The Englih & Spanish Colonial Experiment

Prose & Poetry

Part I - The Captain

Aaaah! The smell of rotting hubris in the morning, stultifying the mind and severing several links with reality, the Captain reels. Unhinged, un-masted, the capstan spins, the spinnaker whirls, the wheel runs free and guides not the rudder for her ligaments and straps have snapped and frayed, leaving us alone on a drifting raft full of gibbering numbskulls. Keep going, keep going, they shout, unaware of destination, careless of their own lives, unconcerned by fate, for their God guides them.

They sought to be free to discover new lands and to invent new ways of living; only to discover that what they had first believed in was the truth and what they had subsequently been taught to believe in was, in fact, invented, unproven balderdash, promoted by men who should have known better but who sought to inflict their dreadful assumptions on others. Hence the conflicts between ‘em that rage endlessly on. As the reeling Captain said by way of justification in the absence of logic:

‘God hath given us this land therefore I will defend it with my life; the divine right I have inherited to force my opinions on others and to drive others out with utmost force and brutality. I believe this to be the word of God’.

You may well ask what reel the Captain danced; I don’t know but it looked like the jig o’ death, a danse macabre, un ugly quadrille.

Then, noticing a dusky itinerant lying dazed by the roadside, he gives out a bellicose address:

‘Been chewin’ the qat again scullion? Get up, damn you! Lying in the gutter in filthy robes, unshaven, foetid stench of …hrrrumph, get up damn you! Representing the aimless surge of the lumpen mass. He toils not, neither does he spin. I’ll set an example to ‘em all. Instil some respect in ‘em sir! Have ‘em fear the lash! Have ‘em fear God!

As for my domestic affairs, why sir, I am as devoted a father as you would ever care to find, most placid and indulgent, (blows nose with filthy moucheoir) mmmnyaaaarrrgh, oomph, umph. I take a keen and benevolent interest in the activities of the children, care for ‘em, nurture ‘em most tenderly and heartfelt. Meanwhile, I scourge all transgressors with terrible and ferocious justice. ‘Tis a justice hewn from my own conscience sir!

Hanging upside down in the tree, by the sickly light of a gibbous moon, in abysmal profundity the heart sinks, hopes evaporate; the cadavers flay’d and display’d.

In masques and robes of striking hue and shape, they frolic splendidly in hedgerow and field, in market square and courts of law, in secret corridors, in great cathedrals, scampering in circles with arms aloft, shrieking in ecstasy their denial of life.