It was the year Columbus crossed the Atlantic,
The year the Jews were expelled from Spain.
Alone, in Lisbon,in a sea-lit room,
A man of whom nothing much is known
Sat and drew a map such as the world had never seen,
Tracing the coasts of Europe and the Mediterraean,
The Black Sea and West Africa.
With sinuous rococo arabesques,
He voyaged about shores compassed together
From fragments,his mariner’s hand
Carried on mysterious currents,
Through secret tempests and wrecks,
Undulating all around the parchment.
And when he had finished, he wrote upon it:
“Jorge de Aguiar made me in Lisbon
In the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492.”
Who was he? A sea captain? Or perhaps a Sephardi?
Navigating southward the African coast,
One manoeuvred against the winds and waves,
Puzzling out the contours of dreams and terrors.
He had found his own magnetic north
And must sail to the limits of faith and reason,
Damned to new diseases,and the avarice
In merchants’ and slavers’ eyes.
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