Another supposition projects... snowy wastes are but vapour trails of jets and tatter sails. Sleet comes only from cannonized rain, galvanized by inclement ironmongers.
Yet a third hypothesizes frozen energy is stored in the form of ice caps and that the lost amongst departed souls are reborn with every powdery breath.
Ptolemy knew of a southern polar continent. Cook and Shackelton attempted separate conquests. Ships voyaged as early twentieth century probes amid frozen stellar space nudging Earth's feet.
Footprints the size of muskets where left as evidence. So were a few red flags. No oxygen bottles trailed the ascent like those that packed Everest. Amundsen as to Hillary across the South Sea face, yet this Matterhorn has a logic and bedevilment all her own.
Page 60 Norway and Russia claim exploration of her frigid body. The British in the first virginal thrust christened Queen Maud Land after a brilliant courtship. Shades of Spencer and his Faery Queen; the Kron Prins Olaf Coast, anyone?
Ice. South of the Antipodes. The floor of the world. Magnificant pack to the drunken global jaw, growlers or submerged ice packs. A cold porterhouse steak to ward off the combattive edge, the chronic boxer's inflamed orifice and eye -- the nosebleed's staunchest friend.
Terra Australis Incognita, the supposed southern continent; hoof of the Cenotaur stringing men like a bow across nipples like raw wounds. clotted hair and blood on a precipice for a chest.
Rocky shale, pale voile, sun lighting the clearness of the bay; come Moccasin Flower or Grass Pink unto Painted Cup -- big with primula eye, these septs off wild and inland seas.
The delights of success and heartbreaks of failure among the people in the land below Tobermory; the rocks on the cold hill, the lilacs by the doors...
And it was at their expense that this land came to be supplied with vitriol, camomile and liquorice, yea some camphor and jallop, oft'times basil, lemon or rhubarb --- all sent from Glasgow in wooden boxes stout as pioneer hearts.
Backwoods cabin, opera house from the pines awash with stars, skullduggery in place over spruce hills dredged to open revolt against invading plough -- where greenest leaves in a miser's hand part rotting gold bags all nugget strewn, step to step, with water speaking magic over the sound of countless woodland ducks.