For the Cartographers

January 26, 2011

For the Cartographers, in the style of Edward Hirsch’s poem “For the Sleepwalkers” and ending in two lines from Mary Ruefle’s poem “On the Beach” from her book Indeed I Was Pleased With the World

Tonight I want to praise

the cartographers,

who have the courage

with their quill pens

and parchment paper

to spell out the horizons,

to scratch into existence

the edges of the world.

They sketch with an artist’s eye

the twists and turns,

the geometric rivers,

the flowing borders,

mapping out the past

and the future

until things that don’t yet exist

can provoke tactile reactions. 

I want to say something remarkable

like: in such smooth cadences,

with such elegant syntax,

the cartographers create

clever creeds, secretly

prophesying the rise and fall

of each great nation. 

We need to learn

how to stop seeing life with the lines

already drawn in. After all, it’s just a blank space

left for us to fill, the world one big possibility

for us to conceive ourselves.

We need to stop thinking

that soon we will no longer be surprised

by anything at all.