Translation Theory

Pedro Menedez is credited as St. Augustine’s founder,
confuses histor/i/ans, why is there a statue of Ponce in tiny town’s square?
Why is there Hotel Ponce (my college dormitory),
if Menendez claims the oldest continuously established
European settlement of the United States?

Consider a statue of someone’s who’s name
is soft three-syllabled (small step from) matanza,
history erodes the name, Menendez to matanzas,

Instead, there is Matanzas Bay, eternal marker
of the inlet where all the French castaways
were stabbed and drowned, massacre, building
forts into salt-caked castillos, holding on to sea-shelled
cement, coquina, keeping pretenses up, all of wars’ death out—