(AA) Canto 1: Broken Peace
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One sees from many examples
In ancient & modern history
That good follows ill, & ill good
That glory ends in blame,
& blame in glory
Ariosto
11/11/18
The glories of our birth & state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate
James Shirley
Ye, yet to live, will speak with sheer disgust,
Of those who prompted roaring War to reign,
To these I leave my tryptychrie in trust,
So things like these just shan’t occur again:
A grievous weight,
Responsibility,
Beginning on this date for all futurity!
Whom of the future could defend
Calculated & condoned
Destruction, ossuaries blend,
Deep well’d & myriad-bon’d,
A massive task to comprehend
Let past not be disown’d,
For surely this, this ‘War to end all Wars’,
Will relic turn, like ribcage dinosaurs.
Alas, wars will not finish if,
Bitter in its ending,
The petroglyphic hippogriff
Bursts from stone, ascending
Up to those dirty psychospheres where Death darts heartrending.
Earth
November 11th
1918
Armistice
And view with retrospective eye
Th’Imperial States whose awful destiny
It was to fade, decay, & disappear
Count Frederick Von Erlach
Your wars are over, so no more killing,
Human splendor move thro’ many nations,
& mops our sodden brows, when, god willing,
We’ll only know cordial relations;
Order’d to yield,
The Wehrmacht leave the trench,
Behind, a bitter field & the ecstatic French.
The Hohenzollern dynasty
Emulates the ancyent Czar,
Forfeits the Kaiser’s monarchy
To the fortunes lost in war,
The Junkers of old Germany
Gathering at Weimar,
Shall delegate, with democratic air,
This treacherous republic to declare.
In some disused railway carriage
All honour sign’d away,
A fretful page, a flaming rage,
To burn some bitter day,
When rise once more shall Germany, when all the world shall pay.
Forest of Compeigne
November 11th
1918
Hitler Awakes!
Indeed the idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men’s Eye much wrong :
Have drown’d my honour in a shallow cup
Edward Fitzgerald
Far from the front rested little Hitler,
Bed-stricken with a bout of syphilis,
Into the ward bursts a babbling pastor,
“Friends, we are beaten, there’s an armistice!”
The war was lost,
As fury rakes the room,
Into a sea-storm toss’d souls suffering in gloom.
He struggl’d to his feet in pain,
Rush’d pass’d the shell-shock’d patients
Into an evening’s winter’s rain,
Cursing the western nations,
“Is all our sacrifice in vain?
All our bleak privations?”
How could this be, he’d sens’d it in his core,
Herr Hitler was a superman of war.
Slump’d by rain-swept roadside seated,
Sobbing for Germany,
His depletedly defeated,
Yet wunderbar contree,
He felt true future grooming him, assuming destiny.
Pasewalk
November
1918
Flight of Peace
Simple and bare we languish,
Not happy, but from the anguish
Of life at last set free
Giacomo Leopardi
Where once was warring calm must reign supreme,
Let analysts asses all the data;
Oer Saharan hues, cerulean dream,
Dovelets flew, ellipsing the Meseta;
Dog-rough cloud rolls
Inspiral from the Earth,
Lest we forget those souls who sacrificed their birth.
The tumult & the shouting dies,
The world three armies receives;
The first with murder in the eyes
When a wounded heart bereaves,
The next already on the rise
As good men become thieves,
Then pity the last! forced to bear the cost
Of battle… some crippl’d, some mad, some lost.
O birds of peace & slender mein,
Men watch ye as ye fly
Up over Spain & in thy train
We made contented sigh,
Watching thee dance amid the burning tapers of the sky.
Europe
November
1918
English Salon
Touch’d by this vastness
I ask the boundless earth;
Who after all will be your master
Mao Tse-Tung
Congather’d for Parisian soiree,
The leading lights of England, more or less,
Collected like a Bloomsbury bouquet
By Mary Borden, warden, chief hostess;
When, with war won,
Gone was the nervous strain,
Which flummox’d everyone like maggots in the brain.
Lloyd-George was there, his snow-white hair
Did flutter with the winces,
Winston would mutter with a stare,
While one of nature’s princes
A garb of Arab robes did wear
“Moscow shan’t convince us,”
Splurts Churchill, “of their Bolshevik journey,
One might as well legalize sodomy!”
“Now of the Germans let us speak…”
“The Kaiser should be shot!”
“Let’s squeeze & tweak until pips squeak,
Seize war debts ‘til we’ve got
Enough to pay off Washington & stave the Empire’s rot.”
Paris
January
1919
Soloheadbeg
And the fugitives crossed
land & rivers
& swept their trails clean
Simon Ortiz
“Home rule is Rome rule”, the Six Counties say,
The rest of Ireland bounc’d back from the booths,
Sinn Fein land-sliding, biding ’til this day
Of souls exploding to their simple truths;
Ireland’s Ireland,
Let’s send the British home,
But Ulstermen won’t stand the slightest link with Rome.
As gelignite, by horse-drawn cart,
Trundles down a country lane,
Six rifles aim’d at head & heart,
Halts two soldiers in its train,
A moment’s madness made them dart
For cover, but were slain,
Whose deaths – before false warriors were blam’d –
The Irish Republican Army claim’d.
“Posters pasted like paper swords
Praise dutiful martyrs,
Plying rewards from London’s lords
& pardons meant to part us…”
“We’ve got ’em rattl’d lads, fuck their English Magna Cartas.”
Tipperary
Jan 21st
1919
Nostoi
That, setting, the sun has only to highlight
Girls crowding the railway track, as the train slows,
For me to discover it is not my station
Boris Pasternak
At the Douamont fort, by sunset shades,
Lay veterans a wreath to heal Verdun,
Melancholic souls of fallen comrades
Escort a living one to Briancon;
Two hundred francs,
Two shirts, shoes, suit, there’s more;
Aye, all the nation’s thanks for winning them the war.
Click-clack’d the slowly sloping train
Up thro’ the Alpine passes,
Attack’d by shawls of driving rain,
He wipes his misty glasses…
“At last! Mon coeur sees home again!”
Light & glossy lasses –
Like flutes, dribbling jubilant glucose –
Applaud homecomings of handsome heroes.
He sees his street, he sheds a tear,
A gasp! “C’est Jean-Francois!”
The pub did cheer as sank, he, beer,
Drenching thirst in nectar,
“Deux francs,” “Deux francs! C’est ridicule pour une Stella Artois!”
France
March
1919
Herman Hesse
A troubadour, I traverse all my land
exploring all her wide-flung parts with zest
probing in motion sweeter far than rest
Dennis Brutus
The Spring has come, the first in seven years,
When war or looming threat of war stood rife,
The deadly dread of mourning dissapears
& brings living back to living life;
One writer knows
Ruin’d was his marriage
Off for a fresh start goes, in a horse-drawn carriage
That carried all his library,
The canton of Ticino
All picturesque posperity,
As over Lake Lugano
Did Montagnola perch, pretty
Churches, perfect flow
Of nature, with humanity, in blend,
‘Twas here, for him, the war, at last, would end.
Perch’d on a rich creative seam
His soul began to dance,
With Elohim, a mellow dream,
A poet’s own romance
Where mountain meadows help forget the slaughterswathes of France.
Switzerland
April
1919
Spoils of War
No longer hosts encount’ring hosts
Shall crowds of slain deplore
They hang the trumpet in the hall
Michael Bruce
They came like Jackals to a wounded bear,
Reflected in the mirrors of the Hall
Men shone no souls – remorseless, unaware,
That what they will’d would build a gilded wall
Twyx world & peace,
This fog-drench’d vengeful clime,
When, who was there to police the intransigent crime
Of Germany’s reparations,
When memories of menace
Choke all cautious moderations –
Grunting hogs like top-tier tennis,
Carcass-tooth’d the delegations,
Concurring, say “When is
A conqueror unable to dictate
What crown or territory to mandate!”
On Berlin foists the guilt of war,
The peace branch but a twig,
That scratches sore, a corridor
Links Warsaw to Danzig –
The French entrenching with revanch, how deep the spurr’d heels dig.
Versailles
June 28th
1919
Mumble Words 