In memory of Charles Simic
That the Gallic tribes were the ‘people of the hills’
(sharing an Indo-European root with collis),
is an idea wherein their heirs in the Eastern Catskills
still find a smidgin of solace.
That the Gauls were the ‘people of the milky skin’
from a galaxy far, far away
that supplied Greece with boatloads of tin
is another concept that holds sway.
That the Gallic tribes were the ‘people of the woods’
(sharing an Indo-European root with coill),
is a theory on which the bronzers of pine cones
find themselves at odds with those who’ve stood
behind the notion, based on the Old Irish gall,
that the Gauls were the ‘people of the raised stone’.
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