TERRA INCOGNITA

TERRA INCOGNITA

            —from the movie, 1492, Conquest of Paradise

At the edge of sunset lies infinity,

and beyond the darkness of dreams

is the chasm at the brink of the world

where sea monsters and dragons wait.

Or so it is said, who’s to disprove it?

But the sailor thought, Life has more imagination

than what we carry in our dreams. On the other side

of day is night, and I can prove it by sailing west.

Imagine the world as round as this orange! 
he said to his son, peeling it, 
as the ships sank beneath the horizon.

Clipped wings of independent minds:

to think was to sin against the church.

To purge the heretics in her midst,

Spain’s fires burned with an unholy passion.

The pyres illuminated the night of the soul.

Columbus confided to Queen Isabel,

There is another route to Marco Polo’s eastern paradise.

Stubbornly, he clung to his contrary belief.

From Castille & Aragon, his tall ships chased sunset,

months at sea, never falling off the 28th parallel.

I can no longer measure the distance of stars to horizon & sunset. How much longer will this new land hide from us? I cannot keep count of this endless chain of days and nights, the doldrums in this circle of fog engufing our very thoughts. What new words for my crew who have lost faith? 

He swatted his cheek. 
Stared at the blood. 
The first clue: a mosquito.

On October 12, we landed on Guanahene Island, gave thanks to God, to celebrate San Salvador, the first naming. Islands everywhere. We must be close to the mainland, but where? 39 of my crew stayed to build La Navidad on Haiti, but did not survive to tell their tale of inquest.

I returned in high hopes with 17 ships, a thousand men, I returned with horses, tools and, guns, grain to build the cities of Nuevo Mundo where we would be allowed our own thoughts. But God and the weather have conspired against me. 

He never discovered the mainland,

but the mosquitos, the malaria,

the hurricanes of Terra Incognita,

and the infinite greed of Spain devoured him. 

Inquisition of the soul.

He returned, a shadow of a man, to his courtly enemies.
The gauntlet of the old world squeezing him.
He spent the familiar prison of his days gazing out to sea.
The conquistadors who followed his footsteps,
climbed the growing mountain of bones
to plunder the origin of of sunset.

2/3/1994