☀ Today's Poem: Excerpt from "Etymologies" Walter Ancarrow

a scribe's antecedent: skribh, "to scratch" into bark, stone, earth

:

scribes, like cartographers, turn the world into paper

:

philosophers spoke of liber mundi. in certain tomes one finds answers at the end

:

the Prophet could reject material reality. he who never learned to read

:

at the Mosque of the Booksellers, scholars publish works by burning them on
windy days

:

the Muqaddimah tells all history in that all history is an introduction

:

there is no projection without distortion, as Mercator knew

:

cartographers, like scribes, turn paper into the world

map from Old French mapemonde from Medieval Latin mappa, "cloth," and mundi, "world"

"When folded such fabrics of space-time transpose orient with occident: antipodes touch, URAL MOUNTAINS labels an unnamed sea, Cairo's dawn sweeps San Francisco's brume, the qibla points everywhere, which is Mecca. When unfolded the world resumes its mundane form. Only the folded map is a holy text—its symbols unseen, its referent a thought with no edge."

—Muhammad al-Idrisi, commentary on Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq fi ikhtiraq al-afaq

from the book ETYMOLOGIES / Omnidawn Publishing

Al-Idrisi’s famous map is really an atlas comprising several maps. It could be translated as The Yearner’s Excursion in Penetrating the Horizons. In my imagining of the folded world, Dubai hangs like stalactites above Minsk while the Yangtze flows into the Yangtze. I suppose the two poems are connected in that closing the world begins a new way of reading it.

Walter Ancarrow on "Etymologies"

View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com.
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2025 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency

͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏