Lay for the Day 11th October

1492: Christopher Columbus sights land, 69 days after setting sail from Spain. The following day, Friday 12th October, he set foot on an island in the Bahamas that he named San Salvador (thought to be the one now known as Waitling Island). The islands were inhabited by peaceful Arawaks. Within a couple of decades they would be devoid of natives, 40,000 of the Arawaks having been transported to Hispaniola (the island now divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic) to work the Spanish mines there.

Before the Empires

In the time before the empires
when the people of three rivers stood up
they said, We are they who fight naked
and they are the armoured.
They have no families
but where our daughters serve them
and we have no metal. What will they not take?
This was before the nation,
nobody thought of tomorrow then,
and the mothers asked about the children
and the men said, We have no metal,
and they said, The children will have children.
They stood up and pointed to the west
and they looked to the east
before the nation broke them,
when this song was made
and their name was not forgotten.

John Gibbens, from Makings ’89-’91

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