The Cicerone Sees a Trashed Columbus
(for P. R.)
J. Quinn Brisben
The tour group is amused to see
HONKY GO HOME splashed on the base
Of far-staring bronze Columbus
At the foot of Columbus Drive in Chicago;
The cicerone is caught between
His beloved midquakes and
The jumbled attic of his lore:
The cops gassed us in 1968
When we gathered at the old bandshell,
Long since torn down and marked only by memory,
And we played hide and seek with them
Around the base of Columbus here.
Chicago schools stil lget this holiday;
The Catholics make sure of that, especially the Italians,
They learned they had to control a piece
Of the great revolutionary ruling myth.
Maybe it can be moved to a safer place,
The way they moved the big cop in Haymarket Square
To an always guarded spot in police headquarters
After we blew it up a couple of times
Or Kosciuszko that they moved across the way
Because they were afrais Puerto Ricans would not respect
A Polish statue when the neighborhood changed.
Maybe they can make it invisible for a while
By re-routing traffic the way they did
For the Roman column that Mussolini gave to Chicago
“In the eleventh year of the fascist era,” really,
Check it out; it’s less than a mile away.
Maybe, don’t laugh, this statue could be art again;
Galleries are full reverently preserved Apollos once
made dickless and noesless by enthusiastic Christians;
Mosiacs have icon dust plaster carefully peeled off
In mosques that were once churches and are now museums.
Of course it is too late for leaden George the Third
Melted for bullets, then fured at his soldiers,
And Kalinin, whom I saw in his namesake city
Now once again Tver, with PUNK ROCK
Chalked on his shoes, may never come back.
Graffitists triumphant, we anti-imperialists,
We anti-racists, we true preservers
Of ecologies and cultures; we caught
A symbol off balance, seized a teachable moment,
And proudly flaunted our black belts
As we made old myths do our will.
The imerialist recessional goes
“Lest we forget, lest we forget,”
And no one can predict who
Will be the last statue in the park;
We are fused with Columbus, like him
We could not go home and could not
Even if we knew
Where home was.
