trout

The much vaunted map of holiness and truth

Bernadette Hall

The lines are not copied from hill or harbour,
from embayage or stone.
They have been imagined purely by the dreaming soul.

Here is the earth as a circle within a circle that is the sea,
so it must be the Mediterranean.
Here is the Garden of Eden with Jerusalem at its centre,
here is the Mountain and the Golden Calf, here is the Burning Bush.    

And here in the margin,
drawn with such exquisite care that it must be the truth,
is the death-dealing cockatrice. And the screaming mandrake-root