The Poetry Society

These mountains have no echoing views, no vertigo.

You climb them intimately, gripping the rockface

in a tight-fitting and protective blackness.

It's hard to remember how far you've come -

 

thinking only in fingers and toes

you seem to be climbing yourself

from the inside. But you're not.

 

This is the ridge that runs

through all the oceans,

 

the world's Great Wall.

 

*

 

Having crossed the mountains where no anemone grows

you reach the median valley. From the last slope

you sense some hidden activity, and smell

burning as if someone had lit a fire

 

to welcome you at your journey's end.

The rock chimneys are abandoned,

streaky with rust and blue paint

 

but work is going on

where the shrimp cluster

 

like bees swarming.

 

*

 

This black smoker might be one of the chimneys of hell,

blurring the darkness with gushing sulphur, scalding

the cold water that's too heavy to boil off.

These shrimp are like complicated pink souls,

 

jostling in the tormented water,

driven mad by their own numbers,

goaded by the claws of crabs.

 

And is this what souls eat,

this white matted stuff,

 

manna from hell?

 

*

 

Listen. The ocean is draining into the fissures

and simmering in the hot earth, all the ocean,

a kettleful at a time. It makes black smoke

that feeds the white bacteria. You watch

 

the earth and ocean becoming life,

the matted stuff shrimp are made of -

and crabs and sea cucumbers

 

starfish, anemones,

whales, the whole rockpool,

 

including you.