Man in a Glacier

The mountainside failed. But when 

we saw that deep spot the dead sun 

came back heavy as an engine 

and my pick rattled like a gun.

The ice unravelled; we peeled it from 

his toothy face, glittering brown, 

a woody rubber round his mind, 

the Bronze Age still stuck to his tongue.

We etched; I touched his empty thumb. 

My present echoed like a tomb. 

We stood in the twilight alpine wind. 

We knelt into the glassy loam

until our slowing fingers numbed, 

stroking out his ancient stone 

with gentleness like fishes’ fins, 

tinkering his resurrection—

trowelling out unfinished bone 

four thousand years away from home—

cold laboring late angels asking him, 

Who do you say I am?