Shackleton’s Men

 

i listened with a mixture

of disdain and wonder unsure

how to judge

these mad men who ventured

with Shackleton in wooden ships

for hundreds of days through

fields of ice, faces

swollen with frostbite,

limbs black and weak

from scurvy, bickering

in the wake of each

implacable rebuff,

while the great war ate the world,

and all for no reason

except to be first

to cross the snowy crown

of the planet and even then

they failed

 

until at the end i heard that one

of the men—his name

was Richards—

said he had no regrets

 

“it was something,” he said,

“the human spirit accomplished.

it was something

you tried to do.”