Columbus Day

[FWIW, with statues of famous white men coming down everywhere, here's a poem I once wrote on Columbus, back near the quincentenary. It appeared in the magazine Chronicles and the webzine The Scream Online. Sort of a celebration of the legend, in all its kitschy cluelessness, no matter what the truth was.--JK]

What we love is the Hollywood version:

The King tired, mind elsewhere, drumming his fingers,

The grandees clustered like skeptical buzzards,

A Capitan this and a Comisario that

And Don Diego Whatsisname who hates your guts;

 

And you:

Out-of-town hotshot with the fast pitch,

Pacing the terra cotta like you own it,

Talking India, talking Trade Routes, talking

Round Earth Theory;

All balls and brains, circumnavigation 

In gold tights.

 

And on that second throne, the Queen—

That Goya skin, those Reubens lips—

Listening, by God, leaning forward, lace

Looping out from both hemispheres,

On purpose maybe, while those dark

Crucifying eyes say in perfect Italian,

Forget these stiffs, just sing to me, Baby.

 

So you talk sextants, 

You talk colonies and gold and empire 

Astrolabes, tea and spices,

Any damn thing you can think of—

Glories of the Faith, cities of gold, 

El Dorado and Plymouth Rock —

While the King fidgets and looks for the major-domo

And Diego hocks in his pious beard

But the Queen cries 

Stop!  He can have my jewels!

And the room goes so quiet

You hear a fly buzz.

 

So then you're off,

Already American as egg rolls,

Half‑baked, hell‑bent, scared green, 

Sailing at the moon.

Three fire‑sale ships with corny names,

A crew of hard cases even the Navy didn't want,

And brother Bart's usual lousy direc­tions.

The patron saint of everyone

Who misses the turnoff and winds up in Cleveland;

Who flunks Geography and makes a fortune

Selling globes to grade schools.

 

You'll lose ships, catch fever; return goldless,

Tealess, spiceless, loaded

Mainly with new explanations:

"Navigational triumphs.  Long‑term potential."

The Queen turns bitchy and Inquis­itorial, bad

As the dragons you took off her maps;

Takes Mass and cuts her losses

Sends out new governors in gray suits

                                                                      

While you keep looking.

Wave and helm and horizon, crossings

So long even the talk runs out;

The hulls get wormier, the crews more sullen. 

You keep finding islands,     

Natives staring in fifty languages,

Shoals where the full‑grown women stand

Nude as coral in the dreaming heat.

The shorebirds wheel, the noon sea glints like iron;

Voices call from the warm reefs,

But not with news of India, and finally even the name

Goes to Vespucci instead.

 

But still it's you who navigates

The memory, crossing somehow

The mistaken seas, the lapping centuries

Down to us.

 

Genius of our hopeful journeys,

After fifty decades green as ever,

Mapless, misinformed, and still looking;

Bless again our misadventures,

Past the missed exits, the wrong turns,

Closing in at last on Columbus:

Not what happened, but what always might:

Upstart sailor chasing the moon,

Immigrant hustler with nothing to lose,

Daring the world's edge, betting the farm,

Making India come to you, Mohammed style.

 

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