Four Poems

The Geographer’s Chair

No one has told him
he is in a picture.
It was the sun

coming in through the window,
blanching his maps of meaning,
made him look up.

It is as if he sees light
for the first time as nothing
but light and is

himself simplified,
his thumbnail, his right
eye and forehead

abridged to crusts
of clumsy pink
and dirty white.

The globe, the vellum
chart, the cross-staff
by the window,
...