Tuesday, April 29, 2003

From “The Iceman” - a

From “The Iceman” - a catalogue from a museum featuring the artifacts and remains of a copper-age man found frozen in the Alps: “The little pouch contained five items, including a scraper, a drill and a flint flake.  A 7.1 cm bone awl was also found.  A black mass which could be identified as “true tinder” fungus filled most of the bag.... Fine traces of pyrites show that lumps of pyrites were used to create sparks.  None were found in the equipment of the Iceman, however."

Been through this pass so frequently
my pack was fitted to my spine,
the hat I wore had seen new moons
above the searing alpine sky.
My shoes of net and hay had trod
across those mountains many times;
my tinderbox and arrowheads
had warmed and fed me in those climes.

Of course the risk was always there,
but I was confident and strong;
I set out from the valley col -
but I could not have been more wrong.
I reached the camping-place at night;
the wind screamed out a haunted song;
I opened up the tinder kit -
the ore had fallen from the thong.

My hopes of fire quashed by loss
I wrapped myself in skins I’d shorn
secreted myself in a nook
and waited, freezing, for the morn.
I lay out flat against the cold,
my reed cape wrapped around my form;
I concentrated on my heat,
I thought of someplace soft and warm.

I slipped away.  A frosty rime
obscured me as I lay supine,
at rest for eons cold and long,
then thawed and wrested with a tong.
For years I lay, my culture’s norm,
protected by the snow from storm,
and now, uncovered, withered, shine
my smile back down on those who climb.