They crippled in,
out of disaster. Santa Maria
lay on their tongues, heavy as a pebble.
The lesser islands shuddered in their mist like dogs
waking to a cold day. Dead ahead their chosen island,
floating like a coral morgue.
The shattered compass
played at memory, and in their separate
imaginations they each saw what they had left behind.
The dune-astounded harbor, a synthesis of greed and love.
Still there, bleaching the bleak coast, a flash of yellow, a rift of blue to cool
the starry furnace, ashes drifting like snow above the emerald mansions.
A hornpipe’s acidic wheeze
brought cabaret to the castellated edge
of heaven, subtracted nothing from the sum
of the slave market quad. Cymbal and drone and the bellow
of a squat customs house, sails run up to clench the breeze. Santa Maria
burned in the backs of their throats.