Antarctica’s Dry Valley
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Extremes beyond imagining for most
Are what some poets want to capture. They
Want more. They strain to make their minds engrossed
With strangeness. They are like a queer gourmet
Who wants to eat a living bird that tastes
Like caviar or like the iron of Mars.
Antarctica’s Dry Valley and its wastes
Would flavour lines they write. Such lick the scars
On Jesus’ palms but these are far too warm.
Antarctica’s Dry Valley has not felt
A drop of water, felt a hydrous storm
For over two cold million years. It’s smelt
Of nothing now for eons. Normal lines,
Though, want to dig in love’s and hatred’s mines.