Before Maps Were Made

Before maps were made, no one strayed from straight lines

from the cradle to their graves. But everyone knew the old ways.

Winter rimed minds and the cartless track, peasant paths,

or ways pilgrims went breaking backs to reach sanctuary,

where untrue saints waited for prayer and their silver.

In spring, jealous boundaries restepped again by

important parish men, sheriff's foot pads,

cloaked crow men of the shire, desireless as priests,

ensuring the land of the shire was unstolen by any.

A motley crew, holy and otherwise, incense and solemnity

competing with mist in the outfield furrows.

Beyond their tread, wild boar watched sardonically,

these iron fisted lairds and lying scribes making

false landmarks as dogs scent trees.

Yet marshes sometimes swallowed petty men like these,

streams tooks turns to have murderous moods,

drowning lords and muck rakers arbritarily.

A flint eyed peasant, bolder than most, might have

watched for strays as the procession of tax leeches passed.

One less of such a retinue would not be missed.

A sullen sunken grave was surely unmarked 

in those days before atlases.

 

The very grass was sharp as spears and contained

all manner of beasts unknown and unclassified,

things that did not go extinct because

they were were not acknowledged to exist.

Hills had more names than now, depending on how

murderous their mood, or how lofty their attitudes.

Forests waned and fluxed, a green tide unconcerned

with the ways of men, stone dykes or run rigs,

poor land seeded by stunted barley then.

Land hungry invaders who did not beware

might be engulfed themselves by gorse and heather,

if they did not at least sideways honour

the geography they tried to overwrite.

By day, boasting of conquest; by night a different tale,

cowering from what was worse than wolves out there.

 

Before maps were made by monks and warlords,

wild stags knew better the wayward paths,

bears patrolled the intersections of wild and tame,

and men bleated like sheep if they strayed too far.

Whole villages might be swallowed by haar 

and never be missed by overlords too drunk

on power to know their wealth.

No planning permission then, when some random

shieling not worth a bead might endure from the neolithic

and other wattle and daub towns wiped out

by rat plague or the say so of the storm gods.

Saints would split mountains without a gasp

(no hard task), demolished hillforts at will,

and you were God's chosen lucky soul

if the gale blew your heart off course.

 

Before maps were made, God had a narrow horizon for all.

There was enough loss near at hand without worrying

about the foreign land of the next valley or town.

The circle of your unmapped eye was

the circumference of the world.