There may well be an Ur-Ilias; here, but lost to us
as water in snow; it may well be the authority on
a man’s proneness to die, in the name of survival
dressed up as a god, yet what—Mawson has thrown away
the soles of his feet. Long loose, he’d kept them
for their slight quality of Shoe, until they wouldn’t sit right
under swaddling, until the pure fluid, between them
and the still-living ends of him, flooded out.
He waters the ice with the manna in his boots
and walks on. His last man Mertz died mortified,
finding his frostbitten finger in his own endless mouth.
Who needs enemies with a self like this? Mawson mourned
with an extra bowl of dog-head stock, a chocolate half-inch.
He walks on, leaving tufts of beard, a weekly tooth:
long the history of the honour-weary foot.