When Tracing New Borders Poem by Ernest Hilbert

When tracing new borders for the Middle East,
Churchill., drunk, allowed his pencil to slip
And left a thirty-mile polyp on the page

That presses into Jordan to this day.
Traveling to the edge of the salient,
One finds only sand, rocks, and wind.

Sometime in the eighteenth century, a
Minor Russian administrator was
Sent to erect a boundary post

On the barren trail between Yekateringburg
And Tyumen to mark the division
Of Europe from Asia, one of many

That had been drawn. Snow whited out
The horizon, made the route indistinct.
Hunched and bound in iron fetters,

Tsarist exiles passing the frontier would
Kneel and fitfully scoop the last handfuls
Of European soil beneath colorless

Winter sun. They crouched as long as they could
Before being pushed forward,
Gazing into the sapphire dusk over

The hills ahead. One observer wrote that
"No other boundary in the world has seen
So many shattered hearts." There was no return

From that point, like crossing into the blue
Frost of Hades without a golden bough
To ensure retreat. One bitter morning,

An Oxford professor, born in Russia,
Gazed out of his rain-spattered window
At garden walls receding down a grey English

Lane and thought of a tidal Europe, its
Borders rising and falling back in time.
For centuries vespers ascend and fall

From cathedrals and cloisters, and, sadly,
Announcing the familiar decline
Of day and light, mark limits, and origins.