Poetry by Bill Manhire

Read by Sir Edmund Hillary at Scott Base, 28 November 2004, at a commemorative service to mark the 25th anniversary of the Erebus tragedy, when all 257 passengers and crew on Air New Zealand flight TE109 died on the slopes of Mount Erebus.

Image by Bob Champoux

The Mountain I am here beside my brother, Terror. I am the place of human error. I am beauty and cloud, and I am sorrow; I am tears which you will weep tomorrow. I am the sky and the exhausting gale. I am the place of ice. I am the debris trail. And I am still a hand, a fingertip, a ring. I am what there is no forgetting. I am the one with truly broken heart. I watched them fall, and freeze, and break apart. The Dead We fell. Yet we were loved and we are lifted. We froze. Yet we were loved and we are warm. We broke apart. Yet we are here and we are whole.

Bill Manhire is the Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Wellington, and the editor of The Wide White Page, an anthology of poetry and fiction about Antarctica.

Image: The crater of Mt. Erebus and Hut Point Peninsula, Bob Champoux

Fri 10 Feb 2006