Notes From A NonExistent Himalayan Expedition

So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo--a white mute.
Quiet.
.
Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.
.
Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.
.
We've inherited hope--
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.
.
Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.
.
Up here it's neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back, think again!
.
I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.
.
--Poem by Wislawa Szymborska (Polish)
and the winner of the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1996. From her volume
of collected poems, View With A Grain
Of Sand