(AA) Canto 58: Iwo Jima
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Where have our air forces and battleships gone? Are we to lose? Why don’t they start operations? We are positively fighting to win, but we have no weapons. We stand with rifles and bayonets to meet the enemy’s aircraft, battleships, and medium artillery
Toshihiro Oura
Assault Force
I took his dripping corpse upon
my dolphin back & reached the strand;
the beast played saviour to the man
Antiphilus of Byzantium
Across the Irrawaddy Britain shunts,
The USA reclaims the Philippines,
The Emperor retreating on all fronts,
Outbuilt in tanks, planes, ships & submarines;
Despite such might
Japan still unsurpass’d
When gunjin bravely fight, fight to their very last.
Across this vast Pacific flows
The Taskforce 51,
Who, sight assembl’d, only shows
This war will always be won
In the wake of great crescendos
Each battleship gun
Deals dose of morning’s shellfire for the cause…
Converging on Mount Suribachi’s shores
H-Hour hath come, the barges crowd
The Ocean gushes calm,
Unbrave, unproud, his helmet bow’d,
His rifle round his arm
A clerk from Albuquerque works thro’ the twenty-third psalm.
Off Iwo Jima
February 19th
1944
Deadly Enemies
A naked picture of surrealist
Beauty in eerie stumps,
& ancient banyans
Mmoe Malietoa Von Reiche
At any moment now a foot shall stand
on the soil – uninvited – of Japan,
Or sand, rather, two miles of it, as land
The first brave wave, who, happy to a man
Sense all is still,
As if in empty kirk,
Nobody left to kill, the guns had done their work.
The crystal beach volcanic, black,
Felt like a wheat bin’s dipping,
No traction offer’d the attack,
As backwards men kept slipping,
Then… with a jolting thunderwhack,
All Hell went let-ripping –
As bullets flew & streaming mortars scream’d,
Some firework Mount Suribachi seem’d.
The beach explodes in fits of ‘fuck’,
An army caught mid hop,
As jeep & truck & troops get stuck,
‘Twas more the butcher’s shop,
As when fog cleared from off the rocky tops of Spion Kop
Red Beach One
February 19th
1944
Death of John Basilone
on the ramparts,
he never said death is to be preferred,
that life is negotiable
Abba Kovner
In face of fear, one’s training is our fuel,
But Basilone oozed pure talent, flaunted
Gifts beyond that beach; a personal duel,
A one-man rampage machine, undaunted,
While mortar shells
& hell-hail did death’s work,
As when the Dardanelles defended by the Turk.
As John, quite single handedly,
Destroyed blockhouses freely
Upon a sudden suddenly
His gun-grip slipp’d genteely,
Then body fell down woodenly,
Mumbling some swahili
John last rites whispers, spurting from his veins…
But whose brave deeds an opening obtains.
Probing towards the landing strip
Men penetrate the lines
Whose comradeship, with chipper skip,
These deadliest confines,
Proclaims a vital victory as on them Luna shines.
Airfield #1
February 19th
1945
Peak Storming
I saw the rampart of my native land,
One time so strong, now dropping in decay,
Their strength destroy’d by this new age’s way
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas
Commanders acting whack’d out, stoned & drunk,
Tenacity unprecedented halts
The drive to take the beach, bogg’d down with junk,
A wreckage wall reduced to fits & jolts
Flame Throwing tanks
Confer decisive aid
Ascending wooden planks in Schenectady made.
Under the starry Pleiades
Battle brokers at the breach
With efforts rais’d by Herakles
The Marines move off the beach
&, with an isolating squeeze,
The peak’s first rise up reach
But bare a second they could spare to stare,
For hidden gun-holes blaz’d them everywhere.
As, slow & bloody from the base,
Boulder after boulder,
What demons chase this awkward race
To the mountain’s shoulder,
When every single jack of ‘em has aged a decade older.
Mount Suribachi
February 20th
1945
A New Flag
And lands are saved and conquests won,
And the race of high and hard truths run,
And chains snapped off and sins undone
FW Faber
‘Hot Rocks’ surmounted! Stars & Stripes uprose,
Mount Suribachi Yankee now, huge cheers
Erupt, while celebratory salvoes
Let loose by naval captains clinking beers;
As Hellespont
Found Byron in her foam,
Says Forrester, “I want to hang that flag at home.”
“LST 779
Holds a larger flag inside
Sir” – “Well, son, that’ll do just fine
Go & raise that thing with pride
Just make damn sure that first flag’s mine,
So many boys have died…”
Faded his voice into the void of war
“…Well, get to it son, watcha waiting for!?”
Joe Rosenthall was watching on,
Associated Press,
His instinct shone, the Sergeant gone
Him follows on a guess,
Sensing something developing, his camera’s caress.
Yellow Beach
February 23rd
1945
The Best Shot
No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from
A.A. Milne
As one good picture wins & loses wars,
Up they strode to seal this sacred moment
Young image makers defining their cause
In shining sun that by the Gods was sent;
As hill tops shake
With breezes from the sea,
Nobody could mistake, this flag means victory!
As Harold Keller, Schultz & Strank,
With Black & Ira Hayes
& Sousley, men with hefty crank
America’s badge did raise;
Joe snapp’d some shots, the seconds shrank
The Stars & Stripes display
Themselves for all this island, & beyond…
Where, like somebody’d waved a magic wand
Across conviction, as they saw
That image clog the news,
Regal & raw, their eagle’s jaw
Unbroken, saw the queues
For G.I. joining swell immensely, melds esprit de corps!
The Unites States of America
September 24th
1945
Broken Bonds
Dead, they examined him, finding
in his body a greater body
for the soul of the world
Cesar Vallejo
With ‘piece of shit island!’ & ‘geez louise!’
Curses blend with the murders under slopes
Of Suribachi, men from overseas
Shall conquer here, as when the Age of Popes
From Genoa
To Caffa sent out fleets,
Far off to Crimea’s rich Trapezuntine seats.
These were the hardest of the yards
American boys must play,
To stay alive by turn of cards
& survive another day,
Where, thinking free from living guards,
Into a bunker stray,
Two friends, who, since elementary school
Have shar’d each other’s basic molecule.
One foe still lives, toss’s last grenade
Into that friendship’s heart;
Decision made, the elder grade
Leapt on it, blown apart,
His stunn’d pal full of, “cogito, ergo sum’ of Descates.
Minami
February 24th
1944
Labyrinthines
Then twice six followers from the board
Rushed forth with fierce delight;
They whirled the club, they waved the sword
Esaias Tegnér
All in these crevices, tunnels, crags, caves,
Only one time flash from eternity,
Go men & boys, from nervous to too brave,
Whom, gentle once, at their maternity,
Now lives to kill,
Without a second thought,
Pursued, with all the thrill of an Olympic sport!
As napalm, scented sickly-sweet,
Outflying from flaming torches,
To some twas just like grinding meat,
To others crunching roaches,
Oer sundry ridges in the heat
Tarr’d by scarring scorches,
Progress, meter-by-meter, day-by-day,
Drove on this madly dangerous melee.
The airfield gave a mighty cheer,
The bomber ‘Dinah Might’
Did drop & veer, her smoking rear
Was damag’d in the flight
That yesterday had help’d to flatten’d Tokyo all night.
Airfield #1
March 4th
1945
Victory Comes
Where even defeat has pride.
And nothing can vanquish this ancient nation,
That knows how to dance with such ardour and will
Gevorg Emin
From glorious stand in Kitana gorge
Men overwhelm’d by overwhelming force,
With swords of steel that with true zeal would forge
No mercy, no compassion, no remorse
& no banzai,
By Kuribashi led
Four hundred set to die, all thro’ the darkness spread.
As bullets splutter’d thro’ the zone,
In hacking battle heated,
Loudspeakers squeal beseeching, drone
“Soldiers you are defeated
Surrender & survive…” just stone
Silence – incompleted
That task your emperor had given you,
Now, only death by enemy will do.
The sun rose up & left the sea,
The island calm & still,
The agony, the killing spree,
Has no-one left to kill,
But will live on in nightmares even Dante could not quill.
Okita
March 20th
1944
Mumble Words 