Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus

-MAP: Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus, by Joean Blaeu, 1663

ARCHIPELAGUS ORIENTALIS, SIVE ASIATICUS


Unsettling as is to know I was born and bred in the unmapped blank
Of unknowns on the Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus of 1663

Drawn in the Dikelands by the Dutch master cartographer Joean Blaeu
It's yet humbling for daydreams in a treasure map of might have beens:

Such as the great river of Australia that filled its inland sea
Where the floating islands of reeds carried villages of elder men

Out to the fishing roads where the annual hunt for bunyips
Set fires in the boats with which they hypnotised bunyip eyes

And lured them back willingly to unsecret their impossible cry
From the off the map loneliness of our undrawn Ultima Thule

Where the wait for lost companion men is still a borderless yen
As we yet explore its bunyip reaches, find advent in its mysteries.