What Rough Beast | Poem for December 28, 2017

William Prindle
Amoroleck’s Argument with Captain Smith

There are three worlds only
Monacan, Powhatan, Mannahoac

You white men in great canoes
Must come from underneath

Our worlds you must come
To take us to take away our worlds

Your skins are strange your words
Are strange your ways are clumsy

My brother king of Hassininga
Wants nothing you have to give

But your kindness in attending
To my wounds causes me to want

To trust you and since your weapons
Are loud and your numbers great

I will take you to my brother as now
There is no other path but trusting you

 

Author’s Note: Amoroleck was a Mannahoac warrior captured by a 17th-century exploratory mission up Virginia’s Rappahannock River led by Captain John Smith. This is an interpretation of their reported conversation from Amoroleck’s point of view.

 

William Prindle’s poems have appeared in What Rough Beast, Written River, The Echo World, and The Pennsylvania Review, as well as in the anthology Best of the 30/30 Project 2013 (Tupelo Press). A Charlottesville area poet, he has won awards from the Poetry Society of Virginia.

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