Gulf of Mexico

Like stopped clocks narcissists can be guaranteed

to get something right at least once: witness

re-naming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf

of America – as the Romans named

the entire Mediterranean,

from Massilia to Carthage,

Levant to the Pillars of Hercules,

‘Mare Nostrum’. Even that advocate

of the USA’s imperial

expansion, and subjugation of Stone Age

peoples, President Thomas Jefferson –

slave owner, miscegenator, gardener,

and one of the Founding Fathers – accepted,

without demur, the 1550 map

that named the gulf El Golfo de México.

It might, after all, have been named for Cuba,

that elongated island – which Jefferson

coveted – that lies like a detached tongue

in the Gulf’s gigantic now poisonous maw.

 

The largest river that flows into the Gulf

is the Mississippi.  The ninety miles

from the mouth to Baton Rouge is known as

‘Cancer Alley’, and comprises mostly

poor, black parishes. Oil refineries

and petrochemical works discharge

their liquid waste containing PCBs,

dioxins, lead, mercury and phosphorus

into The Big Muddy, which then informs

the Gulf’s warming waters, steeped in oil

from the flotillas of drilling platforms –

mostly American – that float like scum.

 

Most marine species are dying, except for

oil-marinated Yellow-Fin Tuna

caught by trawlers out of Galveston, shipped

to US canneries and restaurants –

like old Saturn eating his children. So,

quite right and proper that the Union’s

47^th President should fess up

and give the crime scene a fitting name.