MUKTINATH BY DAVID WHYTE

Dawn at Muktinath
and I look through the window,
white mountains and the steady
slopes of snow,
cold scent of pine and the raven-call
of black birds 
circling upward- toward nothing.

So the breath escapes the mouth
spiralling in a cold room,
so the words leave our lips,
the first line of a long poem
with no courage to finish.

This is the place the path begins,
the empty room beneath the breath
where everything we’ve broken
comes back to be repaired,
where bitterness returns, opens,
turns to a final sourness
on the lime-washed walls
and disappears