Beyond the Poles

Pale peg of imagination,

Never one moment visible,

Touchable—scentless and soundless—

The point to which all others point

Before they peak and then vanish—

That’s your pole, inevitable.

When you sought Ultima Thule,

When you fantasized the north woods,

Or when you sailed south through the ice—

All those romances, all those deaths

And disasters—you succeeded

In reaching and mapping the poles,

But then what? Then where could you go?

It was always more in than out,

More the place you could never go

Than the mystery you hadn’t

Yet accessed—every achievement

Had to be anticlimactic,

As you don’t really want to go

Anywhere in or near this world,

Not even to Mars, not that much.

When you wrote the woods, when you said

The north, terra incognita,

The moon, beyond the pale, you meant

You wanted to cross the threshold

Where the outside would let you in,

But the outside won’t let you in.