The Library of Maps, #13
THE MAPS OF BENJAMIN BANNEKER

I
His head spun, even as a young child
In 1730s Ellicott Mills,
With ideas and dreams
http://www.progress.org/banneker/bb.html

With visions of a space, a "work cabin" with a skylight,
Through which to see the stars and map their courses,

Of a strange wooden clock
To strike precisely on the hour for fifty years,
http://physics.nist.gov/GenInt/Time/revol.html

Of a fierce, elegant letter against slavery
Written to Thomas Jefferson, August 19, 1791
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/readex/24073.html

Of Jefferson’s response, August 30, 1791
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/readex/24073.html

And all this published as a broadside within the year.

II
In the year 2002, the Chief Librarian reverently spread out
The Library’s rare copy of Benjamin Banneker’s Almanac,
And tried to conjure up in her mind’s eye,
That astonishing child.

III
Over the next nine years,
She had a special room built,
With a wooden clock, a black basalt rock table, and a skylight.

There in the Library of Maps
Readers began to study Banneker’s Almanac,
By the lights of the night sky.

IV
One evening in 2020
A mother brought her daughter to the Library.

Refusing to go home,
The girl, age 10, spent all night
Ardently turning the Almanac’s pages,
Lit by stars, planets, comets, and the moon.

V
In 2090 the daughter,
Now a famous old astronomer,
Quietly tells an audience
Gathered in the Library of Maps
of her lifetime work.

Of her discovery of a new sun and its forty planets—
Of naming them and hearing their sounds,
Of mapping their movements
Of studying their seas, mountains, and skies,
And of finding life forms on five of these planets.

Of her memories of that long-ago night,
In the Library of Maps.

Of Benjamin Banneker,

His Clock,

His Almanac,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h68b.html

And his Letter.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/readex/24073.html

by Moira Roth
Written 4/21–4/24/01