I
In her later life,
To her own surprise,
She would wake every morning
To inscribe in her precise handwriting
The title of some imaginary space.

As time continued,
She began obsessively to question herself
As to why she was doing this.

After all, she had spent most of her time, for years,
Going about her regular business
In the familiar and comfortable spaces
Of the Library of Maps.

She was the youngest (and most acclaimed)
Chief Librarian ever appointed by the Library trustees.

Not only did she direct the Library brilliantly,
But she was frequently asked to speak
About arranging knowledge
And information
In an orderly manner.
Audiences were reassured by her certainty,
As was her staff.

II
She began to dream,
Mad dreams,
Each night.

Each morning she woke up,
Sweating,
To find
Her pillow covered with tears
And strange notes, in her own handwriting
But in a language unbeknownst to her waking self,
Littering the floor around her bed.

She found, too,
Long gray feathers buried in her pockets,
And fragments of strange blood-red earth
On the soles of her shoes.

III
One morning, after such a dream,
She stumbled across an account in an uncatalogued book in her Library
About Tibetan Sky Burial Rites.

She began to imagine the daily scene:
A monk comes every morning,
Butcherlike, with a burlap apron,
To strip bare
The flesh from the corpse’s bones,
And then, using a sledge hammer,
He crushes the bones.

Each morning,
After this ritual,
Vultures descend eagerly
To eat the flesh and bones.

Relatives sit nearby on a hilltop,
Not to witness the ritual
But to wait for its completion.

A ceremony of implacable regularity,
Day in, day out,
Year in, year out.

IV
She wrote down casually one morning,
“ The Maps of Death,”
And was surprised by the feelings that phrase evoked in her.

In the evening she left the Library,
Precipitously but calmly,
For an unannounced long voyage.

Upon the Chief Librarian’s return months later,
All remarked on her luminosity,
But none knew where she had been.

V
She went about her new task
With her usual decisiveness,
Instructing her colleagues to search
Through libraries of the world
For traditions and tales of dying and death.

They brought her canonical texts,
And mystical poetic ones.

They brought her recordings of ceremonious sounds,
From Buddhist rites and Catholic churches,
And images—photographs, sketches, and mementos—
Of burial grounds from around the world.

VI
To the surprise of the Library staff,
People, upon hearing of their research,
Began to flock to the Library
In greater numbers than ever before,
But not to study.

Instead, they sit expectantly by the Lake,
Listening to the beat of its Heart,
Or rest in the Courtyard of the Map of Unruly Threads,
Paying intense attention
To the conversations of the shadowy figures in its walls.

Some lie on the grass in the Garden,
Under the Great Nest,
Lulled by the songs of three phoenixes
Intermingling with that of the solitary Squawk Bird.

Several die peacefully,
While holding the Sound Pencil to their throats,
Or composing from the Transparent Scores.

Others are in the midst of exploring,
A Magnifying Glass Medallion in hand,
The Mirrored Path,
Or musing on the Book of Shadows
When death comes to them.

And yet others wait for death
In the Mute Room.

But always at the moment of each death,
Bird calls and children’s voices are heard,
Faintly,
And the air is full of the sudden scent of roses.

by Moira Roth
Written 2/24–3/01/02