by N. Scott Momaday
Because it’s there.
—G.H.L. Mallory
—a passage outside the range of imagination,
but within the range of experience.
—Isak Dinesen
The sheer face lay opposite,
Both over and under him.
His lungs burned in the ascent.
His eyes congealed in the cold,
And at last he could not see.
Or what he saw was nothing,
An ice that reflected death,
Present and invisible.
Below he had imagined
The summit within his reach;
He could not imagine now.
There was only the descent
Into mere experience
And the blind passage between.
