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The Cartographer Sleeps
He dreams:
This afternoon he steals an hour and naps. Behind closed lids his eyes scan to and fro, their rapid movements sketch a world of maps.
The Earth’s already finished but below are strata: sandstone, undivided shale, all in their coloured shapes. Now he can go
under deep sea roads - he’s a diving whale, measures his length along the ocean floors, up mountains, down crevasses. Next he’ll sail
into the troposphere - he soars and draws (naming them all) a congeries of clouds: Bob Cumulus, Jane Cirrus, then explores
even the atoms - christening a crowd of particles, a gang of isotopes. He reads his endless register aloud.
All done! A charted universe! His hope? To sleep again to check for any gaps caused by God shaking his kaleidoscope.
***
He has a nightmare:
Cat-napping now, his careful eyeballs trace firm outlines of once-moving lands, now still and resting neatly in their proper place.
They have been drawn there by his masterskill, he’s hypnotised these huge tectonic plates but they are only slumbering. They will
wake up push off and carelessly create new structures, unknown continents. They’ll drift together, mocking as they tessellate.
Or, jokers in his pack of maps, they’ll shift apart and take with them the bits of names he’s given them: Af Ind and every rift
destroys his w o r l d and all his earthy aims. The little coloured pieces swell and RAISE such mountains! He can’t measure them or claim
to own those bastard hills as chaos plays its game of fast and loose. His pillowcase holds seas of grief and earthquakes of malaise.
Barbara Daniels
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Barbara Daniels website: Formal Poetry and other idiosyncrasies
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