Poem
Kei Miller
XX. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER TELLS OFF THE RASTAMAN
XX. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER TELLS OFF THE RASTAMAN
XX. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER TELLS OFF THE RASTAMAN
The cartographer sucks his teethand says – every language, even yours,
is a partial map of this world – it is
the man who never learnt the word
‘scrupe’ – sound of silk or chiffon moving
against a floor – such a man would not know
how to listen for the scrupe of his bride’s dress.
And how much life is land to which
we have no access? How much
have we not seen or felt or heard
because there was no word
for it – at least no word we knew?
We speak to navigate ourselves
away from dark corners and we become,
each one of us, cartographers.
© 2015, Kei Miller
From: The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
From the sequence \'The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion\'.
From: The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
Kei Miller
(Jamaica, 1978)
‘You might say
my job is not
to lose myself exactly
but to imagine
what loss might feel like –‘
Quick introduction
Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet who has been making an international furore on the poetry scene since his first collection Kingdom of empty bellies came out in 2006. His collections and novels have won numerous awards, up to and including his most recent collection Things I...
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Poems of Kei Miller
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XX. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER TELLS OFF THE RASTAMAN
The cartographer sucks his teethand says – every language, even yours,
is a partial map of this world – it is
the man who never learnt the word
‘scrupe’ – sound of silk or chiffon moving
against a floor – such a man would not know
how to listen for the scrupe of his bride’s dress.
And how much life is land to which
we have no access? How much
have we not seen or felt or heard
because there was no word
for it – at least no word we knew?
We speak to navigate ourselves
away from dark corners and we become,
each one of us, cartographers.
From: The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
From the sequence \'The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion\'.
XX. IN WHICH THE CARTOGRAPHER TELLS OFF THE RASTAMAN
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