(AA) Canto 62: Victory in Europe
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How wonderful was the experience, when I went into town; work-girls, shop-girls, men assistants whom I knew,- as we clasped each other by the hand, each said to the other, I to them & they to me : “Thank God you are safe!”
Edith Sitwell
Ultimate Brass
The air is cool and night is coming.
The calm Rhine courses its way.
The peak of the mountain dazzles
Heinrich Heine
In torrents since the Normandy beaches,
The Allied flood in deluge swamps the foe
Rivers of iron pouring breaches,
With bare a halt-less battle-rush to go;
“Let’s Bremen seize
As soon as possible
Ike pondering agrees, “that won’t be much trouble,
But then Berlin in hell-bent drive
You think must be our standard?”
“I do,” said Monty, “to arrive
Before Stalin has landed,
Immoveable, for years to thrive
Proud, encamp’d & pander’d –
If they reach Berlin first they’ll only be
A wall across whole of Germany
A start! they heard, from left to right,
The first great salvo fire,
In massive might, “But listen, Dwight,
However things transpire
To beat these Nazi bastards, Britain has lost her empire.
Diepholz Airfirld
April 20th
1945
Hitler’s Birthday
The forests burn from Dresden as far as Berlin itself.
The earth is cracked as if in an inferno,
As if in an inferno the clay smoulders
Semen Gudzenko
Entomb’d in the sad swansong of his time,
Arcanum Fuhrerbunker, quetzal claws,
As geocentric wolkenkuck-kuck-sheim,
Projects the acute virtues of his cause;
While strangers wage
The Wars he brought to Earth
In this Aegyptian cage they’ll celebrate his birth.
Tho’ across him hangs a shadow
He invokes the ‘Good old days,’
“For he’s a jolly good fellow!”
The sober jamboree raise,
Soon complexion yields to sallow,
By him but one soul stays…
His little siren, the lovely Miss Braun…
He orders scorched Earth policy by phone.
He exhales with the exstasi
Of fearsome syphilis,
“For without me this Germany
Must certainly perish…”
Outside the comfort of those rooms stretch’d bleak necropolis.
Berlin
April 20th
1945
The Betrayal of Goering
Bitter winter, you crackle your fire
Winter, you consume the woods, the roofs
Winter, you slash and burn
Franco Fortini
Beneath the colour films of glory days,
Clad in woman’s garb, flicking thro’ a rail
Of old masters, Goering churn’d in a daze,
What future now? The vision, once so fair
Plunges despond,
‘Sic transit gloria
Mundi,’ his robes now donn’d, summons old Sofia
Who listens writ down, pen in hand
A telegram, by fraction;
“My Fuhrer, with your final stand
You’ll lose freedom of action,
Therefore, I shall assume command
Hearing no reaction
From you by 10 PM, as settl’d on
The 29th of June in forty-one.”
Said Sofia, “Are you sure, sir?
This might not go down well…”
“Whatever curses I’ll incur,
I’m already in Hell…”
Then gazed he on the valley troughs where evening shadows fell.
Obersalzburg
April 23rd
1945
The Betrayal of Himmler
He’d come to Earth with a hole in his heart,
Then found a way to make that hole expand
With alchemy had set himself apart,
Unwilling now to share the final stand
He reaches out,
To Folke Bernadotte,
Alternate paths to tout, they meet to hear the plot.
“Hitler is finish’d,” he began,
Drain’d of all vital power
Will die, now, any day – better plan
Europa’s future this dark hour
Without him, I can sway Japan…
So, with Eisenhower
Could meet, & bring peace to the Western World?”
Then manic-eye’d abuse Herr Himmler hurl’d,
“Then with one heart we’ll face the beast
The Bolsheviks have form’d,
Whose seed increas’d, whose breed releas’d,
Who from the east have swarm’d!”
“Of this,” says Bernadotte, “I promise Dwight wall be inform’d.”
Lubeck
April 24th
1945
Making Traitors
We are sons of the same mother
The same origin and kind
Like two joined pines
Vasile Alecsandri
With the imminence of oblivion
Heaving on his soul like a shadow,
With babblechat still spitting attrition,
This ‘man,’ whose very blood the broth of snow,
Sits down to read
A batch of telegrams,
Amongst them one did feed his egowolf the lambs.
At first he unresponsive drew,
Droop’d, then, earlobes, whispering’
Bormann insisting its a coup,
Traitors waiting to play king,
Into a fiery cage then flew
Der Fuhere, furies ring
All thro the Bunker on a daemons roar,
Then silence, then a whisper, “then the war
Is lost, but here I shall remain
& die in Berlin’s guts,
With open vein the Reich soon slain,
Death by a thousand cuts…”
The great trapdoors of history upon his chapter shuts.
Fuhrerbunker
April 25th
1945
Wounded Hearts
Verify every fear. But there is warmth
In this sudden desire to sleep,
To surrender to our common condition
Phillis Levin
Time, the devourer of every nation,
Some might say millennia, some a year
Having crept upon incastelation,
Has Hitler caught in sunless dungeon drear;
Twas Goering first
Now Himmler, too, betrays
The cause – both names he curs’d, where once was love & praise.
“As traitors must be death condemn’d
This Reichmarshal’s archest crime,
Was to assume I’d met my end
Before fate’s allotted time,
Now party membership suspend
For all who share the slime,
Of their vile station – Felelein is here…”
“Yes, Fuhrer…” “bring him to me…” – with a tear
Interrogations brusque fist halts
With sentence of death’s swift
Scythe – gun unbolts, its bullet jolts
The head as heels uplift,
Of Himnmler’s grinning adjutant, whose death was like a gift.
Fuhrerbunker
April 27th
1945
Veteran
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride & joy,
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder
Piantadosi & Bryan
Teethsinking hoarfrost left Siberia,
Coating the country of the whining shout,
Floating from volksempfanger receiver
Whom secret sniggerings call Goebell’s snout;
A call to arms;
“For Fuhrer, land & God,
Leave factories & farms, embrace vaterlandstod.”
Emerg’d Wolfgang with decision,
He should defend his city,
The sacrifice of World War One –
Incalculable pity –
Must something mean, a gun’s a gun,
Trenchtrain’d ability
Against the French & English felt ingrain’d,
Yes, he shall fight while breath in him remain’d.
Eating kohlsuppe from a mess tin,
Wolfgang clean’d spectacles,
Thro’ flames & din the foe rush’d in
Remembering the drills
He points & fires his panzerfaust – tank kills, blood spills, old thrills!
Berlin
April 25th
1945
Death of Il Duce
Gone is all that former glory
Relics of it ever glow
In the colors of the rainbow
Akaki Tsereteli
As paths of glory lead but to the grave,
On haunted men past deeds a heavy load,
Beside the beauty of the Como wave
Rough partisans blockade the convoy road;
Suspicions storm’d!
Amid the gen’ralry,
Luftwaffe uniform’d, dirty Mussolini!
After a brief & angry trial
Weeping Ceasar swiftly shot,
Then driven from that Alpine pile
To be strung up at a spot
Where hungry subjects could revile
His corpse as it did rot…
Piss’d on & spat at & hurl’d with abuse,
Full twenty years of torments letting loose.
She steps into Loreto square
Next to a cursing nun,
Her angry stare turn’d to a glare,
She aims a stranger’s gun
& shoots that bastard man five times, once for each murder’d son.
Milan
April 29th
1945
Death of Der Fuhrer
Then thy dead engine & thy broken wings
Drooped through the arc & passed in fire,
A wreath of smoke – a breathless exaltation
DC Scott
Determin’d not Il Duce’s fate to share,
He sets to his own life unrepentant
From power’s height unto a dream despair,
A dictator dictates his testament;
Herr Hitler hiss’d
(His customary mode),
“Global Jewry resist! Uphold the racial code!”
After simple ceremony
Two true lovers proved as one,
But one hour of matrimony
‘Til her husband clutch’d his gun
& stepp’d into eternity…
She, swallowing poison,
Plants tender kisses on his fingertips,
“My darling!” last words slip from dying lips.
Men paus’d awhile before the sight,
Dowsing them in petrol,
Coupl’d alight, firedrakes in flight,
O Viking funeral,
A captain of a sinking ship, a king lost in battle.
Berlin
Mayday
1945
Mumble Words 