# The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica

BY [BERNADETTE MAYER](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/bernadette-mayer) 

Be strong Bernadette  
Nobody will ever know  
I came here for a reason  
Perhaps there is a life here  
Of not being afraid of your own heart beating  
Do not be afraid of your own heart beating  
Look at very small things with your eyes  
&amp; stay warm  
Nothing outside can cure you but everything's outside  
There is great shame for the world in knowing  
You may have gone this far  
Perhaps this is why you love the presence of other people so much  
Perhaps this is why you wait so impatiently  
You have nothing more to teach  
Until there is no more panic at the knowledge of your own real existence  
&amp; then only special childish laughter to be shown  
&amp; no more lies no more  
Not to find you no  
More coming back &amp; more returning  
Southern journey  
Small things &amp; not my own debris  
Something to fight against  
&amp; we are all very fluent about ourselves  
Our own ideas of food, a Wild sauce  
There's not much point in its being over: but we do not speak them:  
I had written: "the man who sewed his soles back on his feet"  
And then I panicked most at the sound of what the wind could do  
               to me  
       if I crawled back to the house, two feet give no position, if  
       the branches cracked over my head &amp; their threatening me, if I  
       covered my face with beer &amp; sweated till you returned  
If I suffered what else could I do