Scafell Pike
Cronking ravens’ aerobatics
between rock-pulpits leaning over,
grey disdainful gate-posts.
Our shouts echoed
as we clambered like ants on a wall,
the lake a far glittering pool
in the dark sunken floor of the world.
On the saddle
buttresses of old hostile crags
hung vertiginously over an empty valley
where brown snaking streams reflected the sky.
When the fire died the night wrapped us in cold arms
and stars like dust convened,
aloof to the elegant comet and its silver veil.
Next day, glad to be warm again, on a pass,
the summit of the piled massif
was a distant view in the sun’s torrent,
another world visited, lonely,
while people toiled earnestly up and down the tracks.
When we’ve gone like empires before,
these mountains would still be hunched under the rain and sun.
But we ventured, searched from view to changing view, conquered, grew,
and came back a little wiser
to explore the wider wilderness
6.97
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