Looking for India

Looking for India, Bartholemeu Dias
sailed out of Lisbon, turned left,
sailed south, found the tip of Africa,
and called it the Cape of Storms.
Which suggests the voice of experience

Battered and beaten, he gave up on India,
turned back, sailed north, told them in
Lisbon that the Cape was a problem,
so they called it the Cape of Good Hope.
Which suggests the voice of expedience

Fourteen years later, still hoping for India,
he sailed out of Lisbon, turned left,
sailed south, reached the tip of Africa,
and died in a Storm off the Cape of Good Hope.
Which suggests the voice of irony

Bartholemeu Dias, seeker for India,
wrote in the margin of his page in history:
follow your dreams, try not to let them kill you,
and never forget your first impression.
And that’s the voice of reality


Dennis Greene (Western Australia)

From Here Be Dragons (Puncher & Wattmann 2015)