Walking through the streets at dawn,
The City Criers called out,
“It is the Day of Naming,
The day the streets are to be named.”

No streets could be called anything at all
Before that Day,
And no maps could be made
Before the streets were named.

Until then, the city had always been
Traversed each year with fragrant colored ribbons—
All the children, as soon as they could walk,
Learning its crisscross patterns by heart.

“I will meet you where the pale green crosses the lemon-green,”
A father would promise his young son.
“I will meet you where the mauve-purple crosses the dark red,”
An old woman would assure another.

From dawn to dusk
On this Day of Naming,
Street after street was easily named
Until only one remained.

J. and A., the last of the Namers,
Deliberated, hour after hour …
Until, at dusk, they pronounced their choice:
“The Street of No Name.”

That night maps were issued,
Each citizen possessing two.
One of the named streets,
The other charting only the unnamed one.

And flowing even now
Throughout the city
Are ghostly trails
Of colored fragrances.


by Moira Roth
Written 4/14/01
[published in "On Maps and Mapping" issue, Performance Research 6, no. 2 (summer 2001), and revised, accompanied by a woodcut "map" by Peter Sis, in March 2002 as a broadside for the History of Cartography, University of Wisconsin]