The Last Governor of New Amsterdam
Dreams in Death
1672
of an island in the Caribbean, where a Spanish cannonball
devoured his leg. The dream-island shifts like grass
and becomes Manhattan, green-faced and river-haired.
Peter Stuyvesant grabs her neck
and strangles her until she turns red.
He is the Governor. He is also
the Pegleg, half-bald and half-
legged, ill-tempered, too strict, and Dutch,
whose subjects are lecherous
and foul, and drunk, and half-
witted, and English
ships rise from the sea floor, their
seaweed-covered cannons aim
at the city’s blue-green neck, but
the Governor will never relent.
Still, money smolders in the pockets of the landed,
the wealthy, the gentry, his own son among them.
All the power of New Amsterdam goes against him, and
Manhattan slips from his grasp. He rolls
in his deathbed and dreams he walks
on two legs and still holds the island
in one hand.