Columbus, You Again
Columbus, you again
Your rotten caravels still unforgotten
Silhouette of flitting bats
And old wives tale of true honor
For at each wheel
The old African seamen
Rana Raraku
And their big nose images of the Ra
Those who mined iron
For Hittite spear points
Sailing by the shadow of the sun
And the juxtaposition of stars
With Stonehenge rocks
Turned into the wet wilderness
Confident that the moai
Of Easter Island
Knew this way to children
Farther east
And all the while your heart
Was like a wing flapping on the drums
Of a webbed imagination
Let me salute you
For courage
To rob so many nations of their gold
For your cause
The Crusades of intermittent genocide
So much honor
In your hatred of the Hamitic line
And these same colonialists
Who dream their new world order
Celebrate the trauma of days for you
Forgotten grandmothers
And the old fairy comes late to tell
Lies on butterflies,
The shadow on the stair
Webs us in ignorance
Your presence haunts us who dwell
At the crossroads of the rim
An Halloween precursor
Where history's tragedy amidst the cotton
And the cane is buried
Deep in the heart
Talon's of your day's unjust wage
The eagle's egg hatching
Oh, but you did not pay them
except in germs and death
That was strange, stranger than volcanic fire
When will the sun on this crinkling empire set
And all the fables that famished children drink retire
When will the heart breaks free its shackled rage
And Columbus disdain
The contrived yarn spun upon a screen of horror
Columbus, what makes you
Last against the better knowledge of today
The global mindset of global liberation
Why after king and kingdoms gone you remain
Like a gene scripting the margins subjugation
Like a blueprint for new forms of social pain
Oh Columbus, I am in the vice of tooth decay
And no fairy here to bring
My penny for my deep belief.
Copyright © David Smalling | Year Posted 2010
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