THE ICE-MAN

Bequeathed by ice,

A face younger than yesterday,
Older than five thousand years.

Trapped by unexpected snow,

The hunter-gatherer
Became fugitive,
Seeking an impossible way back
By routes unfamiliar
And yet all too familiar.

His foes: sleep and fear.

Fingers ice-lumped,
Eyes pinched out.
No mountain guide,
No base camp cheer.

Ambered in glacier,

He is imago,
History’s prize specimen.

* * *

Yet when they raise

His body,
They lay-on hands,
As if in ritual.

Who would deny this man,

This contemporary of Adam,
A taste of the divine,
Though his gods were elemental,
And not of risen flesh?



(c) Michael Newman