SURVIVORMAN - Sherman Alexie

Here’s a fact: Some people want to live more

Than others do. Some can withstand any horror

 

While others will easily surrender

To thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather.

 

In Utah, one man carried another

Man on his back like a conjoined brother

 

And crossed twenty-five miles of desert

To safety. Can you imagine the hurt?

 

Do you think you could be that good and strong?

Yes, yes, you think, but you’re probably wrong.

FOR SOME A MOUNTAIN - Stephen Dunn

For some a mountain, say an Everest or a Kilimanjaro,

exists to be conquered, the kind of obvious big thing

my father, that valley dweller, would casually diminish.

What’s wrong with life in the lowlands, he’d say,

why not just look up, enjoy imagining

how you’d feel at the top? And interesting people,

if you need them, are everywhere. They can be found

in a glade or a clearing, even in a suburb.

 

My father is dead; he only has the words I remember

and choose to give him.

 

If I were to say my need to define myself

involves breathing air not many have taken in,

and the excitement of a little danger, I’d hear him say

Do some good work, mow the lawn, carry wood

from the woodpile. Don’t confuse the dangerous

with the heroic.

 

But the truth is I’d like to be a mountainizer,

someone who earns the pleasure of his reputation.

When it comes to women, I desire them married

to their own sense of accomplishment, each of us

going our own way, coming together when we can.

 

Not enough, he says. If they lack generosity

they take back what they give. If they have it

they remind you, ever so gently, that a man

who climbs mountains leaves behind his beloved.

 

It is impossible to win arguments with the dead.

 

Everywhere you go there’s danger of being a no one,

my father insists. Is he changing his position,

or is that willful me changing it for my sake?

The grave was always his destination, the modesty

of his ambition obscured now by lichen and moss.

Comes the mountain before the reputation, I say.

Comes the unsure footing, the likely fall, he says.

The World Loved by Moonlight - Jane Hirshfield

You must try, 

the voice said, to become colder. 

I understood at once. 

It is like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze, 

braced in stone. Only something heartless

could bear the full weight.

XIII - Stephen Crane

IF THERE IS A WITNESS TO MY LITTLE LIFE,

TO MY TINY THROES AND STRUGGLES,

HE SEES A FOOL ;

AND IT IS NOT FINE FOR GODS TO MENACE

       FOOLS.

THE SPELL OF THE YUKON - Robert W. Service

I wanted the gold, and I sought it ;

   I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.

Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it ;

   I hurled my youth into a grave.

I wanted the gold, and I got it— 

   Came out with a fortune last fall,— 

Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,

   And somehow the gold isn’t all.

No !    There’s the land.   (Have you seen it?)

   It’s the cussedest land that I know,

From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it

   To the deep, deathlike valleys below.

Some say God was tired when He made it ;

   Some say it’s a fine land to shun ;

Maybe;  but there’s some as would trade it

   For no land on earth—and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);

   You feel like an exile at first ;

You hate it like hell for a season,

   And then you are worse than the worst.

It grips you like some kinds of sinning ;

   It twists you from foe to a friend ;

It seems it’s been since the beginning ;

   It seems it will be to the end.

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow

   That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim ;

I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow

   In crimson and gold, and grow dim,

Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,

   And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop ;

And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,

   With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer—no sweeter was ever ;

   The sunshiny woods all athrill ;

The grayling aleap in the river,

   The bighorn asleep on the hill.

The strong life that never knows harness ;

   The wilds where the caribou call ;

The freshness, the freedom, the farness—

   O God !  how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter !  the brightness that blinds you,

   The white land locked tight as a drum,

The cold fear that follows and finds you,

   The silence that bludgeons you dumb.

The snows that are older than history,

   The woods where the weird shadows slant ;

The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,

   I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.

There’s a land where the mountains  are  nameless,

   And the rivers all run God knows where ;

There are lives that are erring and aimless,

   And deaths that just hang by a hair ;

There are hardships that nobody reckons ;

   There are valleys unpeopled and still ;

There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,

   And I want to go back—and I will.

They’re making my money diminish ;

   I’m sick of the taste of champagne.

Thank God !  when I’m skinned to a finish

   I’ll pike to the Yukon again.

I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight ;

   It’s hell ! —but I’ve been there before ;

And it’s better than this by a damsite—

   So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting ;

   It’s luring me on as of old ;

Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting

   So much as just finding the gold.

It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,

   It’s the forests where silence has lease ;

It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

   It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

“The earth is too wide” - Al-Shanfara (translation)

The earth is too wide

for a free man

to put up with humiliation

      or hatred.