Coordinates Poem by Christopher Merrill

A map on which the names have been erased,

A compass pivoting on a black cross,

Sextants dismantled and displayed in a store

Razed and rebuilt in the Jewish Quarter—this is

How to draw coordinates for the next battle

On memory and desire, with a set of tools

No one knows how to use. And so the colonel

Peeling an orange at the command post

Hums an aria from La Bohème

Until a mortar lands outside his door.

__________

The trial will resume next week, if the judge

Survives the latest attempt on his life—though the jury

Impaneled for the duration of the war

Cannot reach a verdict in the case

Of the man gagged and hanging from the ceiling

Of the machine shop: the ghost prisoner,

AKA God’s beloved. His testimony

Must be thrown out, new witnesses examined,

And the court reporters banished before the judge

Can order him to be strung up again.

__________

Cicadas emerge, numbered and ranked, their clear

Wings beating—a light arriving from a star

Glimpsed from the depths of an abandoned mine.

We won’t make it out alive, the guide said

And tumbled down the shaft. What remains?

A shred of plastic flapping in the nest

The birds left in the hedge, a speckled egg

That never hatched, a file of summonses

Lost in the flood. The trees hum in the dark.

Pray for the guide. Pray for everyone.

__________

Heroic poses generate suspicion,

According to a poll taken on board

The wooden ship bound for the Orient.

Hence the captain’s orders are delivered

Through the sous-chef who signed up to resurrect

The art of navigating by the stars.

The first mate is afraid to leave his cabin.

The stowaway will lead the mutineers.

And the passengers will tell you anything

If you will take them safely to Ceylon.

__________

To break the back of the iambic line,

The prisoner in his metal cage, exposed

To sun and wind and rain, summoned a host

Of voices from the vast storehouse of his reading

And listening, and cast them on the page

Like glittering shells collected at high tide,

In a new line variable as the surf

He could no longer hear from his death cell

In Pisa: by the law, so build yr/ temple…

The verdict? Silence and unsentencing.

__________

The tower leans toward mystery. Which is to say:

The past, present, and future, the masonry

Of which is lined with cracks through which to glimpse

A second space—i.e. eternity.

Thus Mimi, coughing, seizes Rodolfo’s sleeve

To sing goodbye. Thus a seasick passenger

Prays for deliverance. And thus the poet charged

With treason marks off in the sand the days

Until his execution, while the colonel

Is buried with full military honors.

__________

After the torture and interrogations,

The water-boarding and sleep deprivation

And menstrual blood flung in his face, the ghost

Prisoner revealed the coordinates

For the Roman razing of Jerusalem

And the itinerary that John followed

To Patmos to compose his Revelation

For the seven churches in Asia. The guard

Removed her underwear. And from the throne

Proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices…