When country fiddlers held a convention in Danville,
the big money went to a barn dance artist who played
Turkey in the Straw, with variations...
— Carl Sandburg
Consensus is born of determination...
Some say the first Americans had named it for its cluck Or that Chris called it “tuka” for a peacock he mistook (By Chris I mean Columbus; Tuka’s Tamil for peacock, And Tamil is the language of Ceylon), but by the book The Brits declared it first and for all time the bird from Turkey, While Science called it meleagris, out of Malagasy (Relating it to Guinea fowls, with Latin terms so classy They get excused for making things perpetually murky). Each stop along the trade route added names to the imposter: The Palestinians dubbed the bird an Ethiopian Rooster, The Dutch decreed it kalkoen, a Malibarian coaster (From Calicut of Malibar in India, southwester). The commonest of turkey tags, for Turks and many others, Is Indian Chicken, for the land Columbus misdiscovered: Thus hindi, dindon, indyk, indjuk, hindishga, all brothers Of the nascent New World Order of the Turkey. Meanwhile, over In India, some Indians have christened it “peru”, Deferring to the name their Portugallan traders knew. But Peru never knew the bird until the Spanish shipped it; They called it gallopavo, for the peacock Chris descripted (By Chris I mean Columbus; pavo’s peacock; gallo’s chicken; And Portugallans are the chicken-trading Portuguese). And so this story goes: the plot unwinds, the titles thicken, But dinner’s on the table; you can call it what you please. There is no grand denouement in the course of human nature And from the very start the turkey’s oldest nomenclature, Presented by the Aztecs in their native Nahuatl, Has been a word the world could never say: Xuehxolotl.
from Thirty Birds
No comments:
Post a Comment