Climber Since a steep winter walk crocked my left knee the leg’s stopped talking to the rest of me: nerves, muscles, brain—they hear its pains but muffled, like the wires are frozen. Stiff, it braces itself through daily paces, lets its fellow, its right-leg man and master, hustle it home with a stick, a step behind, the sound of one foot walking, one dragged, grudgingly lies down in tandem; but in sleep becomes its own limb again, goes off for holidays on its own, shins up the Eiger or Matterhorn. I dreamed, modestly, of conquering Coot-tha or, fifty years back,…