Discovery

In our remarkable ignorance
we never discovered what a potato was.
I never nicotined my own hell
out of the childish temptation of tobacco;
never sat acting lyrics
while you rolled cigarettes
with one eye on the time,

You were never born,
one of your Irish ancestors never met
his French-German lover,
iron curtain oceans dividing them
not with periods, but with full-stops.

Columbus never did cast off.
His flat world and fully rounded
ego made all scientific observation
unnecessary in the light of
one sunset, one sunrise.

He drew his own conclusions,
he stuck to what he knew.

Too afraid to set foot in the boat.