This Poem takes
A Mountain’s place.²
The soaring Cliff:
Our hall of Meditation.³
Gravity on the mountains is Reversed:
Rather than pulling us down—they pull us up.⁴
Mountains drunk & mad with Elemental wines
Rend the seamless mist—and stand up Bare:⁵
A mountain bold, like a Giant of old!⁶
Oh children of earth, attempt ye still to Rise,
By mountains pil’d on mountains, to the Skies.⁷
A mountain sits upon a plain in its eternal Chair,
Its observation omnifold, its inquest Everywhere.⁸
As we reach the mountain’s side:A wondrous Portal opens wide!⁹
The good of climbing mountains
Is that Life is Reconsidered …¹⁰
¹ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
² Wallace Stevens, The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain
³ Reizan tr. Stryk & Ikemoto, The Myriad Differences
⁴ Lâle Davidson, Calling Down the Mountain
⁵ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
⁶ Anonymous, Loch Ina
⁷ Alexander Pope, Epistle IV
⁸ Emily Dickinson, The Mountain Sat Upon the Plain
⁹ Louey Chisholm, The Pied Piper of Hamelin
¹⁰ Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted by James Miller in Examined Lives