[John Beaton]

I’m with Chris in liking this one. It starts with a tourist trip and ends with the revelation of a pearl of humanity in an oyster of natural and spiritual grandeur. And I’m with the poet all the way.

Hawaiians made the ascent to the summit of this place (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJOdbhCh-tw ) to lay gifts at an altar to Kane, their god of procreation and maker of the upper and lower heavens and of earth.

The cliff “telegraphs” human hurt, as when a boxer “telegraphs” a punch by making it so obvious his opponent can’t help but notice. I don’t think this word is terribly out-of-place in a poem with a helicopter in it. It’s an economical way of saying the cliff is drawing N’s attention to Kane’s cryng.

L12 asks why humans (normally a pleasure-seeking and cheerful bunch) brought gifts to such a place of tears and not to a comparable place (i.e. a mountain with a god at the top, so why not “Olympian”?) of happiness.

L13 and L14 answer: because Kane is crying in sympathy with the mourners of great human tragedy. In other words, the gift-bearers cared enough about the suffering to make the amazing ascent in order to assist with the mourning of it. I have no problem with the list—it simply evokes human tragedy, and cause for mourning, on a global scale.

My only slight quibble is with the geology. This phenomenon was formed by erosion and is not really a crater with a collapsed wall. However, the world calls it a caldera and this is a poem, not a treatise.

John