1. We are the map’s
icons, the clot-
black or gray hyphen-
lines, the capital’s
isolate circled star.
The key
boxed underneath
in the smallest font will tell
us exactly what it is we mean
to stand for.
2. Is there no difference
between a legend
and a key.
We’ve never known
a scale of more
than one to one,
imperceptible dis-
proportion. . .
3. And here we are again, self-within:
legended,
aliased and atlased.
4. Without its scale, the map’s
a sumptuary object,
quarter-inch a thousand miles, a yard a sliver
of off-green.
I’d chart your inwardness but where’s the key.
The scale-pan’s weight subtractable from the measure.
5. If the scale is an arrangement of our notes
and what’s left inaudible between them
6. As diagnosis
is to disease,
so the map’s
legend, to the mapped.
7. All we do, Libra, is practice
at our scales,
finger the frets
toward some unlearned nocturne’s diminishment, its flats.
8. Will the key
reexplain
everything on the mapface that’s been
inscrutably abbreviated?
9. Legend is to history as map is to its legend.
10. We’ve grown
so tired of persistent direction—
is there still some way
to unmap
each other that
the scales
might fall from our eyes?
11. Then say
to me something
I can’t expect, or negotiate-
against, or boundary-draw:
draw me a map wherein
no legend’s
legible, or needed.
from TheophobiaFind it in the library
Copyright © BOA Editions, Ltd 2012
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of BOA Editions LTD.