Ah, this one is an old and dear friend, this poem! It's been alive in my head since the first reading, and has never lost its force.I love the way it begins with a space metaphor, a series of "place" words ( mapping, cartography, terra, legend--in the map sense--and so forth) but then, at "shaky ground," which suggests human tremors, shifts into "time" language: the moment, pendulum, clocks. By the time we reach that three-line killer ending, the focus is on time, the agent that alters relationships. That kind of way with metaphor is a joy to watch in action.
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