Cape Sea Route

By Roon Lewald

Today, bulk carriers hog the route around the Cape:
a trunk-to-tail procession of robotic mammoths,
shambling blindly by along their migratory trail.
Their polluted wakes despoil the silver tracks
etched in history by wooden ships
erratically tacking through these seas.

First came the great discoverers –
Diaz, Da Gama, Magelhao, Drake.
On their heels, the merchants, priests
and colonizers of Europe
pursued the treasure and the souls
of Marco Polo’s fabled Indies
and Cathay,
and the island groves
of costly herbs and spices.