The Mound (Mons)

Lyrics

We open the atlas.
*De Humani Corporis Fabrica*.
The pages smell of old paper and preserving spirits.
We turn to plate twenty-seven: the pelvis.

The pointer finger traces a line.
The word is *mons*. M-O-N-S.
From the Latin.
It means a mountain. A gentle hill.
A rising eminence of adipose tissue, lying over the os pubis.
A landmark on the map of the body.

In Padua, the winter of 1543.
The dissection room is cold enough to see your breath.
Andreas Vesalius ignores the old texts from Galen.
He trusts his own eyes, his own steel scalpel.
He draws the human form as it is, and gives the landmark a name from the landscape.
A simple hill.

It is only a word.
A label for a shape.
A mound of tissue over bone.
The map is not the place.
The Latin is a clean tool, a quiet instrument.
It is just *mons*.
It is only a mountain.

Two centuries pass.
In London, a physician, John Quincy, sits by a coal fire.
The year is 1719.
He is writing his *Lexicon Physico-Medicum*.
He writes the old word, and then adds another.
*Mons Veneris*. The Mount of Venus.
He puts the goddess on the hill.
A poetic flourish.

One man saw a feature of the earth.
The other saw a home for a goddess.
But the language they chose was a kind of fortress.
A way to speak clearly, to catalog the flesh.
To name the part without naming the whole story.
To keep the science safe from the parish sermon.

We close the book.
The ink is dry, a permanent stain on the parchment.
The word remains.
A small mountain on a page.
*Mons*.