This poem is taken from PN Review 280, Volume 51 Number 2, November - December 2024.
Four Poems
The Geographer’s Chair
No one has told him
he is in a picture.
It was the sun
coming in through the window,
blanching his maps of meaning,
made him look up.
It is as if he sees light
for the first time as nothing
but light and is
himself simplified,
his thumbnail, his right
eye and forehead
abridged to crusts
of clumsy pink
and dirty white.
The globe, the vellum
chart, the cross-staff
by the window,
...
No one has told him
he is in a picture.
It was the sun
coming in through the window,
blanching his maps of meaning,
made him look up.
It is as if he sees light
for the first time as nothing
but light and is
himself simplified,
his thumbnail, his right
eye and forehead
abridged to crusts
of clumsy pink
and dirty white.
The globe, the vellum
chart, the cross-staff
by the window,
...
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