"Great God! This is an awful place!" he cried,
This walking dead man. All the same, he lied.
The snows that swept the plateau on that day
Were the same that he had seen from on the Sound;
The ice-fields he had trodden on the way
(Glinting in their crusts of cold névé)
No different from those lying all around.
They had not changed. Perhaps the man who spoke,
Exhausted and deprived of his last goal
(So that, beneath this blow, his spirit broke),
Perceived with Delphic vision, at a stroke,
The subtle ice pluck out his stubborn soul.
"Great God! This is an awful place!" he cried,
And met his end. The South Pole could abide.
© 1996 by Angus MacSpon • Contact • Writing page