At the Top of the World

by Brett Rutherford

Is the mountain the object of climbing?
Does the act of climbing alone suffice?
I say, To climb is to achieve that height
     from which, alone,
you can scan the overarching beauty
of a curved horizon filled with summits.
It is not the triumph of reaching top,
but the sudden and dizzying knowledge
that what you scale is but a single hair
on the bristled, old beard of the cosmos.

See now the range of upthrust pyramids
on which you perch, a height-giddy rider
on the hump of a thousand-mile camel,
a speck on the Andes’ anaconda.
Blue peaks, pure snow, kingdom-encompassing
rainbows, stark shadows cast as lambent sun
inks fold on fold of airbrush shading
upon the distant ranks of staggered hills —
all this you spy, and make out something more:

upon each mountaintop
    is the form of yet another climber,
your brother who stands and regards you,
     eye-to-eye your equal.
Or sometimes, in a condor solitude,
you find the driven spike and banner-mark
left by a climber who has come and gone.

Sometimes a scaled peak is vacant, but, lo!
Take hold the rock and gaze down vertiginous,

and see that a figure is scaling upward towards you.

Is it the same for all who struggle
     out of the shadows into the sun?

You cannot turn back. You belong no more
     to the towns and folk of the settled valleys,
where they see only your shadow pass,
     and fear it: to them
you are a spectre now, a name
     that induces a shudder.

Down there, they hone

     their knives and swords,
covet, enclose their neighbors’ fields.
Their cannons spark —
     this way — that way —
in the depths of distant gorges,
their bloated and river-hugging cities
engulfed in flames
as each invades the other.

Could you go down and tell them?

Could you stop carnage they so revel in?
No! Thin air and star-glory,
     cloud-food and fog
are now your homeland,

     a cold rock your throne.

On what goes on below,
crusaders on horseback,
earth-drilling rape of the mantle,
the belching sulfurous hell-fires,
the gods and their mountains
look down in scorn.

[Revised 2018, revised again May 2019].

2018 revision