K2

They say you can't be climbed in winter.
I wonder why someone would want to do that.
But then again, I wonder why someone
would ever want to climb you.

As 'Godwin-Austen' some have tried to name
the silent ice of centuries, locking time within itself,
that stood witness while men shed warm blood
in ephemeral lives and causes.

Some call you Chogori or Lamba Pahar
for you grow a few centimetres every year,
looming over your prettier sisters the Gasherbrums.
But you are only second-tallest on the earth,
- dulled, dimmed, diminished -
by that accessibly famous Mt. Everest.

They call you King of the Karakoram,
in your eight thousand metre magnificence.
You reach, yearn, lunge for the stars -
just as men with the ambition of kings
reach, yearn, lunge to conquer you.

Some call you the Savage Mountain,
the hermit among mountains -
in awe of your frigid isolation,
for they say, you cannot be climbed
unless you yourself will it.

It is well no one truly bothered to name you
For names have a beginning and an end.
But you were there in your nakedness
before the first of the humans
and you will be there after the last.