Man and Mountain Part I

A man stands mute before a mountain.
Although minute under the firmament,
This mound of dirt and stone insurmountable,
This impassible pile of pushed-up earth,
Seems to taunt him laughingly, as if to say,
“I dare thee! Scale my crags, approach the peak
of my true greatness. And if you do, what then?
My proud heights will mock you in due time
As you are lowered down with speeches, tears,
And ceremony to an elevation (the irony!)
Fit only for creatures that never see the light
And whose vision-wanting forms privilege not
Even with sight your futile, brief existence.
And in your subterranean darkness you
Will vanish from the earth, while I, yes I
Will grow like your once youthful boyhood did,
Reaching, stretching slowly through the eons
Of geological time (as men call it!);
And when I’ve grown another thousand feet
Above the limits of the sea, nourished
By the heart and heat of the earth, know this:
My childhood has only thus begun,
And yet I witnessed countless generations
Of forests come and go, saw the deer
Long before it learned to glide so,
Watched the hawk learn to use his claws,
And all of this was long before your kin
Scurried in and claimed it as his own,
And thus began his endless bloody feud
And sadly mistaken patricide. But I
Am callous now. Do not mistake my streams
And rivulets for tears of hopeless grief.
Despair is not for such as great as I.
But now, in light of this brief history
(Which I could expand indefinitely
If you wished, since I have the time,
But I do not advise it, since time to you
Is not quite what it is to me,
And the time for your dubious task approaches),
I ask you to consider what’s to gain
For yourself (not for your tribe, since
They will soon forget you) should you reach
My peaks and view the gorgeous expanse
From such a worthy and a lofty place?
What difference will it ever make?
Answer well, thou semi-conscious clay,
Thou dirt-destined dirt, thou proud speck
Of time-obsessed yet time-forgotten dust.
Speak!”