by David Ehrenman
The tourist guides on the glacier know the truth,
naming the wasteland “Mordor.” It felt strange when they said it
but not because they were wrong—the advice opens
blind eyes expecting vacation beauty to experience’s lens:
a desolation full of wonder and ready for awful transformation.
Someone told me once that if there is a God or not,
and more importantly the answers that we have
(or disinclined and guiled by the genius in Dis, that rot
unexamined, unhandled, unloved), should make
no difference to me. Not everyone learns the
language of virtue, embodied or hollowed as speakers might be,
but I wonder if maybe beyond the words’
magic, humanity misses here, deep down our souls.
This is no multiversal difference in how our languages
configure the little miracle of thought, but the width of the world,
between lands of likeness, compressed by absence in an instant.
The vacuum sucks breath as collapse sparks explosion.
Maybe virtue is the way even if it hardly reveals
deep crevasses unmappable, and only visible suddenly
in the human glacier. Roots keep us together
so long, but some racing ahead grow heavy, split off,
and embrace separation with regret or resignation
for the isolation inevitably accompanying dissolution.
Whether it comes from sincerity (even authenticity)
or simplicity or (mark the pity) ignorance, the
sacrifice raises no smell in the cold when they
perform petty religions in their own names.
I cannot sit in judgment, when ash wears through me,
Fire through ice. I too am carried along the ages on the
shoulders of an animated spirit nine fathoms deep,
the form of human progress grinding back to dust
both mountain memorials and buried earth.
The human soul is round—that, perhaps,
is where (below the surface) there seems no
difference to me. And even there, I see my family
in one state or another. The abominable silence speaks
not for the divine but for humanity. Legion
manifests in fire, earthquake, and whirlwind,
since so many in their rituals lose true names to call on.
In the land of fire and ice, I turned my face up.
I wondered at first to see Heaven like the divine face as
Cosmic machinery’s cycle turns round
in new repetition’s seeming caprice.
When the earth turns its face from the light
I wonder how many holes in space and time tear
the fabric worse than all the pinprick
living stars. Which one am I?
David Ehrenman is the former Student Engagement Coordinator at Anselm House, a Christian study center seeking to connect faith and knowledge. A lifelong lover of literature and walking between worlds, David is a dual citizen with substantial experience across Australia, the United States, and central Europe. David earned the Michael Wagenheim Memorial Scholarship and Highest Distinction in his English Literature B.A. from the University of Virginia. When not chatting, running events, or climbing, David can be found burying his nose in a book he’s reading or a piece he’s writing. His work appears in Mythic Circle and The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, as well as his Substack, Life in Circles.
header image: Untitled (2026), ©Kairos Photography
