Thursday, April 27, 2017

World Map (Hans Holbein The Younger), Sonnet #348




















My mind was designed to click to the grid.
I could draw a floor plan of every home,
Each room I've lived in, etched as with acid.
The maps in my head make a heavy tome.
Some atavism shapes our love of maps --
An impulse to capture chaos in traps
Of paper and ink, odd shapes, twisting lines,
Repeat the world with approximate signs.
One old map shows an angel at each pole
Turning the earth, known by then to be round.
Monsters and sailing ships don't make a sound,
The land is mostly flat, the oceans roll,
The coordinate lines are tightly wound.
All is fixed and still as a sleeping soul.