With every age, they graph this globe
to illustrate the day's domains,

and thick within each penciled edge
fanatic loves of margins swell

- until the markers march that fringe,
emboldening the delible;

but then some flood, another war,
an earthquake, or an asteroid,

erasing lines annulled by tense
from atlases mapped out-of-date.

Cartographers, you chart the fate
of states once traced with greatest pride,

remind no border long divides
wherever universe decides.