Sunset On Columbus Day Poem by Frank Avon

Sunset On Columbus Day



10.12.2014


Promenade of winesap apples
quilted with falling leaves

dawn of frost
sweatered after breakfast,
sweltering by high noon:

In fourteen-hundred-and-ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue
and never knew, never knew, never knew
where his ships were sailing to.

Forty groggy fourth graders chanted
in Miss Sybil's sluggish classroom
(she never left her desk, she always sat;
we each recited, all forty of us...
October's bright blue weather, etc.) ,

earmuffs and mittens lining the shelves
of the classroom's cloakroom,
prime punishment before a threatened paddling,
'Go, sit in the cloakroom; don't let me see you.'

We never knew, we never knew
just how many Arawaks they slew.

We grew, we grew, each year we grew
tracing the same pseudo-graph
of Pilgrims and Wampanoags
roasting turkeys and deer,
costumed in good cheer,
feasting the season.

Even Dvořák sounding empty,
cellos shallow, violins shrill,
colors too bright, too tempting;
it's too late anyway for an overture,

bullets have blasted, blood has spilled,
and all those Columbia's -
those townships and counties,
those rivers and lakes and hills -
have sprung up all over:

Mule Day in Tennessee
Avenue of the Columns in Missouri,
the People Tree in Maryland,
Wright's Ferry on the Susquehanna,
state capitol on the way to the Santee,
blueberries and cranberries in Maine,
last wooden jail on the Chattahoochee,
Strassenfest south of St. Louis,
shrine of St. Katharine Drexel in Virginia,
the gold rush in Califronia,
hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest,
and on and on and on.

Now it's 2: 21 in the afternoon:
strings swing into a Virginia reel
brasses crash a fanfare for the polka
the applefell overture.

Cristoforo
the great Columbo

before the Redskins
were as Amerri-kin
as God! , motherhood
and apple cobbler.

Italian-Americans arise, arise!
strike up the band with your Irish-American neighbors,
with Teutons, Slavs, and Scandinavians
(never mind, they were not the first ones, either) ,
with Africans, czarists, Bohemians,
Iroquois, Osage, Pawnee, Sioux.

Rise up, rise up, Lewis and Clark,
the sabbath we desecrate is the Old One,
the monument we dedicate is a nation anew,
the arches that bind us,
the superways we traverse,
space needles we reverse
the men on the mountain remind us,

(October's bright blue weather...)
(hardly a man is now alive
who remembers that famous day and
shot heard round the world...)

'twas nineteen-hundred-and-forty-five...
many of us are no longer alive -
Don and Nancy and Bobby and Julia and
Nelson and and so many others are gone -

and the frost on the pumpkin
and the fodder in the shock

dem old days
dem old ways
dem bums of Brooklyn
dem old folks at home:

sainthood survives
the saints' demise.

St. Christopher,
Cristoforo's forebear,
crossed the river
with the leaden child
on his strong shoulders,
and in his distress
shouldered us all
on the way to glory.

Rise, people, rise!
Declare this day
a holy day,
our new world
is old
and old worlds
are renewed...
The way is the way,
call it a high way
call it the Nina the Pinta the Santa Maria

call the bronze princess you find
(if you're to be sastisfied with a name)
an indiana, if you will,
build her a shrine
in your heart and mind
feather her with gold
ennoble her with a tiara
love her and cherish her

sanctify your embrace
magnify her presence
call this a holy place
dignify her children
with all your blessings,

for their day
is their day,
and the only day that's left.

The sun is setting,
the sun is

yet

Thursday, October 16, 2014
Topic(s) of this poem: holiday
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