The Last March, Part 5

Cairn marking the site of Robert Falcon Scott's tent, 1912. Petty Officer Edgar Evans died in February 1912; Scott and the remainder of his party died during March. The bodies of Scott, Dr Edward Wilson, Lieutenant Bowers were eventually found in their tent by a search party in November 1912

Epilogue

On the pole,
A solitary flag –
Black –
Waves stiffly in the distance.

A journal –
Brilliant red –
Drawn from his fur-lined jacket,
Scott records:
“This blizzard began
As white smoke,
Billowing on the horizon.

No sun for days…

The question is:
What shall we find at the depot now?”

Outside the tent,
And beyond,
A whirling drift
Of wildly-moving snow
Blowing one way
And then against itself,
Is all that the eye can observe.

It almost seems
To be as if
All hell has turn’d
Inside out:
And once red hot
And burning flame,
Has become
Blue-white
And frozen.

And the hellish, hissing wind
Drives,
Spirals,
And subsides-
Then races again
Across the frozen plain.


The confounded travelers
Inch their way
Across the bleak and barren waste.

“Oates
Not pulling much.
Hands and feet
Are pretty well useless.”

And tracks,
In endless mile on mile,
Feet and steel rudders
Lay their faint memorial-
Only to be obviated
By the frigid foe.

“Poor Wilson-
Horribly cold.”

Hour after hour,
Day follows day.
One night becomes another.

Through the open tent flap:
The faintest of trails,
Irregular prints,
Disappearing
Over the cadaverous magnificence.

“Poor Oates
Walked to his death.
Would not give up hope
Until the very end.

…Brave soul.

This was the end.”

The frigid forces,
Their legions arrayed,
Slashed cold steel
Across the barren tundra.

“Edgar Evans –
Out of food –
He lay insensible.

Providence removed him.”

The Polar Predator,
Gathered in strength,
Hurls headlong
Into the crisp, cold air –
Pounding the ice
In rigid rage.

Then silence,
The symbol of supremacy,
Stakes its final claim.

The surface is still –
Pure white-
Basking in its innocence,
As fleecy clouds drift swiftly
Across the deepened blue.

And the wind,
Its spectral song
Skimming the air
Whirls ‘round the frosted,
Sightless dead.

Its frozen fingers
Turn the final page:

Last Entry:
For God’s sake
Look after our people.”

Over the twinkling coverlet,
It darts for the Pole.

The Last March, Part 4

The Scott Expedition at Admunsen's flag on the South Pole.

Intermezzo

Day after monstrous day passes,
As the fur-hooded explorers
Advance
Across mile after endless mile
In dauntless search.

Their sledges dryly crunch
Into the hard-packed snow
Of the crusted plain;
Leaving sets of linear prints
As lone monument to their progress.
Gloved hands rise to wind-burnt brow
As they face into the raw gusts
With eyes searching
To discern signs
Of their success.
Extreme hardship,
The hurdle of human exploration,
Is increasingly felt,
Tinged with apprehension
That there may be
No end.

Until,
It appears,
On the crest
Of the horizon:
The warm red and cool blue
Fluttering
Of Amundsen’s flag.

As they approach,
A tent,
The sign of human habitation,
Appears before them,
Its flaps gently waving
In the manipulating breeze.

The disembarked explorers stand
Before the Norwegian flag:
Its red and blue crosses
Seem to symbolize
A crusader’s march,
And a crusader’s victory.

And yet,
The crusader has departed.

Around the pole,
A white bleakness
Everywhere prevails.
And a cold, raw feeling:
That the captors
Are the captured,
Contains the scene,
Like an atmosphere
Of pure white,
Tufted silk.

The Last March, Part 3

Snow builds up outside Captain Scott's Terra Nova hut at Cape Evans in Ross Island, Antarctica, in this picture taken in August 2006. This time capsule of Antarctic exploration is being given a make-over to save it from the harsh polar weather. For nearly a century the wooden shack has withstood some of the most extreme weather in the world.


Landscape

Ahead lie
The hulking mass
Of frozen snow and petrified rock
Charted as Ross Island.
Icy water laps
At its leaden sides
Leaving a crystal coat
On its black roots.

And beyond the frozen isle –
Interminable ice,
Snow crusted to a flat plain,
Stretching out in all directions.

An eerie beauty
Surrounds this land
The way the muted glow
Of an azure halo
Signifies an almost perfect
Innocence.

One can almost hear
The slightest tinkling
Of a thousand
Silvery chimes,
Studding the frosted landscape.

The deep-throated boom of the ship’s cannon
Sounds a farewell volley,
Breaking the silence,
And dispersing the tinkling sounds
To the icy air.

Winds rise
Sweeping ‘round the travelers;
And, gliding past them,
Spray mists of finely grained snow
To the air;
Then sweep out into the distance beyond.

Soon,
In the distance,
Five darkened figures
Appear on Beardmore Glacier –
As pinpoint statues,
High atop an immense base of frozen snow:
Dwarfed to minuteness,
Yet resolutely placed –
Poised toward the Pole.


Looming in front of them –
Frozen falls:
Crystal cataracts,
Their flowing fluid
Bounding over the height,
And cascading –
Then rushing
To the deep ravine below.

Yet no movement at all –
Only the silence –
And a mass of solidly frozen ice.

The Last March, Part 2

Scherzo

The sky bristles
With the masts of tired ships
Anchored in the oily water of the harbor.

Soot, smoke,
And the constant racket –
A cacophony of metallic clanging,
As barge and battle boat
Pass one another
In separate service.

All is left
In the churning wake
As the dull gray metal vessel
Cuts the swell,
Bearing south:
The expeditionary force
Of Robert Falcon Scott.

A whale surfaces
And shoots a welcome
Volley of water
Into the chilled, raw air.

Penguins process,
Chaplinesque,
Like impatient dinner guests,
Flapping and squawking
On the colorless surface
Of their white waiting room.


Beyond the ship
Sea birds swoop,
Weaving white patterns
Over the frozen fallow
That is their quest.

The Last March

When I was younger, I became a fan of classical music. One of the pieces I listened to was Ralf Vaughan Williams' Symphonia Antarctica, a piece with five titled sections, each one a musical tone poem for part of the exploration of the South Pole by British explorer, Robert Falcon Scott. The reason it was segmented so was that Williams wrote this music as movie background, then published it as a symphony. It is bleak and cold, and beautiful. I was so fascinated by it that I went to the county library to look up Robert Falcon Scott and his ill-fated exploration of the South Pole that ended in the frozen death of he and his team eight miles from safety.

When the music was first published, it came with segments of different poetic works that the publisher hoped would be read while the section played, and match the mood of the music. Williams never authorized any specific readings to go with this music. I became fascinated by this challenge and decided to take a stab at it myself.

I have recently given my older poetry another look, revising what I wanted to keep. This is one of those works. As I revise each section, I will post it over the next four nights beginning with tonight. It is called The Last March and incorporates descriptions of what Scott saw and recorded in his journal, as well as lines from the journal itself.

I welcome any comments on this work, as I have with all of the other works I have posted.

The Last March
Christopher Bogart

The last exploration of Robert Falcon Scott
March 29, 1912



Prelude

White wasteland
Completely covers
And stretches out as far as the human eye can see,
For mile after endless mile
Until it disappears over the horizon.

There is a crystalline magnificence about the place,
And yet –
The cold.

A cold so deep
That it would seem to penetrate
The very fibers of anything
Not composed of ice as it is –
And crystallize perpetually
All that is alien to it.

Blue-white snow
Mounds into fantastic shapes,
Leviathans of land –
Yet no land at all –
Only snow.

Jagged black rock with coat of pristine iciness,
Lakes of thick, crusted ice,
And Ice,
As if it, being cold,
Were an elemental emperor
That has had its hiatus here.

Great white and slate-gray clouds
Breathe frozen wind
Across uninhabited desolation.

And the moaning…
The low, mournful,
Sonorous moaning of the wind,
Sings its spectral song, as it searches vainly
For life across the wilderness:
Like the Sirens of Homer-
Searching for prey
In this prey-less waste.

All the elements:
Cold, wind, ice and snow,
All exiles
Nature has driven to its polar extremes-
Silently await their final challenge
With the predator.

All, for eons
Of continuous non-existence
All await the presence
Of man.

Counting Airplanes

Counting Airplanes
Christopher Bogart

When I was a kid in Queens,
We used to count airplanes.

Two stupid kids from the public housing projects,

Peter and I,
Looked to the sky,
Day after summer day,
And counted the passing planes.

Eyes to the skies,
Brows knitted,
Faces squinted,
Pencils in hand,
We counted planes –
To protect our country
From aerial attack.

The Russians wouldn’t dare –

Two boys faced the air
To protecting the skies
Over Flushing, Queens.

There we sat,
Peter and I,
Day after summer day –
Me with my sharp vision,
Peter with his pad and pencil,
Protecting America
For Democracy.

Published in Voices Rising from the Grove

Stone Columns

Stone Columns
Christopher Bogart

Stone columns are all that is left of ruined mansions.
Bare arms reach to the sky, to hide chipped
and molded capitals.

Their wickedness,
once magnificence upon the landscape,
now festers in pools at their feet.

The buzzing of the cicadas, muffled by moss-draped magnolias,
interrupts the suffocating silence,
where race was once the reason for war.

Dead by the score,
bored by the maggots of lost causes,
they lay in an uneasy rest.

The balm of forgiveness,
forgetfulness seeps out of sight,
lost in fetid pools of live hatred bubbling around the bases.

Generations rise from these pools of kith and kin and klan,
their voices fill the void left by a world lost,
and by our indifference.

Stone columns,
covered in green mold and grey grime,
rocks of ages,
seem somehow taller today.

They appear to be growing,
not likely to go away.