The Cringing Maps

The maps of the world cringe before the influx of armies approaching their boundary lines. Mark how they have changed over the years, unraveled by uncertainties, straight lines made ragged, ragged, straight. Here is the recoil, there, the curl, and these compressed lines are where mountains buckled with them, or they were bent back to convoluting rivers that were hard to cross. There are camps of the Within ranged against the Without by the turned backs of strong cultures, insistent languages and gods entrenched; but Many pervious walls where ideas contend too fiercely crumble to ruin whose only frontiers are rubble and even this stabilizes no longer than a fortnight or a year, or a few minutes....