<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div id="poem-top" class="tab-content active" style="display: block; "><h1 style="font: normal normal normal 24px/normal Georgia; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Drake in the Southern Sea</font></h1></div><div id="poem" class="tab-content active" style="display: block; "><div class="poem" style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 25px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><p class="epigraph" style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 25px; margin-left: 25px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><i>For Rafael Heliodoro Valle</i></font></p><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">I set out from the Port of Acapulco on the twenty-third of March</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And kept a steady course until Saturday, the fourth of April, when</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">A half hour before dawn, we saw by the light of the moon</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">That a ship had come alongside</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">With sails and a bow that seemed to be of silver.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Our helmsman cried out to them to stand off</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">But no one answered, as though they were all asleep.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Again we called out: “<small>WHERE DID THEIR SHIP COME FROM</small>?”</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And they said: Peru!</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">After which we heard trumpets, and muskets firing,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And they ordered me to come down into their longboat</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">To cross over to where their Captain was.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">I found him walking the deck,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Went up to him, kissed his hands and he asked me:</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">“What silver or gold had I aboard that ship?”</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">I said, “None at all,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">None at all, My Lord, only my dishes and cups.”</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">So then he asked me if I knew the Viceroy.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">I said I did. And I asked the Captain,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">“If he were Captain Drake himself and no other?”</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">The Captain replied that</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">“He was the very Drake I spoke of.”</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">We spoke together a long time, until the hour of dinner,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And he commanded that I sit by his side.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">His dishes and cups are of silver, bordered with gold</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">With his crest upon them.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">He has with him many perfumes and scented waters in crystal vials</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Which, he said, the Queen had given him.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">He dines and sups always with music of violins</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And also takes with him everywhere painters who keep painting</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">All the coast for him.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">He is a man of some twenty-four years, small, with a reddish beard.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">He is a nephew of Juan Aquinas,* the pirate.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And is one of the greatest mariners there are upon the sea.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">The day after, which was Sunday, he clothed himself in splendid garments</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And had them hoist all their flags</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">With pennants of divers colors at the mastheads,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">The bronze rings, and chains, and the railings and</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">The lights on the Alcazar shining like gold.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">His ship was like a gold dragon among the dolphins.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And we went, with his page, to my ship to look at the coffers.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">All day long until night he spent looking at what I had.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">What he took from me was not much,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">A few trifles of my own,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And he gave me a cutlass and a silver brassart for them,</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Asking me to forgive him</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Since it was for his lady that he was taking them:</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">He would let me go, he said, the next morning, as soon as there was a breeze;</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">For this I thanked him, and kissed his hands.</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">He is carrying, in his galleon, three thousand bars of silver</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Three coffers full of gold</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Twelve great coffers of pieces of eight:</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">And he says he is heading for China</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3">Following the charts and steered by a Chinese pilot whom he captured ...</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><br></font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>- Ernesto Cardenal</font></div><div style="text-indent: -1em; padding-left: 1em; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>(Translated by Thomas Merton)</font></div></div><div class="credit" style="line-height: 18px; color: rgb(127, 127, 127); margin-bottom: 30px; padding-top: 24px; "></div></div></body></html>