When the copperplate cracks Poem by Imtiaz Dharker

(Theatrum Orbis Terrarum)

So this is how it is done, one hand inching
round the coast to map its ins and outs,
to mark the point where ink may kiss
the river's mouth, or blade make up
a terra incognita, an imagined south.

This is where the needle turns to seek
a latitude, where acid bites the naked shore
and strips the sea till it is nothing
more than metallic light. The lived terrain
comes face to face with its mirror image

on the page, the world made up
and made again from sheets of ore, slept in,
loved in, tumbled, turned until the copper
buckles. You see it clearly in the print,
the place where metal

has been wounded, mended, where the hand
attempts to heal the breakline in the heart.