The Library of Maps, #14
THE MAP OF THE SANDSTORM DESERT
(for Alison Cornyn)

I
In the Library of Maps,
The Sand Room was already installed.

On its walls hung all but one of the Sand Maps
—each drawn by the Sand Mapper on parchment with pale green ink—
And below,
three inches of sand
—collected from all over the world—
Covered the floor.

Only the map of the Sandstorm Desert
Was missing.

II
For some years,
The Sandstorm had begun at dawn
And lasted, relentlessly, all day long,
So that the Sand Mapper
—as she lamented daily in despairing letters to the Chief Librarian—
Could see nothing,
And, thus, could not complete her cycle of maps.

One morning, she woke up
To stare out, yet again,
At the sea of whirling sand grains.

But this day was different.

Diffidently, because she was no composer,
She suddenly thought to herself
That perhaps her map should be charted in sound,
Not on parchment with pale green ink.

Accordingly, she left the desert
And for several months
Rented a room in the Great City,
There constructing a complex device
To record the Sandstorm/

When she had completed it,
She took the Sand Sound Machine into the desert.
But with the first storm,
The machine was nowhere to be found—
All she could see was a newly formed sand dune.

What to do next?

III
She decided to live on the outskirts of the desert,
To count out loud from dawn to dusk,
And at night
To record, number by number,
The grains of sand in the Book.

Over time,
Visitors made their way to the desert
And surrounded the Sand Mapper’s house
Where they listened to her chanting.

One day,
To the astonishment of the Visitors,
The Sand Mapper left her house silently,
Carrying a mirror and a ladder.

When the Visitors timidly entered the house,
They found only the scattered pages of the torn Book of Sand.

Suddenly the Sandstorm ceased,
And the woman could be seen
Tilting her ladder toward the heavens.
At the bottom of it, she had set down her mirror,
Which had begun mysteriously to multiply itself.

Within minutes, a Mirrored Path ran through the desert,
Disappearing over the horizon in the sand dunes.

IV
In time the woman died
And they buried her beside the Mirrored Path—
While the path continues to multiply itself,
Just as the sand continues to fall upon it.

In the Library,
An empty space is still reserved for the Map of the Sandstorm Desert.

by Moira Roth
Written 6/03–6/04/01, revised 4/06/03