Quisqueya II

How much further does it go?

Will the ships bow, dusk the sand, and thrust

And upheave the golden land stow?

And make with it their insolent Ark?

And tanned the hide of their sun coated skin

And smelt the gilded grin

And in the lacquered dark

Froth the country’s arid tarp

With Quisqueyan sands of sheen;

(How much further can the eye go,

How much further this seeming dream ,

Of the faux and fluorescent scenes

That are peeling and reeling—

Away, the spindle and revealing

The pulleys and gears,

Of veldt machines beneath);

The belching ship with win,

The streets at dock with louder din

Flock of white wings who clap like herons,

And errant sailors, the crew and dean—

Are brave soldiers combing their lofty preen,

These oriented surveyors, scout the land

With scope in downy hand,

Have laid their tracks, with pole in hand

And by their own bade, scavenge the land

These wind tamers, who scarce held the pole

(For fear they’d pierced their feathers,

Before whom scared to pick the heathers)

But the fishing rod, and the wheel, and the mop pole,

Have herons come to be flagburners,

With warmongering soul?

That scorch and scorn, that peaceful soul?

Are their opposers always in the foul role,

As that sinister snake that end Eden’s furl?

That apple that Adam ate rotted on the world?

Was it futile conversation or impatient translation

That led to the Ill turbulence, of a momentous revolution?

Was it futile furnish, and sinister impatience

That led momentous action, in the sparse events of transaction?

What awoke wrathful hypnosis,

That the uncivilized needed beg

To stranger legs,

And path upon the holy catharsis?

What sacrosanct lies!

These beliefs decried!

For the shame, in His name, those had died!

And Quisqueya, of the golden steep

With grove and breeze nodding to sleep

And the free shackles that signum crucis,

(Hinges singing timbre)

On the weary pilgrimage,

From the horizon, the sun, grating grove to cinders

And Quisqueya on the stern, with dismal visage

And a prayer for her emerge, from golden gilded vision