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Sharing a Bed with Eight Other Men
for Steve Moody
Alpine Hut Dix.
You’ve crossed the Pas de Chèvres, though
it’s doubtful any goat is accomplished enough
to descend the forty feet of steel steps to the glacier.
At least three days without washing
and only Swiss-bitter, herbal tea to drink
yet you snuggle down deep under the communal duvet,
try to keep your breath from freezing nasal hair to cotton.
Nine men. Nine pairs of armpits and all those crotches
with the risk of something which might creep out.
Unseen, by the sun’s impartial eye, dreams shift,
stretch beyond the silhouetted Matterhorn
crouching like a secret under a gentian sky.
A tenth man is there; is forever there.
You can hear his dreamings if you open your mind,
sense his breath crystallise to indoor snowflakes,
taste the bile which rose in his throat that very last time
and if you roll over in sleep, you may find yourself face to face
with a blur of features you don’t recognise;
it is then you know that you’ve climbed higher
than the nimble, sure-foot chamois,
much, much higher than you ever thought feasible.
Moira Merryweather
first published in Watermark, Middlesex University Press, 2004;
also published in The Interpreter’s House, Issue 31, 2006
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