like most western borders,
wild, unruly,
like waves;
and this border’s an ocean.
Contemplating an ocean
makes him waver, shudder
and shush, like beauty.
He then visited the northern border,
where a language is spoken
with the accent of a split
Gallician family.
He then travelled south
and this border was familiar,
the same ocean:
a calmer surface, yet strong
currents underneath,
like diplomacy.
Then east, always
from where barbarians come;
ask the Saxons about the Vikings,
ask the American tribes,
the Estonians,
the Greeks, classic or otherwise,
the Finns; ask in
in
He thought, returning home,
that barbarians are hordes,
outsiders to his mental geometry.
