#MIDDLEBURY
The Map
Marie Howe
The failure of love might account for most of the suffering in the world.
The girl was going over her global studies homework
drawing the map with her finger in the air
touching the Gobi desert,
the Plateau of Tiber in front of her,
and looking through her transparent map backwards
I did suddenly see,
how her left is my right, and for a moment I understood.
About this poem
“‘The Map’ was once part of a longer poem. As often happens, over time the first part of that poem fell away and what remained was this.” – Marie Howe
About Marie Howe
Marie Howe is the author of “Magdalene” (W.W. Norton, forthcoming in 2017). She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Marie Howe. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
