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Picasso’s Notes About Christopher Columbus
By Jan La Roche
I underestimated the amount of imagination you had;
sailing west you didn’t fall off the edge, into a square box.
Did you have a blue period on the ocean
yearning to hear your wife’s voice on the winds?
A rival Portuguese reached India instead of you.
Hey, Braque made Cubism, and I ate it.
You had a Guernica of your own, hopeless
about the Santa Maria sinking on Christmas Day.
You used sign language with the natives,
like I did with Matisse, painting by painting.
Inhaling new world tobacco rearranged how you saw faces, squared
like tables, and you said the canvas was never the same on the ships.
What did the first Tainos wear in Spain during the winter?
Had I been there I’d have painted the women in short red coats,
over golden frocks skimming slim ankles, and tanned feet, and have them
seated together in the Moorish Gardens, smoking opium,
Les Demoiselles d’ Aragon.