Accessible.

MAP

Flat as the table

it’s placed on.

Nothing moves beneath it

and it seeks no outlet.

Above — my human breath

creates no stirring air

and leaves its total surface

Undisturbed.

Its plains, valleys are always green,

uplands, mountains are yellow and brown,

while seas, oceans remain a kindly blue

beside the tattered shores.

Everything here is small, near, accessible.

I can press volcanoes with my fingertip,

stroke the poles without thick mittens,

I can with a single glance

encompass every desert

with the river lying just beside it.

A few trees stand for ancient forests,

you couldn’t lose your way among them.

In the east and west,

above and below the equator—

quiet like pins dropping,

and in every black pinprick

people keep on living.

Mass graves and sudden ruins

are out of the picture.

Nations’ borders are barely visible

as if they wavered — to be or not.

I like maps, because they lie.

Because they give no access to the vicious truth.

Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly

they spread before me a world
not of this world.

Wisława Szymborska