Mappa Mundi of My Brother’s Heart
When they hold up the ghostly map
of your damaged heart,
it looks like a sea creature,
a bivalve with no protective shuck,
its rhythms too boisterous to leave untouched.
Tomorrow they’ll crack open
your breastbone with hi-tech poultry shears,
track a ragbag of rivers coded in Latin,
eroded, threatening to burst,
coax your core from its safe place –
a dissected frog twitching
on the cold marble of their expertise –
prove you to be mechanical, an under-bonnet thing.
Their brilliant witchery
will make you vanish for five hours.
Don’t be afraid. In that dense forest
there are hidden trails, we will find you.
No scalpel can breach your true
dimensions. Beyond synthetic sutures
lie deeper bonds.