Patalis; or, Antipodus Incognita
Harris Coverley
The Ancients knew well the Antipodes
Aristotle and Ptolemy and the rest
That giant continent
With coasts like shards
Yet bare and smooth on its surface
Halfway between rock and ice
Not a human in sight
But a few million penguins
And a few thousand seals
To dance in the temperate air
In quietly joyous harmony
The perfect balance with the Known Northern Realms
That is until the Sons of Adam began to expand
And explore upon greater and greater ships
With gold and spices and converts in mind
The Antipodes
Such a frightfully shy landmass
In pained embarrassment began to shrink
Its vast shards crumbling into the evermore encroached upon ocean
Its penguins and seals drew in
Toughening up against the growing cold
Until—not a fifth of its true size—it was a frozen wasteland
Its avian and mammalian citizenry huddled hip to hip
Bellingshausen and Lazarev in that winter of early 1820
Did at last spot what remained—
“There is no Terra Australis!
Only this worthless and jagged shelf of ice!”
To this day its plains seem rough and dead
And yet…
They await the time to smoothen out and warm again
