after Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The Map’

Bold shades of autumn leaf – or blazing embers’ light,
bright to extinguished, as if fires set
in hearths huddled closely in the dirt were offset
by pallid oceans with their artificial light.
Are the colours fire-signals to a planetary eye
that, like Atlas, feels the weight of earth,
foreseeing how the grief will be focused at its girth?
Burgundy, past danger, a climate gone awry.

The almost-Africa of Greenland is startlingly red.
Europe and Eurasia go galloping through daffodils
in their ever Spring. There is nothing here to touch –
flat as time on a line, the map opens to the eye
a dream of change. So fire’s heat wavers
as it rises to your hand. Countries, if you hover, leap up
with a number that’s badged to their name, like prisoners
or players: the lower the number, the darker the colour
and graver the voice that makes the call.
The countries ranged together seem to shout
across the globe: You too? Really? Who’d have known.

The oceans keep their counsel. They are sidelined
from the picture by the stakes and how it’s played,
for only settlements can trade
but the waters that surround may undermine
them any time. None have chosen where they stand
– all the field comes pre-arranged – and the game
will not be won by any group. The outcome is the same.
Time is burning through the map.

Judith Bishop

Judith Bishop’s forthcoming collection, Interval, will be published by UQP in March 2018