there stands columbus, lost in thought,
the board an empty space, and in the court
the maple’s green sail, the clatter and clamour
of genoa. a breeze blows from the harbour
where the sailors gabble on about antillia,
the abject leper exposes his stigmata
like a mappemonde’s white birthmarks,
while hawsers left in heaps out on the mole flex,
coiling in their sleep, and the kelp’s script
is dissolved, rewritten, rubbed out –
as if the sea were still at school, a classmate
of columbus, who even now receives a clout
about the lugs from his preceptor, so hard
the earth begins to shift beneath his feet.