The companion poem to that, "17,"
shows him coming down from the mountain.
See how carefully worked out those two.
He goes up in the first poem, he comes down in the next one.
"I am down at last from the mountain,
having confessed, without words, that height is not everything.
Not that I did not enjoy the rare air,
the oversides of birds.
Not that I did not applaud the dark clouds' silver linings.
And of course, all that splendid symmetry.
Merciful God, did you know that even the meanest water gully
winds its course, cocksure as a headstone?
But height is not everything.
Thus, I am down now from the mountain,
gulping the dense air, dodging the droppings of kingbirds.
Lightning, I tell my vast audiences,
strikes only once, and always in the same place.
At unmarked creeks, I don a faded loincloth,
then dive like a deep-eyed urchin,
again and again and again, for the spent coins of belief."