photo by my Chandra
I’m trying to eliminate clutter. It’s my true effort to become a thoughtful parent. Unfortunately, I find it almost impossible when it comes to my files.
Tackling one of the thick folders of correspondence from my late friend
Hans. He was a lot of fun…
Hans, I re-read one of his letters and just couldn’t bring myself to dispose of it. It is too funny. Right behind it was the following poem he wrote to Christopher Columbus. If you were me, could you toss it out?
‘What I always wanted to say to Chris but was afraid to’
by Hans Muller
‘Mister Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus, by Granger. I doubt he was much fun.
you’re in history’s vein a thrombus
which, on wide spread urgery
should be removed by surgery.
By Soviet-style complete excision
lest history’s held up to derision
occasioned by your sine-qua-
non mis-historical faux-pas.
What befogged your addled brain?
There was no smog or acid rain,
no radio or T.V. commercial,
nothing crass or controversial
to have made you cause such terror
by your gross baptismal error,
christening our natives ‘Indian’.
Did you hear them speaking Hindi-an?
Did you see them wearing saris?
Your fraudulence tops Mata Hari’s.
Had odes been sung in Amerindian,
not Shakespearean or Pindian,
but sung in praise of Red Man’s Gods,
you’d probably call those odes odds.
You would call a square a rhombus,
wouldn’t you, Signor Columbus?
You’d misquote the works of Homer,
The Nina (Santa Clara), Pinta (Spanish for ‘the painted one’ (prostitute), and Santa Maria
you champion of the crass misnomer.
No more of your mumbo-jumbo
Don Chistoforo Columbo.
I shall ask the nearest cop
to jail you, Mister Malaprop
for the lies with which you bomb us,
Mister Christopher Columbus.
*Hans, who could speak/read about five languages, had no problem making up words in any of them. He believed in having fun.
View from Over the Hill 