The Map of Apollo

Fully encragged by the map of the bear,
Poem trekked slowly and painfully on foot
for miles and miles up to, and more miles into, 
the realm "where dogs won't go, even in sleep."
Rocks or bog, nothing in between.  The air
filled with insects, and nothing 
luminous anywhere but slime.
Overpowering odor of things recently dead.

Double-vision during the few times anything 
was visible; triple kinesthesia or worse;
gray snarl of mishearings mingling
with thorn-scrapes' distant crimson
in who-knows-whose body.
Under it all, nothing in his mind except
the bone-ache become his center and
the rare mosquito-sized lightning 
something unknown
flicked into it.  

Cold rain then, cold rain that, after more miles--
or feet, he could no longer tell--turned to almost
solid snow.  Finally, it blurred him to a halt, 
defeated.  

He remained halted for hours.  No
enlightenment came, just a desire for it all
to end.

It didn't.  Ergo, south his dark trudge then splashed,
however feebly.  He persisted.  And the cold
slowly stuttered from metallic to rancid
to word-dim, however continuingly vocal in the shallows
of his lesser confusions.

South Poem now moved, 
and upward, less and less unlithely, 
spoorless weather braving him almost swift,
the hawk now within descanting bright winds
over the outer margins of his bone-ache