Theme From Antarctica Poem by William He

Theme from Antarctica
By William He

Time and Sea Spirit stand still,
As seagulls descend the fore.
Rocking and rolling,
The trouncing winds,
Lash with ruinous rage.
Crossing the Drake,
With the fury of a thousand black horses,
Aviating through troposphere clear as sealed glass.
On that far-off, capricious passage,
Survival runs with Bear Grylls in blackened waves.

Light-mantled solitude,
Dazzling reflections,
Mystical crystal sculpture.
Icicles drip in trance,
Incredible cliff stacks,
An allure extraordinarily merciless.
Where water joins the sky,
With flashes of genius,
At the brink of the precipice,
Brutal beauty is rarely so bare.
Melodies in pink and blue,
Ice carving jade terraces,
Splashed in sunset's orange-tinted hues.

By biting wind,
And bitter cold,
Salamanders subsist.
Porpoising Adélie penguins,
On a landscape of black and white,
Against snow and sleet,
Gather in a ring,
Postures erect in ceremony.
Grampus leaps in awe,
A lone hydrofoil in flight,
With a single tail-flap,
Midstream, it vanishes,
Breakers spill in silence now.
Amidst towering bergs,
Seals chase hide-and-seek,
On sleepless semi-frozen reefs.

Canoeing through the wild,
The ferry landing lies deserted,
Silence swells into symphony even.
Ribbons of wonder move,
Frozen music of sapphire-yearning heights,
Paradise bays and icy capes,
Twinkling stars, a silvery river,
All beneath a canopy of witchery.
Through the Land of Elves,
And the Ross Ice Shelf,
Scott vanished on his epic quest,
Flags of Antarctica sparkle,
Waving for every creature of the past.
All scramble toward fresh fame at moment,
On pilgrimages to Amundsen,
Beyond all bounds of gain or loss.