Arctos / Antarktikos

82 Arctos /Antarktikos elizabeth bradfield The Greeks were right. The land beneath the pole star toward which the great bear noses his bright stars, never hiding that constant and fruitless work, is mirrored. Take this, then, as proof that imagination is not useless. Or as a sign that truth will circle through our traceries. Back before the myths were spoken all land was lumped on one side of the globe like an aching tooth, there was ocean over both poles. Then the slow spread of earth’s humors: Asia, India, Australia, all the soft-voweled continents drifting. And in this present which is long enough to call fact, the Greeks—fathers of Western 83 Civilization as taught at least in my grade school—were right. Two white lands. And the stars were right: bears circling the northern one, gyres of flesh and need. And in the southern sky, abstract and tricky, Octans. The octant. Old instrument telling sailors how much calculation is required when fumbling intuited lands. ...