Lay for the Day 28th May

The feast of St Bernard of Montjoux, the patron saint of mountaineers, who built two refuges for travellers in the Alpine passes that now bear his name – the Great and the Little Bernard. He also gave his name, of course, to a famous breed of rescue dog.

His feast-day was also – by coincidence, I suppose, rather than design – the day on which Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay were left alone by the rest of their team, to spend the night precariously camped on an ice slope below the summit of Mount Everest, before they made their final ascent of the peak the following day, 29th May 1953.

The poem is about my eldest brother, and also appears on his birthday, 15th August.

Lone

An ascetic
in spareness and
strength of physique,
his aesthetic

goes slow to be
sure of his holds
on the world’s mad
geology.

A solitude
is where he’s glad
to catch the light,
rock and water,

opens his heart
to the shutter.
The Nepalese
returned a sense

of wonder grown
gradually since
earnest youth was
plagued by teendom’s

drossy mockers.
I remember
“Draw me something,”
which something turned

out a dragon,
sky-born earth-force,
Chinese fashion.
I copied scores

of that totem.
Picture him ridge-
striding, splayed sun
spilt from a ledge

of cloud, a child,
like the dragon,
of elements,
rare, here and gone.

John Gibbens, from Characters: You & I

 

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