(AA) Canto 40: The New World
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We are all under the same sky but we don’t all have the same horizon
Konrad Adenauer
Genesis
Overhead the seasons rock
They are paper bells
Calling to nothing living
W. S. Merwin
Before they taste the worst of wasted lives
Whom others breath deny by martial deed,
Before the flailing alien arrives
On Earth alight that bruis’d, enthirsted steed,
Before an age
Was vitrified in gore,
Let us devise the stage & lay its playful floor.
From stardust is a planet made
Then leave the rest to science,
Eftsoons we’ll hear the rise & fade
Of songbirds in alliance,
A never-ceasing serenade
Most happy circumstance
Of swallows following Dawn’s constant roll
Aslant a planet spinning pole-to-pole.
Thro’ lightning flash, hail-stones of coal,
Destruction decollates,
Those mires that maul, those fires that fall,
All breathing devastates,
While dregs of flesh existence call hopelessly to their mates.
Mexico
65,000,000 B.C.
Helen of Troy
And in the visions of romantic youth,
What years of endless bliss are yet to flow!
But, mortal pleasure, what art thou in truth!
Thomas Campbell
Not setting sun, not rosy-finger’d dawn,
Nor ocean’s pearl; not breezy mountain air,
Not spider-spun, nor lazy summer lawn,
Could e’er to this temptressy smile compare;
Her wide-sought hand
Won by the Spartan king,
Many a Grecian band gifts to their wedding bring.
From vinegar festivities
Paris woo’d her to one side,
Venus entwining destinies
As this hot, bedswerving bride
Sings lush, erotic melodies,
& sucks his love inside –
Afterwards, englamour’d with enchantment,
Thro’ spacious halls their silent footsteps went.
Moonsphere makes webbings in the waves,
Men row a ship to sea –
As future craves the golden graves
Of immortality,
These sweethearts, silken-sheeted, milk the teats of exstasi.
Aegean Sea
Birth of Gesu
In patience, then, possess thy soul,
Stand still! – for while the thunders roll,
Thy saviour sees thee through the gloom
William Allen
Rays of pure stardust pulse across the Earth,
According to some alien design,
For deity desires a humble birth
When interplanetary spheres align,
The Starchild born,
Warm & mellow manger,
His writ the world to warn of the Devil’s danger.
The virgin mother sent her child
To a cult of strict Essene,
With them the Dead Sea scrolls were filed,
Ancyent prophecies to glean,
With them this little lad was styled
Until he turn’d thirteen,
When Mary’s boy restor’d to Nazereth,
Naught but hell-burning brains & wafts of death.
Like sharp, shark fins the sins of Man
Round the incarnate swirl’d,
As Romans ran their sordid plan,
Thro’ war-polluted world –
Boy tutor’d in messiahdom, or Heaven’s face unfurl’d?
Judea
2 A.D.
Carolingia
The birth canal is yours
Either to open or to close.
Open it you must, dear elders
Hermana Ramarui
His armies birds in sky & trees on earth,
On Christmas Day was crown’d great Charlemagne;
King-conqueror, far from his cradle-birth,
He rais’d a triumph from a Caesar’s train;
Holy empire
On pagan planet won,
Whose perfect seed shall sire a spotless, proud-heart spotless son.
This pious Louis took a wife,
All the Angels deem’d her good,
These conjuring more regal life
Protected the sacred blood,
Each wise as Rome, each fair as Fife,
Each strong as Flemish wood,
Each gather’d by their father’s dying bed –
He drew them close & choking phlegma said,
“None of ye shall be Emporer,
But each a realm shall reign;
Italia, Germania,
The Franks & Aquitaine…”
Friction on such division stood, fought out on blood-fraught plain.
Aachen
843
Alfred
It may be glorious to write
Thoughts that shall glad the two or three
High souls, like those far stars that come to sight
James Russel Lowell
Only the lords of Wessex dare defy
The victual flamboyance of the Vikings,
“Are we not Saxons?” rings a captain’s cry,
The morning chorus of the English kings;
As great a man
As ever was Pompey,
Driving his battle-plan along the old Ridgeway.
They met the Norsemen on the hill
Life’s liberties to defend,
In moments making time stand still,
Immortalities suspend –
Britain some Nordic overspill
Or war-heroic blend?
As Saxons tough the better of the fight
Ravens of breaking cloth are put to flight.
Upsrpings a worthy capital
Laws writ in native tongue,
The chronicle of his struggle
Preserv’d in prose & song,
Then marries into Mercia to make his nation strong.
Winchester
892
Holy Roman Empire
While Rome could none esteem
But virtue’s patriot theme
You loved her hills, & led her laureat band
William Collins
Distant princes court Alfred’s grand-daughters,
Enchaunted by their dancing beauty’s youth;
Perfect as pearl, skin soft as spring-waters,
Souls hankering for virtue-verdur’d truth;
King Otho’s bride,
Edgitha, shares his reign,
Her Saxon blood allied with sacred Charlemagne.
“How yearnst I,” sighs the emperor,
“To unite all Germany,
Bind beautiful Bavaria
To blueberry Lombardy,
Blend heather-scented Swabia
With sunny Saxony –
Administ’ring, with Papal proconsent,
The central portions of this continent.”
Arose a sense of nationhood
Tied by Teutonic tongue,
In hall & wood, great tayles of blood,
The Niebelungen song,
Stirr’d up a spirit where the soul of Seigfried soar’d among.
Germania
962
Rise of Paris
The city’s all a-shining
Beneath a fickle sun,
A gay young wind’s a-blowing
Sara Teasdale
Long since the notion struck the Parisii
To settle by the Seine, & since sublime
Lutetia prais’d each Ceasar’s victory,
This eagle’s nest, amidst the mists of time,
Claims Frankish throne,
As jangling jongleurs sing,
“One of our very own has been elected king!“
How many noble knights advance
Gorgeous daughters for the bride
Of Hugh Capet, the first in France,
Whose Parisians beam pride,
But only one lass stands a chance,
As once again allied,
The blood of Charlemagne & Alfred merge,
One wedding night, abed, with mighty splurge.
“So this is life!” the pilgrim said,
Upon the paths to Spain,
To slowly tread, with fruit & bread,
The roads thro’ Aquitaine
Meeting, en route, the valorous, the vocal & the vain.
France
990
New Spain
But just before the end
there is always this crepuscular hailstorm
echoing base voice owned by men
Elvis Gbanabom Hallowell
Not knowing world empire was theirs’ to sire
Fair Isobel’s promis’d to Fernando,
With passion elevating cannonfire,
Grenada falls beneath their combin’d blow;
United land
Centred upon Castille,
Chief of the bible brand with homicidal zeal.
From Genoa Columbus came,
Whose fleet from Cadiz set sail,
The lure of spice, the lust for fame,
Thro’ bold missions would prevail,
Each sunset ‘rison flash’d aflame,
Or brooded on a gale,
‘Til verging on a murd’rous mutiny
Thin verdant sliver parted sky & sea.
“I claim this place for regal Spain,”
Flag thrusteth into rocks,
“This pleasant rain must grow our grain
& feed our teeming flocks,”
On board, a sickly sailor’s breathing death-streams of smallpox.
America
1492
Motecuhzoma
In the beholding eye,
A thousand years of wind
Are cool
Shiki
There was a time when white men thought them best,
Of course we know this naught but braggart’s boast,
But then, there was a time when to the West
Great floating mountains landed off the coast;
“Quetzalcoatl
Has come!” the Emperor,
Faced with true immortal, tribulates in terror.
Hernando Cortez was no god,
Gunpowder was his magic,
Him over honor rode slip-shod,
Intransigencies tragic,
Snapping Motecuhzoma’s rod,
Sends tumbling, double-quick,
A vast empire of gleaming golden plate,
Consumed entire into the Spanish state.
Five hundred years, from pole-to-pole,
European empires
Shall each, & all, rise up, then fall,
Until the thought retires
That men aren’t meant to others rule… Cortez inspects the pyres.
Tenochtitlan
1521
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