The Silent, Icy Void

Washington City Paper

The Silent, Icy Void

The British Empire conquered
all they aspired to, for the British
appetite to surmount all challenges
was unquenchable. Domination of
conquest in all spheres of endeavour
emphasizing indomitable fitness, vigour,
the guiding star of British superiority
impelled its champions through conflicts
and trade imperatives from India to 
Persia, Afghanistan to Pakistan's 
Waziristan and Lhasa in Tibet. By
force of imperial arms to diplomacy 
with China and challenges to Russia,
on to exploration of the unknown at 
Earth's two poles, Arctic and Antarctic,
the sceptered Isle ruled the world. Of
more recent vintage than the Great War
to end all wars, sturdy assaults on the
Himalaya. Stiff-lipped expeditions
to Chomolangma over the moving
glaciers of a world of ice and snow
encasing lofty granite exhaled its 
siren's call from the blizzard-blasted
roof of the world. Adventurers, surveyors,
naturalists, explorers, mountaineers,
summitteers all, bewitched by the vast
and lofty aspect of the veiled goddess.
Awed by her imperious, impervious
presence, and her redoubtable entourage
of sleet and wind, sun and icy mists,
they were compelled to risk their lives
to court her in their lust of conquest.
Her magnificent, unknowable
features shielded in the challenge
of depthless snow-mantled aloofness 
led them on to reckless folly. She remains
in her sentinel fastness timelessly
awe-inspiring and they, Mallory and
Irvine, ninety years haunting her slopes.