Mapmaker
How can I know
where the sea
of forbidden things
lashes the rocks
with white-tipped waves
if you do not tell me.
I will have to make
my own maps
with knowledge gained mostly
by tripping and falling
and using the wrong words
which I also did not know
could not be spoken.
Some days I feel
distressingly unworldly
as if there is a landscape
invisible between us
that I will never fathom
and so I retreat into silence
and stay motionless
like a fluttering insect
pinned to a card
with terror.
Inside this small circle
it is safe to rest
as long as I stay frozen
like the dew hanging
on the spider’s web
like the leaf already fallen
and waiting to fade
into the dull bronze
of the earth.
A pre-Mercator nautical chart of 1571, from Portuguese cartographer Fernão Vaz Dourado (c. 1520–c. 1580).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartography#/media/File:Fern%C3%A3o_Vaz_Dourado_1571-1.jpg
