(AA) Canto 45: Grappling Tides
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If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf
Nikita Kruschev
Conquest of Italy
Food is scare now, & men are scarce
Whole villages burnt to the ground,
New cities in disrepair
Michael Hamburger
Languor usurps the last coragio,
The fair share of the fighting has been fought,
No faith to summon Jupiter Stator,
Arms thrown aside men made for safest port;
From Alpine mists
The Tramontana blows,
Summoning fresh fascists, vile packs of Nazi crows.
As when the mighty Alaric,
A Magister Militum,
Entering the streets sardonic
Of old Mediolanum,
He with instancy laconic
Beat Visigothic drum,
Announcing to these Ceasar citizens,
“I seize this land, my daughters, & my sons.”
Altho’ the temple of Janus
Hath closed it’s doors to war,
Hitler’s panzers, like tight lancers,
Roll with a clank & roar,
Thro’ Rome’s gorgeous museum streets pepper’d with tombs of yore.
Rome
September 10th
1943
Operation Oak
No subject for immortal verse –
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse
Cecil Day Lewis
Vex’d by the betrayal of Italy,
As acts she some common adulteress,
Hitler is torn between deep loyalty
For his companion’s latest distress;
But friends are friends
& if them curs’d by strife
& on thine aid depend, what nobler thing in life!
Five men are summon’d to his lair,
All brimming with devotion,
“Italy! what think ye of there?”
Silence but for one captain,
Who fix’d him with a solid stare
“I am an Austrian!”
The rest were dismiss’d, instant decision,
“I offer you a sensitive mission
There is a man I care for true,
T’would mean the world to me
If, soon, would you go to rescue
My friend, Mussolini?”
“T’would be a great honour,” saluted Otto Skorzeny.
The Wolf’s Lair
September 5th
1943
Eastern Bloc
It happened in a land of farmers
on Hilly Balkan, far, far away;
A troop of students died martyred
Desanka Maksimovic
Tho’ hate burns under illustrious eyes,
Tito attacks diplomacy’s charade,
His revolution used by the Allies,
Greets Stalin as an old party comrade;
But on his back
Scars of thirty lashes,
Still echoing the crack of those captive thrashes.
“Some twenty divisions need we
If Belgrade be freed from yoke,”
“You’ll have an entire company…”
Stalin breath’d out swirls of smoke,
“…Restore King Peter’s regency;”
Tito cough’d on a choke,
“Impossible! the people will rebel!”
Earning Stalin’s respect &, “Very well,
But what if ever the English
Land on a Balkan shore?”
“We would resist, our only wish
Self-ruling, as before;”
“My friend, we must frustrate the West when we have won this war.”
Moscow
September
1943
A Dramatic Rescue
A ! Fredome is a noble thing !
Fredome maiss man to hair liking
Fredome all solace to man gifs
Robert Barbour
Humming Heinkels drew gliders deft in tow,
Releas’d them on the buxom welken swell,
Now floating to Gran Sasso, far below,
Capp’d by snow patches & this white hotel;
From splintering,
Flimsy, crashdown gliders,
Strong men rush outpouring, like brave gladiators!
The bungling gaurds jump’d out of bed,
Caught in canine siesta,
Il Duce shouts down, “No bloodshed!”
Some damsel in her tower,
A gen’ral rais’d goblet of red,
Toasted, “To the victor!”
Gobbl’d one gulp by Otto Skorzeny,
“Mein herr, please take me to Mussolini!”
“Der Fuhrer bids ye form fascist
Republic North of Rome…”
Hitting the gist Il Duce kiss’d
His saviour, “then back home,
I’ll go?” he mumbl’d humbly, sunken shadow in the gloam.
Abruzzi Apennines
September 12th
1943
Rejuvenations
It is time for me to go to attack Germans
& I want to carry your name forward
If only in my battle cry ‘Ura’
Sergeant Vlasienko
Moscow’s Bears awake from hibernation,
Claws sharpen’d for coming reconquista,
Azazelian annihilation,
Torrents from a horrent-arm’d ballista;
Stalin demands
Every god-damn German
Expel’d is from his lands, or rots there in the sun.
Altho’ they knew the war was lost,
& drown’d in diarrhea,
Each man morphs to a sturdy schloss
To fight on for Der Fuhrer,
An iron or a wooden cross,
Loyally together,
For if great Germany wins not the war,
What else in life is there worth living for?
From Smolensk to Sevastapol
The Wehrmacht, on the rack,
Bred in battle deadly skilful,
Are daily pulling back,
Bursting each mouse-trap circle thro’ exfiltrative attack.
U.S.S.R
September
1943
War’s Shadow
I know not, ah! sweet streams, despair of knowing
When I shall come again; for as I go,
And ponder why, ye fill me with such woe
Luis Vaz de Camoes
Armour’d car swept up the serpentine road
Of the mount of Saint Benedict’s abbey,
General steps out, clutching silver sword,
Eyes saccading oer the Liri Valley;
A position
Ruling wide area,
“They must take it before Casilina…”
Boot nails echoed round the cloisters
Where stood Dom Gregorio,
Flank’d by seven very pious
Monks of Montecassino,
“To stay here would be dangerous…”
“No! no! we cannot go!”
“Very well, but may I suggest, promptly,
Transport thy treasures for safe sanctuary.”
They placed gold-laced legatura,
Corali, tapestries,
Mellin, Conca, Solimena,
& bibles in lorries;
Each guarded by two monks driven to Roman galleries.
Italy
October 16th
1943
A Game of Chess
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart
Hangs on & howls, biting at air
Howard Nemerov
Pale workers spend a hard-earn’d half-an-hour
Huddl’d around blindfolded Botvinik,
Exercising, barely, deep chess power,
He beats some patzer with a knight’s fork trick;
Their foreman’s cough
Disturbs his ego show,
Taking the blindfold off, a message from Moscow!
Comrades perus’d thro’ the pages
Of this amazing letter,
“It seems, Mikhael, you are famous,
No more the mere sheet cutter,
With you lies Russia’s fate in chess
When the war is over…”
“Yes,” said Botvinik “a war we shall win…”
Nobody there dare doubt his knowing grin.
That night he mind-mapp’d the Dragon,
Sharp Yugoslav Attack,
White’s H pawn on the sixth… “White’s won…
What’s this?” An exchange sac –
Forth, with exploding forces, flow’d the the fury moves of black.
The Ural
October
1943
Irma Greese
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
Charles Bukowski
As iron clang rang Five AM apelle
The Strafkommando’s punishment detail
Was hers today, she’ll make this day like hell –
Into the wagon went them, weak & pale;
Beyond Auschwitz,
Thro’ fields of fat & stout
Beside the piles & pits Greese hisses, “Out! Out! Out!”
To the sounds of falling timber,
& the break of brittle bones,
Overseering all September,
Lumping logs & hauling stones,
She would drift off & remember
Last night’s eloping moans
With Doctor Mengele, beside his fire;
She succubus, him breathless with desire.
Her callous zeal was recogniz’d,
Rank-ascent rewarded,
Deftly devis’d deaths she disguis’d
As work widely applauded
For in such supraheathen days, evil brides are lauded.
Auschwitz
October
1943
The Swiss Role
There is delight in singing, tho’ none hear
Beside the singer : & there is delight
In praising, tho’ the praiser sits alone
WS Landor
Shrugging danger away with hearty laugh
For the heart of France brave Monsieur Holland
Risks godless torture for to photograph
These strange sites that somehow concern England;
Blueprints hidden
Within a sack of spuds
& fresh disguise woven – a cutter from the woods.
Rolls of barb’d wire the border close,
Switzerland shuns Vichy France,
Grey guards pass by, the tension grows,
Michel dashes at his chance,
But caught by wolfhound, on its nose
Punches firm annoyance,
Then thro the jagged barbs he cuts a path,
To reach his adventure’s safe aftermath.
He cursed the city’s atmosphere
Burgeoning with profits,
The Jewish fear left great wealth here,
Substantial deposits –
Accounts not to be honour’d without death certificates.
Zurich
October
1943
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