show

Of evidence on the ground. Now
The lid was lifted, and
Sun set icicled trees aglow
With flame, a blue sky spanned

The hemisphere, and while we packed
Our gear, we found we were
Singing, but Szymanowski backed
Out, silent as the fur

On a fox ... or the wolfish cur,
Slinking like a shadow,
That stuck to our pack dogs like a burr.
Where S. went, God may know,

But we went on to a frozen hill,
A vast block of the past —
An ice cube for a drink in hell
(If anything cools that thirst).

Inside, preserved like a foetus
In formaldehyde, like
Life itself, staring back at us
The mammoth creature struck

Poses for our cameras; then
We got busy, and went
To work, and all seemed well for ten
Days, and then some strange scent,

Not unpleasant, weighted the air,
Sweet as fruit, and one dog
Stirred, and then another, and where
I sat, keeping this log,

A steady dripping started up,
Slowly at first, and then
Faster. I made my palms a cup
To catch the flow, and when

I lapped the melted snow, I glanced
Down, and saw how cold
Ground under my boot moved and danced
In little streams: an old

Fear shook me and I ran to where
The mammoth stood — freed from
Time and vulnerable to air.
His curling tusks seemed some

Incredible extravagance,
A creator's last spree.
His fixed stare held me in a trance,
His reddish-brown, shaggy

Coat caught the sun like burnished oak,
But he didn't move: was still
As if he'd been carved from a rock.
Nothing supernatural

Was going to happen, and I breathed —
Fresh meat on the hoof! — In
An instant, the pack dogs had covered
Him like hungry ants spreading

Over a hatching egg, tearing
Chunks of raw flesh from his side,
Snarling, snapping their jaws, baring
Fangs that ripped his flank wide

Open. My hands, my boots were spattered
With blood, and the dogs ate
Him up. That horror performed, we scattered
Into the world, but late

In the afternoon, I saw a shadow
At my heel, and I knew
The others were dead — numbed into slow
Motion, and each a statue

Buried in ice. And then the clouds,
Piled in the north and east
Like a funeral parlor's stack of shrouds,
Darkened, sliding southwest,

And it snowed and has never stopped
Snowing since, and I have
Come with blood in my mouth, my hands sopped
With red snow, to speak and save.