The Diary of Captain Picard

1 November 1694

What is there but read or write poetry
now that Satan has visited these waters?
He strangles the ship with sargassum fingers
after he blew all the trade winds away.
Oh, that I were on the Saguenay River
where once I traded for Iroquois pelts.

I should have tacked more to the South Atlantic
from west equatorial Africa
to travel the coastline up from Brazil,
except Monsieur le Gouverneur sent word
his treasury was lacking for molasses,
and my sea dogs were thirsting for their rum.

Perhaps we have perished and gone to hell
for the sin of throwing them overboard,
first the frail, intended as one transaction
The Company surely would have forgiven,
but soon there were needed all of the rations
for black feral muscle nourished for auction.

Desmarais, I fear, will not last the night
after his kidneys succumb to the brine,
but in his madness he says there is time
to find a young widow who for her passage
will pleasure us all the way back to Nantes
where a priest he knows requires small penance.