Death of the Beekeeper in Winter

Sir Edmund Hilary 


tends his hives and dreams and lives 
on mountains demanding 
these brown people against the white mantle
he will thereafter wield a hammer, pike a shovel
his voice occasional
the smoke he into his hives
for he is a gentle beekeeper of occasional violences against large objects
no man climbs a mountain
it chooses.
it chose to raise him on wings of smoke 
and the mountain breathes hard
 
There is he 
blowing smoke bellows onto his honey bees 
and him flying, too
across seas
There is he  
blowing smoke onto the mountain  
into the sleepy, sleepening eyes of the mountain 
There is he  
blowing smoking bees in his bed. 

There is no gratitude due the man
rather the mountain and god thereto  
that drew the smoke to its slope 
then to their villages and fires. 
This keeper of bees,  
This soother of beasts 
Seen with bucket by bucket  
For birds and bees of other sorts 
To bring goods of other gods to ailing children
To bring men of other skills to mothers dying in their moment 
There is he
exhaling the thinning air,  
Ever-thinnening 
from his lungs stretched across the sky 
ever-thinnening  
stretched out under the sun
waving like pennants  
as they fly apart. 
His lungs never to be drowned,  
Merely to become breath of another wind, and  
Like him years before,  
There is he
drawn up the chimney of the mountains
to sit at the right hand of an other god 
He blew smoke into the gentle eyes of the mountain and it lifted him unto its shoulders 

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