Mount Grandeur

You've attached your fake, long, white beard
and maroon suit
the ensemble you wore
when Klimt came around.
I told thee it would not do
but persistence and resistance
brushed me down
and ushered you on, out.
There was lots of snow on the ground
but none falling
as boots took their first
cold step, then again, then again.
Passed firs and cabins
full of life and sound
rising, rising to the underground.
Air cooled and hair rose
against the white a frozen pose
a statue of effort
...but not a bust of genius.
With that thought beating-up your mind
chemicals flowed and limbs slowed
to reconsider the grandeur of those halls
echoes on marble
and disillusionment on the young faces,
your faces, our faces.
Still you clawed and clambered
up,
a mist set in that said to you: NO.
Nearing the peak
she threw night in your face
a mighty mace
to break the senses and end all these
willful pretences.
Apex, tip, mountain top
the heart gives a cry
the mind knows why.
Tired and torn
portrait... forlorn,
you sit and contemplate
the moving earth and changing times
you roar logic and reason notes
to a tune of the infinite.
As frost put shackles around joints and bones
you could almost hear the asylum moans.
Morning woke and light provoked
a flitter of the eye
encrusted, still:
out, across the green plains
of fountains, cobbles and unreal rains
stood some other, remote, taller peak
brooding in the steam
it gleamed and boasted
and seemed to laugh,
seemed to toast your demise.

They thawed out the body for eighteen hours
and examined shrunken organs,
after, I covered him in his works
scribbles, magic and madness scrawls
messy, neat and incomplete
and buried all,
in the shadows of the hills
away from life's eternal chills.