Caleb Perry Murdock

One Mountaineer Admits the Truth
    RIP Muhammad Hassan

Pressed again for why he never climbed Everest,
the wealthy American adventurer said,
“Why should I?  If I climb it once, with a sherpa
to do the hard lifting, where is the accomplishment
in that?  So I should climb it once and receive kudos
for my bravery, while my sherpa, right at my side,
climbs it for the seventh time, consigning all my steps
to insignificance, and then, after I depart
for the parlors of Europe to shout my name,
climbs it again — and again and again and again —
until he keels from the thin air that makes his brain boil,
or missteps into a crevasse, becoming then
the thousandth victim of the evil rock,
dismissed by the newly triumphant as a failure,
though ultimately he climbed it ten times more
than any of them, his body now a frozen landmark
for people to pity, thankful they can’t see his face,
this unknown man who lived in poverty and died
in poverty for nothing more than his love
of climbing, a love vastly greater than anything
I will ever feel.  Such glory I can live without.”

Caleb Perry Murdock was born in 1950 and lives in Rhode Island. He spent most of his life as a word-processing operator for law firms. He has written poetry since his twenties, but he didn’t lose his chronic writer’s block until his late sixties. He is now writing up a storm to make up for lost time.