Anonyme
My father drew the edges of the known,
the coastlines where the surveys fell apart,
he shaded in the places left alone
and marked with question what he could not chart.
I grew up reading maps before I read words,
those coloured planes of what the world had said,
I knew the shapes of rivers, mountain cords,
and deserts spreading where the rivers bled.
He told me: never trust the centre of a map,
that's where the money is, that's where the power draws.
Look to the margins, find the unmarked gap,
that's where the real geography still claws.
I think about that now when I arrive
in cities where the streets don't match the plan,
where something in the in-between stays alive
beyond the neat intentions of a man.
There is a world beneath the one we name,
rivers that flow under roads and car parks still,
the original country, wild before we came
and waiting underneath our maps, until.