Poems
ROSS BARRIER
You
MUST
rise early to see the day dawn on the iceberg's horizon,
at the hour when the sun of Southern latitudes spreads
in
the distance
its paths upon the sea. Miss Jane carried her parasol, and I an elegant
double-barrelled shotgun. In each narrow pass in the glacier, we
kissed each other in the mint-green crevasses, and carefully postponed
the moment of seeing the red hot ball of sun open for itself a path
through spangled whipped cream and ice. We preferred to walk
along the seashore where the cliff breathed regularly with the tide,
and the sea's slow rolling, like a pachyderm, put us in the mood for
love. The waves beat against the walls of ice, of green and blue snow,
and cast at our feet,
in
the coves, giant crystal flowers, but the coming
of the day was particularly sensed by the light phosphorous hem
which ran along the festoons of the crest as when the nocturnal
capitals begin to float on the sweep of their high sea. At the Cape
of Devastation, in the ice gaps, there grew night-blue edelweiss, and
we were always sure of seeing renewed day by day a fresh stock of
sea-birds' eggs, which Jane believed to"have the virtue of bleaching
the skin.
It
became a rite with me to renew each day, and then pluck
with my lips, this childish adage on Jane's mouth. Sometimes the
clouds, hiding the foot of the cliff from us, presaged a cloudy after–
noon, and Jane inquited in a tiny voice whether or not I had care–
fully wrapped the Cheshire cheese sandwiches. At last the bank
became higher and all chalky in the sun, it was Desolation Point, and
at a signal from Jane, I spread out the cover on the fresh snow. We
stayed there, stretched out, a long time, listening to the heart-beats
of the wild sea horses in the ice caverns. The far horizon was a semi–
circle of diamond frosted blue which the ice-sea upheld, where some–
times a wisp of vapour was born, detached from the sea like a white
veil, and Jane quoted me verses from Lermontov. I could have spent
whole afternoons there, my hand
in
hers, listening to the screech of
the sea-birds, throwing pieces of ice and listening as they fell into the
abyss, and Jane counted off the seconds, her tongue stuck out slightly
