the splendor of maps

And the splendor of maps, abstract road to concrete imagination,

Letters and random strokes opening on wonder.

What dreaming in dusty bindings

And signatures, so complex (or so simple and graceful), of old books.

(Distant, discolored ink, here beyond death,

Time’s visible enigma, living nothing that we are!)

What we forget daily, and comes back in drawings,

What certain engraved announcements accidentally announce.

Everything suggesting or expressing what it doesn’t express,

Everything saying what it doesn’t say,

And the soul dreams on, different and distracted.

Fernando Pessoa: Álvaro de Campos (1/14/1933)

Rare Metellus

Japan, 1596

Jan Jansson, Nova Anglia Novum Belgium et Virginia