When Men Got to the Summit
Light words forsook them. They filled with heavy silence. Houses came to support them, But the hard, foursquare scriptures fractured And the cracks filled with soft rheumatism. Streets bent to the task Of holding it all up Bracing themselves, taking the strain Till their vertebrae slipped. The hills went on gently Shaking their sieve. Nevertheless, for some giddy moments A television Blinked from the wolf's lookout.
When Men Got to the Summit - meaning Summary
Achievement Meets Indifference
The poem imagines climbers reaching a summit only to find that achievement strips ordinary language and certainty away. Human structures - houses, scriptures, and streets - seem to buckle under the weight of their silence, while the hills remain indifferent. The final image of a television blinking from a wolf's lookout suggests a brief, unsettling intrusion of modern human culture into a wild, unmastered landscape.
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