(Geraldine, Carla and Erica found a letter, which they thought it was an important document belonging to someone living miles away. It was clear that a person entrusted the written paper to a messenger after putting a wax seal on it. The seal was placed on this document in such a manner that it was impossible to read it without first breaking the seal, which was very dry and brittle.)


Carla said, '' Let's read and bring to life the stories behind
These manuscripts, '' ''Let's find who was the owner and who handled
These books and papers.'' ''Some memories come back into my mind, ''
''I love to read; it’s so dark in here, let's light a candle, ''


Said Erica; they saw scribbled notes written on the margins
Of the books and the changing ownership of some manuscripts.
''An Arab medicinal work for Jewish use, that’s for certain.''
''Is it? '' '' It's translated into Hebrew; I think it's fabulous, ''
(… Replied Carla.)

Geraldine opened a book saying, '' This is a Persian
Medicinal work translated into Turkish; it must be
More interesting; they treat using a different version.''
''This copy of the book written by José Vicente.

(..Said Carla,)

Has a lot of geographical and astronomical
Information; you can learn to measure the distance;
It contains the main cities, oceans, '' ‘‘It’s phenomenal! ''
''Mapmakers, '' '' it's like a trip to another existence! ''
(..Exclaimed Erica,)

''It shows which stars are visible or not, the solar cycles
And it is illustrated with tables, diagrams, and maps.''
''Is this a Holy Book? I'm not good in perusing these titles.''
''Yes, it's written by Francisco Javier, a nice one, perhaps, ''

(Geraldine replied to Erica, knowing that she was a Russian not knowing too much Latin. Geraldine continued…))


''It's about a convent established in Mexico City
For any daughter of a conquistador who lacked dowry.
''Look, Aonio Paleario! I think it’s such a pity
To contradict the Catholic dogma; this language is flowery, ''

(…Said Carla.)


''It's a copy of a rare book. Does this contradiction mean
The trouble with the Inquisition in these Reformation times?
''He had the most influential protectors I've ever seen.''
But his protectors died; there are notes between the lines, ''

(Carla answered to Erica. Carla continued…)

‘’The Spanish Inquisition is run by the civil
Authorities of Kings after centuries of Muslim
*******; the execution became official
For the Muslim piracy to turn it down to very dim.’’

(Geraldine intervened in the conversation…)

‘’Spain had asked the Papacy to set up the Inquisition,
But the Papacy refused. Then, Spain threatened Rome
With not coming to give aid against the Muslim opposition.
Their armies sacked Rome and made southern Italy be their home.

The Pope set up the inquisition only for Christians.
Over time, the torture was not to be done more than once,
Was not to threaten life; there were Spanish transgressions
By the lawyers who oversaw this system from hence.’’

(Then, Erica told them…..)

''In England, the person convicted of public begging
Has a limb chopped off; a Catholic priest in England
Teaching school is executed.'' ''There're penalties for bringing
A false witness against someone; England's laws also bind Ireland, ''

(….Replied Carla. Erica continued….)

''There is a secret collaboration between London and
Tsar Peter of Russia.'' '' He is known as Peter the Great.''
''There are notes on a book; while travelling to Europe, he shunned
The persons knowing him, '' ''He wanted to change his country's fate.''

(Carla expressed her point of view regarding what Erica said. Erica continued…)

''He studied new developments in shipbuilding; he lived
In Deptford, at the home of John Evelyn, a writer.''
''This letter is from England and I’m a bit surprised
'Cause this letter should be brought to a Russian.'' ''A fighter


Was this messenger.'' ''Maybe this man is the ghost we feel.''
''Did King William help Peter? '' ‘’He increased trade with Russia.''
''Peter loved a peasant and, wanting his love to conceal,
He made her be his domestic serf.'' I've heard she's from Prussia.''

''She's from Lithuania; her name is Catherine; he married
Her secretly, '' ''But he's married, '' '' He divorced his first wife.''
'' He worked as a carpenter; his interests were varied.''
'' Friend with Marquis of Carmarthen, he started a new life.''

(Geraldine tried to open the letter a little without breaking its seal. '' I think it is written 'Catherine' or 'Carmarthen.' '' ''Impossible, '' replied Carla, ''It would be much more important than any other one and it wouldn't be lost here. Give it to me.'')

(Erica said,)

'' King William gave Tsar Peter the ship Royal Transport
As a gift; the ship's designer was Marquis of Carmarthen.
As King Augustus of Poland, King William showed him support.
'' This messenger traveled many miles to take his ship again.''

(Erica told them that she feels like she's about to faint. Carla ran down the stairs to bring vinegar and water and Geraldine hurried to open the window. Meanwhile, Erica took a document from the box and hid it under her dress.)

(..to be continued.)

Poem by Marieta Maglas)

Remember when we thought we could burn the world down?
And now we can’t even manage a spark
We aren’t bored with passion or refused it
We just never knew it
And we’ve all become compliant
Being stale gasoline in gallon drums

We could be virgins or saints but we’re liars
And we wouldn’t have it any other way
Are lilac fields are wilted
And covered in swarms of honey bees
And we walk hand in hand through the hives
And come out swinging

Putting our trust into mapmakers who’ve never seen the world
Their limbs have all been broken
Now treading water with their hearts
This could be the most meaningful turn of the world
And you’d never ever know it
Until it came like a tidal wave crashing through your front door

We’ve been screaming at the sky until our throats are raw
And all we hear back is silence, not even an echo
I swear to God I haven’t felt like myself in so long
‘Cos all that’s left of me is confusion
We’re all mad here in this wasteland
With our dead cowboys and our dead spacemen

Forever Peter Pan in a business suit
Forever Peter Pan when my spine has doubled over
Forever Peter Pan on a morphine drip
And forever Peter Pan in a casket
And all that’s left of a name
Is what’s chiseled on your gravestone

You were my beautiful urgency
Your lips promised the world onto the fragmented map
left in me
A beautiful Pangaea sealed together
The world stopped for us- the naive mapmakers
While everything else spun into beautiful chaos
The madness of the tectonic mountains
stop for none
Not even the innocent promises forged across the continents
They laughed as their rifts
battered our beating hearts,
Until their was nothing left but a single pulse

Memories flood me, brutally constant, like the tides angered at the shore

When your laughter stretched across the ocean
But somehow only seemed to reach me
Pulse
When we picked out the life our children would have,
Like it was some neat and concise future picked from a catalog
Pulse
When our world went up in smoke, it had never been
clearer
Pulse
When our hearts started beating for someone else
Someone else besides for you and me
Pulse
When you walked away
Pulse
And I realized it was too late
Pulse
When I knew in that moment your brokenness would forever
Cut sharply at my heart, etching those four words left unsaid
Until I was as broken as your ghost
Pulse
When
Pulse
I
Pulse
Realized
Pulse
You
Pulse
Were
Pulse
My
Pulse
Everything
Pulse
And I was just your side thing.

Pulse

What can be said about your beautiful urgency when your time has run out?

There’s a famous town that does not exist
It’s in new York state in the Catskills.
It is name Agloe.
It’s a paper town.
Put on the map in an insignificant place.
To protect the mapmakers in 1925
from copyright infringement
By unauthorized reproduction of the map.
I followed a map once all the way to
a place that did not exist.
I travelled slowly to it
Mile by mile.
I loved the thought of living there.
I even fell in love with it.
But it turned out to be a paper heart.
Filling a space where the real heart
Should be it had no feelings or love
It was paper just to look like a heart
to outsiders like me.
So after all the tiring journey
to find it.
I found out It never existed.
Just like Agloe
On the old paper map.
But Agloe never
broke anyone’s real heart.

Dear best friend, if this were a letter it’d been in writing for at least the last ten years. It starts with a girl who didn’t need a best friend, so of course she was going to find one anyway.

Dear best friend, if this was a letter there would be no plot, introduction-body-conclusion, or ******. There would be a long, long beach, snaking against the pull of the ocean, that point where the sand is in the crick of the hourglass, and time slows, not stops. I saw, you there, dear best friend, maybe lost, maybe adventurous, but not looking for a best friend either.

Dear best friend, you’re so easy to talk to. We crouch before the bonfire that tickles the scaly sand, melting between our toes, and see the world in the smokescreen that is the stars. We timeline our lives, diagramming the intersections and the parallels of our futures. Our fingertips brush against each other in fire-tinged darkness. We are mapmakers with our toes in the ocean.

Dear best friend, I’ve never been a good writer. Not the way you are, the way your words grow thriving cities in front of my eyes, or corner me between laugh or confusion, or strum my imagination at its bass strings. When I write, I try to color in the blanks you leave behind like footprints in the sand. Did you leave them for me? Or do you truly not know that the wind from your sail tugs at my face across an ocean, here alone next to our bonfire? When did I start needing a best friend?

Dear best friend, this letter wasn’t supposed to have a ******.

Dear best friend, I hear that time is shaped like a figure eight. That must be why I see you stumbling over the sand, a zigzag skate to our flickering embers. I feel your shadow as I approach, a reflection of my uncertain soul. There’s too many words in the air between us, but I still need your fingers clamped around my forearm as we sink to the ground, much the way you need mine. When did you start needing a best friend?

It’s peaceful here, dear best friend, as we watch the stars, not chart them. The warmth from our fire wraps around me like an easy blanket and rests mildly on my eyelids. I don’t have the strength yet to stand and you don’t have the confidence to speak. Just for once, let’s let a story go untold, snatched up by the salty wind and hidden in an ancient treasure chest. X marks the spot of a sand-kissed promise to open the chest someday.


Dear best friend, I don’t know when I’ll see you again. I’ll lean against the curved glass of life and feel my way through, sometimes blind, sometimes half-blind. Maybe there’ll be music too, the quiet breath of an underground oasis and a sleeping city. Maybe you’ll hear it too. Or maybe it’s patterned into the edges of our souls, a calling from the beach that is my heart.

Sincerely,

Woe is a horned creature
      Color/blue (soft)
      Youth of savage taste
        
Piano is envious for magic
(The noise is disquiet)
    
    Angel wise and
    a whisper

Mother cleaned up her
violent act on stage (a highwire)
    The temple forever stained with
     birth
    
          Garden of age/
          
       A river's foolish plea with the moon,
        
People wrapped in ivy dance holily
   With their April patterns in a truly
    Dionysian scene
    
         I am there (a poet)
             day belonging to death
as death is owed to
life

   I feel balanced in this state
   (on the edge of the river)
  
       we are joined by harmonies from the Valley,
         they can be heard from above
           flowing
           downward
           featherlike
           unafraid
          
           (a warmth/a womb)

II

   The sea is still alone
   (chasm of black)

Thinkers chase its waves &
Our eyelids disappear like marble
into empty flies
  released from a tropic fantasy
  
    The inevitable scream, humid &
     Covered in ash (volcanic)

III

Illness rejuvenates the dream/
questions remain questions

   An elephantine flowerbridal looms/

Smoke erases the memory stained in each ring of each pine,
          burdens relieved from the Antlers of
ancient death
         (smoke, tide, branches crackle in a flame, peace is envisioned here, I love you)
         Narrow ceilings attempt to re
         create
The sky/      
Paint flaking off pathetically (the palace)
darling ember washed away with simple time

    (Where has our capability for survival gone?)
    
         mapmakers and children watch their hair fall into a promising wishwell
    ...kept secret and sacred
    
         those who see the bottom of the well are branded with eternal laughter!

IV

? Healers hand
       (You've arrive
       d
       at the entra
       nce you once saw asleep)
      
                 The conquest for simplicity is finally realized as no conquest at all
                     You're in love again,
                    
(Yellow love)
!

a vehicle of the family of man;
who say what cannot the mass.


mapmakers of the human psyche,
topographers of the human morass.
culling small order from the disarray,
trying to sow joy in infertile topsoil.
redolent the music on the mind's wind,
sacrificing sleep and self, for creation.
with all the monks within his head
praying for so many antithetic things,
notions and trinkets, truncated by dread,
oceans and skies and flutterby wings.
writing the songs of the solitary deaths
of the incomprehensible connections
missed by humankind's transient passing.

There's a small boat on a big ocean
Emerald seas and faded pink sails
Where have you gone? Why have you failed?
Who tells the tales of the travels failed?
The bleached bones on decks
Albatrosses hung around necks

There's a certain bravery in beginning
They once believed Sornieth was flat,
The Thousand Seas falling of the edge of a void
But we still set sail,
Aiming for a shore we might never see

Here's to the mapmakers, the explores
The pirates that braved the seas
Here's to the navigators
The Windsinger's domain
And all the others