“We look before and after,
and pine for what is not…”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
Drawing maps for the hill
station, really they were modeling
the wilderness after their own cities
in the west: Burnham in his prairies,
his stockyards and early prototypes
of sky-scrapers. Aspiring to the colonies
birds build high in trees: their rookeries,
extravagance of space opening for light
over the middle court. On one side, plots
for residences. And on the other, buildings
of state. Lagoons, a greenway, promenades
for The White City— semi-utopia in which
visitors were meant to be shielded from poverty
and crime. In their records you won’t find
a list of indigenous names, families moved
along with livestock deeper into the nameless
periphery of rice terraces, lemon groves,
and more than a hundred species of fern.