Best Columbus Poems

Once upon a time there was an Italian,
And some people thought he was a rapscallion,
But he wasn't offended,
Because other people thought he was splendid,
...

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,
Someone sailed the ocean blue.
Somebody borrowed the fare in Spain
For a business trip on the bounding main,
...

This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
...

Should I get married? Should I be Good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood?
...

The petals of the vagina unfold
like Christofer Columbus
taking off his shoes.
...

Is it really so depraving
I like to eat a lot?
The thought of food I’m craving
Just ties me in a knot
...

No more of talk where God or Angel guest
With Man, as with his friend, familiar us'd,
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast; permitting him the while
...

From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent Summer comes,
In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:
...

I am leading a quiet life
in Mike’s Place every day
watching the champs
of the Dante Billiard Parlor
...

How in all wonder Columbus got over,
That is a marvel to me, I protest,
Cabot, and Raleigh too, that well-read rover,
Frobisher, Dampier, Drake and the rest.
...

IT was near the close of his indomitable and pious life--on his last voyage
when nearly 70 years of age--that Columbus, to save his two remaining ships
from foundering in the Caribbean Sea in a terrible storm, had to run them
ashore on the Island of Jamaica--where, laid up for a long and miserable
...

O world, thou choosest not the better part!
It is not wisdom to be only wise,
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
But it is wisdom to believe the heart.
...

This is the greatest thing in North America:
Europe is the greatest thing in North America!
High in the sky, dark in the heart, and always there
Among the natural powers of sunlight and of air,
...

I

Once below a time,
When my pinned-around-the-spirit
Cut-to-measure flesh bit,
...

...Preamble

A rough draft
for an ars poetica
...

BOOK FIRST.

I.
...

Steer on, bold sailor--Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land,
And hopeless at the helm may droop the weak and weary hand,
Yet ever--ever to the West, for there the coast must lie,
And dim it dawns, and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye;
...

555

Trust in the Unexpected—
By this—was William Kidd
...

I asked the old Negro, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."


I. IN WHICH A RACING AUTO COMES FROM THE EAST
...

Steer, bold mariner, on! albeit witlings deride thee,
And the steersman drop idly his hand at the helm;
...

When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me
I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,
Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
He married me when drunk. My life was wretched.
...

You may talk of Columbus's sailing
Across the Atlantical Sea
But he never tried to go railing
From Ennis as far as Kilkee
...

The winter sun, golden and tired,
settles on the irregular army
of bottles. Outside the trucks
jostle toward the open road,
...

IN yonder red-brick mansion, tight and square,
Just at the town's commencement, lives the mayor.
Some yards of shining gravel, fenced with box,
...

If from great nature's or our own abyss
Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,
Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss--
But then 'twould spoil much good philosophy.
...

'_There are no ghosts in America._'

There are no ghosts, you say,
To haunt her blaze of light;
...

These alternate nights and days, these seasons
Somehow fail to convince me. It seems
I have the sense of infinity!
...

Ah!--What should follow slips from my reflection;
Whatever follows ne'ertheless may be
As à-propos of hope or retrospection,
As though the lurking thought had follow'd free.
...

NOT thine where marble-still and white
Old statues share the tempered light
And mock the uneven modern flight,
But in the stream
...

Sweet maiden, why disguise
The beauty of your eyes
With glasses black?
Although I'm well aware
...

Green, in the wizard arms
Of the foam-bearded Atlantic,
An isle of old enchantment,
A melancholy isle,
...

Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American,
For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must
...

The longest tyranny that ever sway'd
Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd
Their free-born reason to the Stagirite,
And made his torch their universal light.
...

LEANDER.
No more of Memphis and her mighty kings,
Or Alexandria, where the Ptolomies.
Taught golden commerce to unfurl her falls,
...

O WORLD, thou choosest not the better part!
It is not wisdom to be only wise,
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
...

From his adventurous prime
He dreamed the dream sublime:
Over his wandering youth
...

Too long have Tyranny and Power combined,
To sway, with iron sceptre, o'er mankind;
Long has Oppression worn th' imperial robe,
...

Part I.A Short Walk Along the Coast

Yes, I have walked in California,
And the rivers there are blue and white.
...

This weeping willow!
Why do you not plant a few
For the millions of children not yet born,
As well as for us?
...

ERE from under earth again like fire the violet kindle, [Str. I.
Ere the holy buds and hoar on olive-branches bloom,
...

3

"Sic transit gloria mundi,"
"How doth the busy bee,"
...

Like star points in the ether to guide a homing soul
Towards God's Eternal Haven; above the wash and roll,
Across and o'er the oceans, on all the coasts they stand
Tall seneschals of commerce, High Wardens of the Strand --
...

Es con voz de la Biblia, o verso de Walt Whitman,
que habría que llegar hasta ti, Cazador!
Primitivo y moderno, sencillo y complicado,
con un algo de Washington y cuatro de Nemrod.
...

Columbus looked; and still around them spread,
From south to north, th' immeasurable shade;
At last, the central shadows burst away,
...

The priest never used blueprints, but worked all
the many designs out of his head.
...

Performances, assortments, résumés—
Up Times Square to Columbus Circle lights
Channel the congresses, nightly sessions,
Refractions of the thousand theatres, faces—
...

Still the loud death drum, thundering from afar,
O'er the vext nations pours the storm of war:
To the stern call still Britain bends her ear,
...

(In which, Adolph Hitler
discovers Transcendental Meditation,
learns how to levitate,
and invades Poland.)
...

This list will be updated from time to time. The most recent items will be at the bottom of the list. (Last update 25 March 2025)

Poems that have won prizes or recognition:
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Here fix the tablet. This must be the place
Where our Columbus of the South did land.
He saw the Indian village on that sand
...

My mistress’ bedde, my wylling scholeroom is,
where I do lerne my eager pupille’s taske;
her scorns, her prayse, to me as equalle are;
her swete chastisement, alle thatte I may aske;
...

SEE how it flashes,
This grape-blood fine!—
Our beards it splashes,
O comrade mine!—
...

Slang..
Chick-fil-a = the best place ever
jade = bEotch
brooke = gorgeous
...

(For: Jamaica
“…fairest island eyes have beheld,
So mountainous and the land seems
to touch the sky.” ~ Christopher Columbus)
...

Beside me as I sit here typing is a golden pool, of relaxation,
alertness, patience and trust, uniquely brought together
...

'Where shall I hide myself?-
Lost and undone!-
A beggar-an outcast-
Insulting the Sun!
Oh! Yesterday vanished!
...

You say, Columbus with his argosies
Who rash and greedy took the screaming main
And vanished out before the hurricane
Into the sunset after merchandise,
...

I'm de only one left ob de Colony niggers;
How things do meander away!
When dey count my yeahs dey break down on de figgers,--
Fer things will meander away.
...

f there were no God
There would be no beauty
No scorching heat nor howling wind
No fallen leaves and stormy seas
...

When I speak of history I speak well;
I leave behind the past where broken bones
Lay scattered on blistering sands to tell
Of atrocities that are mostly groans.
...

Henry dreamed the New World to see-a
on the Pinta, Nina, Santa Maria;
but that Columbus was such a strange fella,
when Herbie his own poems would yell-a
...

Many forms belong to greatness.
He who now has left us bore it
As a doubt that made him sleepless,
...

"Young fellow, listen to a friend:
Beware of wedlock - 'tis a gamble,
It's MAN who holds the losing end
In every matrimonial scramble."
...

The barking were the loudness of evils
Extreme noises swarming the pretty dawn
Shy of lights and abide
Notorious philosopher of gangland
...

Hesper again his heavenly power display'd,
And shook the yielding canopy of shade.
Sudden the stars their trembling fires withdrew.
...

By deeper water, upon greener rock, I had pitched my tent
And washed away with care the colour of my scream
Your bone and stone ornaments dried on wet rock
And Night would spread its blue-black skin upon the water
...

Staring at that gold
seam up her ass,
stitched on that fathomless
blue that takes my eyes
...

My heart has sighed in secret, when I thought
That the dark tide of time might one day close,
England, o'er thee, as long since it has closed
...

Long had the Sage, the first who dared to brave
The unknown dangers of the western wave,
Who taught mankind where future empires lay
...

With feet at the fire, I am thinking of those birds
Which told Columbus that the land was nigh.
Water, water, water far as the sky.
At last a sailor shouted out these words:
...

It was during my Walkman summer
I learned my lesson not to walk home late
To my low-rent street
While immersed in a violin concerto…
...

High o'er his world as thus Columbus gazed,
And Hesper still the changing scene emblazed,
Round all the realms increasing lustre flew,
...

Hail, holy Peace, from thy sublime abode
Mid circling saints that grace the throne of God!
Before his arm around our embryon earth
...

If heaven has into being deign'd to call
Thy light, O Liberty! to shine on all;
Bright intellectual Sun! why does thy ray
...

Now, round the yielding canopy of shade,
Again the Guide his heavenly power display'd.
Sudden, the stars their trembling fires withdrew,
...

But of all tales that war's black annals hold,
The darkest, foulest still remains untold;
New modes of torture wait the shameful strife,
And Britain wantons in the waste of life.
...

So, we are who we are, as the Mississippi flows,
and what remains from yesterday is still ours-
but the color of the sky has changed,
the sea to the East has changed.
...

Let the Nile cloak his head in the clouds, and defy
The researches of science and time;
Let the Niger escape the keen traveller's eye,
...

In one dark age, beneath a single hand,
Thus rose an empire in the savage land.
Its wealth and power with following years increase,
...

High o'er the changing scene, as thus he gazed,
The indulgent Power his arm sublimely raised;
When round the realms superior lustre flew,
...

In one dark age, beneath a single hand,
Thus rose an empire in the savage land.
Her golden seats, with following years, increase,
...

Hello my name is Hate and I was born in the beginning
I'm in a competition with Love but I seem to be winning
It's an autobiography so I guess I'll tell about some of my succession
Well, I was the reason the world went through the Great depression
...

Christopher Columbus says to the historian
that outside world is not to be feared but explored

It's a half truth and a half lie
...

If I was Columbus
I wish my sailing across the ocean
To be
to meet you
...

...

But now had Hesper from the Hero's sight
Veil'd the vast world with sudden shades of night.
Earth, sea and heaven, where'er he turns his eye,
...

Thus view'd the Pair; when lo, in eastern skies,
From glooms unfolding, Gallia's coasts arise.
Bright o'er the scenes of state a golden throne,
...

Hail sacred Peace, who claim'st thy bright abode,
Mid circling saints that grace the throne of God.
Before his arm, around the shapeless earth,
...

And now the Angel, from the trembling sight,
Veil'd the wide world–when sudden shades of night
Move o'er the ethereal vault; the starry train
...

Discovering...I pull myself into her eyes
Beyond my reflection I bathe in a tempest of thought
Like a modern day Columbus I set sail in epic journey
On the seas of her mind I am tossed like a cork
...

Naval action of De Grasse and Graves. Capture of Cornwallis..
Thus view'd the sage. When, lo, in eastern skies,
...

The first European to discover the sea route to India he lives on in marine history
With Columbus and Tasman and Amerigho and other great men of the sea
The Portuguese Vasco Da Gama ventured far from his native shore
Even further than his countryman Dias had travelled a decade before.
...

First seen and reported on
By Christopher Columbus
In 1492.
...

The things that haven't been done before,
Those are the things to try;
Columbus dreamed of an unknown shore
...

It is not like that I do not like
The flora and fauna of America
As I know this is a land of vast wealth
And a land of wonder
...

It was a Wednesday,
the third day of August in 1492,
when Christopher Columbus set sail
from the Iberian port of Palos.
...

The children of the poor
lured into the military by
promise of college and bonuses...
lured by the pawns of war profiteers
...

I see two eyes
peering out at me from the corner of the couch
and a little pink nose
nestled in the middle
...

...

The people who’re afraid to merge
on freeways in Los Angeles
would in the past have lacked the urge
to sail the wide world’s seven seas.
...