Mystery Of The Maps Poem by Louis Kasatkin

Do maps redraw themselves after they are

rolled up and put back in the drawer?

Do rivers and mountains relocate and

topographically readjust in the quiet

of the dark whilst we are asleep?

Are distances shortened between

continents before those maps are

once again unfurled and inspected

by statesmen and generals over Port and cigars?

Do red lines themselves alter language,

reinvent culture, annul history or do they

only seem to do so long after they are drawn?

To think, if the maps had been handled differently,

we should have ended up on the other side

of a line made by an errant pencil stroke.