Poem in response to When the Mountain Fell

This is a poem in response to C.F. Ramuz's When the Mountain Fell.


A man could not
make his hands paint
so he colored in words--
a darker shade of gray and white fingers
and told about when the mountain fell.

Nature is a cruel mouth
on the mountain
he wrote.
Some say a healing power exists
between bent fingers carefully speaking
and that a high breeze could cure an ill face.
Then why do we still feel like prisoners on the mountain?
Is it because it could easily kill us
and death is unsettling.
Up there, down there.
The mountains have their own way of making the dead.