When tracing new borders for the Middle East, <br />W.C., drunk, allowed his pencil to slip <br />And left a thirty-mile polyp on the <br /> <br />Page that presses into Jordan to this day. <br />Traveling to the edge of the salient, <br />One finds only sand and dirty rock, wind. <br /> <br />Sometime in the eighteenth century, a <br />Minor Russian administrator was <br />Sent to erect a boundary post on the <br /> <br />Barren trail between Yekateringburg <br />And Tyumen to mark the division <br />Of Europe from Asia, one of many <br /> <br />That have been drawn. Flakes of snow scattered the <br />Landscape, gleamed in fragile starlight, made the <br />Route indistinct. Bound in iron fetters, <br /> <br />Tsarist exiles passing the frontier would <br />Kneel and fitfully scoop the last handfuls <br />Of European soil beneath colorless <br /> <br />Winter sun. They crouched as long as they could, <br />Struggling not to cry, before being pushed forward, <br />Gazing into the sapphire dusk over <br /> <br />The hills ahead. One observer wrote that <br />'No other boundary in the world has seen <br />So many shattered hearts.' There was no return <br /> <br />From that point, like crossing into the azure <br />Frost of Hades without a golden bough <br />To ensure retreat. One bitter morning, <br /> <br />An Oxford professor, born in Russia, <br />Gazed out of his rain-spattered window at <br />Garden walls receding down a grey English <br /> <br />Lane and thought of a tidal Europe, its <br />Borders rising and falling back in time. <br />For centuries vespers ascend and fall <br /> <br />From cathedrals and cloisters, and sadly, <br />Announcing the familiar decline of <br />Day and light, mark limits and origins.<br /><br />Ernest Hilbert<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/when-tracing-new-borders/
