The scene is a Roman bar, where the narrator tells—in outrageous sonnets—of Columbus’s battle with the Spanish bureaucracy for supplies and ships, of the endless storms that pound the ocean, of the voyagers’ inevitable swindling of the natives, and of Columbus’s final fall from royal favor. After several interruptions and promptings by a skeptical and impatient audience, the narrator comes to the point of his yarn—that genius will sometimes exact a heavy price.

Winner of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets

Translated by: John C. Duval