Flat Earth Society

 

Who decided that the Earth

Should have four corners?

Mapmakers, I guess

And a poet who could not resist

 

We make metaphors

So that something new might have

A meaning

Like the first day,

We need to separate night from day

One shape from another

Have touchstones for the texture of the thing

 

So that when

We hold something we don’t know

And wonder whether to feel squeamish

Or maybe grasp a little harder

As in the embrace of

Someone we haven’t seen for a while

 

The world is made of figures

(no need to fold it over;

take it as it is)

and the way to comprehend them

Is to line them up

Get to know them into metaphors, the similes

Induction to deduction,

We have

A rosy familiarity at last

We settle into something like a star

A source of light and radiance

Every place that has no pleasure

In the dark

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Konrad Miller – modified version of File:Karte Pomponius Mela.jpg; form Mappae Mundi Bd. Vi. “Rekonstruierte Karten”, Tafel 7., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38472341

An 1898 reconstruction of Pomponius Melas view of the World.