Teardrops, emotion-tainted water
Now ice within ancient rocks
Mantled by unblemished snow
Fear, hope, love, and ice
Have crystallized as one
The body fades into non-existence
Yet traces persist
Forensic memories
Life, eternally,
Frozen in time
On a flight across Australia I kept hearing the song “Teardrop” by the band Massive Attack on the plane's popular music channel. I'd seen the band in Perth earlier that year and had bought its album, but I'd never really listened to the actual lyrics of the song. As it was a long flight I eventually heard the song about four times, and then the words finally sunk in. The line “teardrop on the fire ” set me thinking about my experiences of Antarctica, and inspired the poem above.
On 1 January 1992, the day on which I survived falling into a crevasse and being almost buried in an avalanche, my tears had fallen onto the rocks and snow. They would have seeped into the microscopic pores of the 380 million-year-old sandstones and would still be frozen there today, protected within those minute cavities, even if covered and somewhat ablated by the snow and ice from the ravages of several harsh winters.
The realization then dawned on me that a small part of my essence, of my molecular body and my ethereal soul, will now remain forever in Antarctica.