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