Axis & Allies
(AA) Canto 18: Battlelines
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The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient & dangerous of human illusions
Robert Lynd
Stalemate in the West
My lord, do not go forth to a combat so giant!
Do not raise your arm where weapons clash,
in the festival of young men, the dance of Inanna!
The Lugale
The Phoney War is raging at its height,
Both sides conduct a fierce leaflet campaign,
Sometimes patrols skirmish into the night,
Sometimes a ship slips neath the Spanish Main;
What tensions rise
Each time Hitler aborts!
Unheterlan Allies content to man the forts.
Twisted steps are swiftly taken,
Thro’ Nazi racial doctrine,
A Pole told she is now German
As her Ahnenpass stamp’d clean,
Resisting pacification
Leads to but one mean scene –
Rotting husbands rocking at the gallows,
Bandsmen drowning bays of wailing widows.
Gallant little Belgium proclaims
Her arm’d neutrality,
Sidestepping games, chief of her aims,
Avoid hostility!
But selfishness breeds weakness says the court of history.
Europe
January 15th
1940
Boarding Party
Go thou to England, rest awhile thy brow
Upon her breathing bosom, cool & free
& she shall lay her arms around thee now
Basil Fry
Where running water drains a paradise
Of saw-tooth’d fjords, glacier-goug’d, deep time
In ev’ry crevice, despite the advice
Of neutral countries, a volitive crime
Plays out today
With revirescent haste,
Thro’ rains & icy spray two naval nations fac’d.
Altmark’s bows the Cossack barges –
On running its prey aground,
Tough Marines & tougher Sarges
Leap like elks to eager pound
Metal decks, all whom emerges
Were cut down where them found –
Quite the professional cutlass attack
Went hell for leather & snickety-snack.
Their haubergeons ripp’d up, a row
Of matrosen slain-sneer
As down below, voice loud & slow,
“Any Englishmen here?”
“Yes we’re all British!” “So are we!” uprioted wild cheer.
Jøssingfjord
February 7
1940
Finland’s Fall
Weapons, weapons, weapons
And poets on duty, pulling the trigger
Ready to set the last cigarettes on fire
Léo Ferré
As Russia floods the Reich with oil & grain,
The Reich returns full train-loads right on time;
Munitions, tanks & the modern warplane,
To help them pierce the stalwart Mannerheim;
One million men
Launch a grand offensive –
Tis now not if but when that bastard front must give.
Thick furs fire at fifty paces,
But for ev’ry man they slay,
Five more Ivan took fresh places,
Five fresh men to hold at bay,
Sheer exhaustion etch’d drain’d faces,
Working both night & day…
Desperate Sisu holding grimly on,
But in the end, the brave end, War’s are won.
Yes War! the ancyent arbiter
Of disputing nations,
Whose proud victor may cast censure,
Politic’s extensions,
For battlefield diplomacy drowns converse with it’s guns.
Helsinki
February
1940
Swing Youth
In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about
Taylor Mali
Not every German struts about like Geese,
Some still prefer to swing the jinx away,
That unencumber’d, evergreen release
Teenagers feel when real musicians play;
Eurythmical,
Each gramaphonic scratch
Comblendeth mystical new music without match.
Young Xaver Stemmler caught the drug,
Grew his hair an awfa’ long,
Goes wiggling thro’ the jitterbug
In good English sang along,
When puffing like a paddletug,
Settling himself among
The girls, he curls a cigarette, or two,
Sits back & swoons, impassion’d, at the view.
“In here there is no Nazi yoke,
In here feel liberty,”
He lit a smoke, he bit a toke,
He blew the white rings free,
Facing the floor, lush fraulines laughing with frivolity.
Berlin
March
1940
Lights of Freedom
Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked
Kahlil Gibran
Aghast of life, this living suicide
Of odorous companionship bleeds out,
“As tears by aching patience must be dried,”
The rabbis plead, “you’ll be releas’d, no doubt!”
Hatches the wish,
For one the dark hath ceas’d,
Pretending, “I’m Polish!” Spiegelman’s time releas’d.
On Parsha’s Trauma stepp’d he out
To world of dazzling brightness,
No more the angry clanging shout
Of Nazis in their spiteness,
While all bucolical about
Spring sprung in its spriteness
& now a train to take him homewards bound
An open’d door, a house alive with sound.
His son could not stop hugging him,
& his wife so happy,
Then losing vim her voice grew dim,
“Vladek, the factory,
Was seiz’d & taken off us!” “But at least, my love, we’re free!”
Sosonoweiz
April
1940
Conquest of Norway
Trains clattering coastwards out of sight
along the valley floor in this textbook
twilight provide all the metaphor you need
Steve Xerri
Their native rock gript, from the Skagerak
To the Arctic Circle, by German hands,
Their soldiers withering neath the attack,
Their King harras’d by bombers thro his lands;
Norwegian sires,
Hardiest of races,
Enslaved – Hitler desires all their coastal bases.
Millennial neutrality
Sever’d by Teutonic sword,
Sad King Haakon quits his contree,
Crosses oer the Romsdalsfiord,
At Tromso’s bomb’d-out harbour quay
Hustl’d quickly aboard…
Surrounded by London’s fail’d strategum,
Troops cold & damp who lost him a kingdom.
An eagle dis across the day
Watching destroyers lurch
Beyond the bay, subdued & grey,
The skies became a perch,
A lofty throne from which all Norway felt it’s keen gaze search.
Galdho Peak
May 3rd
1940
Lancashire’s Finest
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
Alun Lewis
On Belgium’s border barrack’d the East Lancs,
The one word whisper’d in the mess was, “when?”
Amidst the chassis of Matilda tanks,
Captain Andrews reviews his tawny men;
Such hardy bunch
From Pendle’s rugged vale,
When coming to the crunch he knew his lads wunt fail.
Picking their spades up after tea,
Some small subsidence to mend,
Tom Sumner swivels to Billy,
His baby-faced schoolboy friend,
“All this diggin’ is plain silly,
These lines we shan’t defend,
As soon as Gerry turns himself hostile
We’ll leave these bloody trenches for the Dyle!”
They dug awhile & watch’d the sun
Conclude ephemeral,
The digging done, jigging his gun,
Tommy foresaw battle,
“There’s summat funny goin’ on… t’night… I sense trouble.”
St Amand-les-Eux
May 9th
1940
Teutonica
The moon’s rays shiver in the branches.
Forest dark. Silence. Dug-outs.
How wonderful May nights are !
Georgii Suvorov
Racist nations face the decadent West!
Spermatic as the coming of the Spring,
When leafy woods are at their loveliest,
& bowers vibrate with the blossoming,
When golden streams
Sol sends set on the scene,
When gorgeous glinting beams rebound off each machine.
Hitler boards the Amerika,
Under stars he trundles west,
Stirring strains of his dear Wagner
Lull him to a good hours rest,
Whirrs time by… train reaches bunker,
His bomb-proof Felsennest…
Praying before purpuric bloodshed starts,
“O God of Battles steel my soldier’s hearts!”
Facing the tranquil occident,
Rommel reclines with wines,
Cool, calm, content; his regiment
Should thunder thro’ the lines,
Flicking thro’ Sun Tzu, Von Clauswic & Charles DeGaulle’s opines.
Germany
May 9th
1940
Edge of War
This age her whole loveliness maul’d
batter’d & barren from a six year’s bout
so trod & torn, grossness itself defiled
RP Blackmur
Herr Hitler glances nervous at his wrist,
He counted only two hours ’til sunrise,
Ushers in his meteorologist,
“I promise you a week of clear blue skies!”
O happy plan!
The gods smil’d on his plot,
He gives the weatherman a medal on the spot!
Syphilitic abhorrancy
Of imperial desires,
Fuell’d constant by fate’s buoyancy
Oer dreams of epic empires,
Guided by strange clairvoyancy
A single man inspires
World history; its res gestae, whose thought
As truth or falsehood, over now, fierce fought.
Stepping out to view the passage
Of all-auroral dawn,
Sky-blue blank page, a brand new age
Was born this coming morn –
Forever & eternally this day shall be his own.
Bad Münstereifel
May 10th
1940
(AA) Gl’Immortali II
What is a society without a heroic dimension
Jean Baudrillard
Prometheus
My voice is raised, the truth to tell,
And o’er his exiled urn will try
To pour a strain that shall not die
Alessandro Manzoni
Wide-eyed inside a nightmare’s aftershock,
The great God of War wakens in the rains,
Arms entermeddl’d, tied to craggy rock,
In craven rage instraining at the chains;
“Why hold me here?”
Shouts echo cross the seas,
No rescuers appear, now dropping to his knees,
He fills the cosmos with despair,
From dawn ’til the drop of night,
At last the Dark Lord made aware
Of the War God’s awful plight,
So sends three harpies thro’ the air,
Craw-throated feral flight,
From whose sharp claws raindrops a golden key,
What mass of slime uprises from the sea?
That key grabb’d by a tentacle,
& Lord Mars was releas’d,
Stands grateful, branding his skull
With numbers of the beast,
Pois’d ready for the battle, Hell’s hegemony increas’d.
Oceania
Trials of Strength
Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle
Aaron Hill
Mars track’d deep wolf prints North & West & South,
& found Fenir a-feasting in the East,
Plunged his brave gauntlet thro the drooling mouth,
To lose a hand but tame this famous beast;
Mounting its back
They gallop to Asgard,
Leading a snarling pack of blood-hounds battle-scarr’d.
As all Valhalla dined & drank
On the fare of Saehrimnir
Tyr strutted in & broke a shank
From the loins of Andhrimnir,
“Good brethren pleased I am to thank
You all for being here,
Lord Odin I have sworn to challenge Thor
& win thy favours as goes Aesir law.”
He dons the magical gauntlet
That Mars enfused with power,
Forearms firm set, grunts, groans & sweat,
The contest lasts an hour,
A table smash! the Aesir cheer, how tall did Mars tower!
Valhalla
Conversazione
Soft peace she brings; wherever she arrives
She builds our quiet as she forms our lives ;
Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even
Matthew Prior
The goddess Karma flew to Fairyland,
Convers’d with Mab, Queen of the Pixie Glen,
By daffadowndillies them lovely fann’d,
Far from the prying eyes of Gods & Men;
Sipping their brews,
Teas of rare wildflowers,
They share their recent news, minutes turn to hours….
A wood nymph with translucent wings
Serves the best blueberry cakes,
Sings Mab, “These new Gods & their Kings
Seldom learn from late mistakes,
& discontent with what Fate brings,
Each lusts more while he takes –
In that I trust not Satanus, nor Mars,
Lords of land’s cancers & the sea’s catarrhs.
In these futurities foreseen
Your days must grow busy?”
“Not quite, my queen, I choose one scene
So very carefully –
Two families shall represent all of humanity.”
Fairyland
The Hastening
Let all the gods hear and bend for your yoke
Let sovereigns hear and fall prostrate before you
Let countries hear and bring you their tribute
The Seven to Erra
Upon Bifrost, lush bridge of rainbow light,
Which Asgard joins with Midgard’s mortal realm,
Alerted by black Valkyries in flight,
The handsome Heimdall don his golden helm
The Aesir come
Leading an army grand
Marching to the thunder drum, the scope of Heaven spann’d.
Odin counsels upcoming war
From stallion-steed Sleipnir,
To son & heir, lieutenant thor,
Who swings the hammer Mjolnir,
Points at Europa’s forest core
With sharpest spear, Gungnir,
“Beneath the morning progress of Sol’s lamp
There Zorya & her Amazons make camp.”
They waited ‘til the sun had swept
Far yon the scepter’d noon,
Sly & adept Thor’s heroes crept
‘Tween treetops, rock & dune,
To sight Tuchola’s garrison beneath a swollen moon
Lechia
Schism of Heaven
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon
Dylan Thomas
Before there passes time, some far off time,
When every palm should bare the Devil’s mark
& Mammon, like a Jabba in the slime,
Shall gorge all human labour, like a shark,
‘Til gutted full,
All monies must explode,
& divine lights dim dull as all accounts zeroed!
Before, totalitarian,
Humanity sells its soul,
Aviating erebian
Hordes of Hades’ angels squall,
T’where, singing Stygian paean
The First Prince of their Fall
Howls “Anti-hosanna!” thro’ conching horn,
Messiah urging never to be born.
They swept a lifeless parallax,
Pass Pluto, & all that,
Yon mofette cracks, long torture racks,
‘Til Hell spread icy flat,
Where on his master-throne, in jubilation, Satan sat.
Cocytus
Aesir Roar
Peace on this planet
Or guns glowing hot,
We lay there together
Jericho Brown
Thor summons a storm warflame-bolted,
At the onset of glorious onslaught,
Tuchola’s awfully assaulted,
It’s Amazons fall dead inside the fort;
One survivor
The Valkyries restrain,
The elderly Zorya, chain’d naked in the rain.
For destinies are as the sun
Which rises at the dawning,
Unstoppable, once we’ve begun
Our progress through life’s morning:
When only half-the-day is done,
Sudden, without warning,
We find our brightest face begin to fade
The death-mask of the midnight masquerade.
Odin arriv’d with victory
Fill’d toasts with hydromel,
All thrill’d to see his soldiery
With hero killers swell,
Then turn’d his gaze towards the east, where tromp’d the hordes of Hell.
Lechia
Heart of Hades
To my true king I offered free from stain
Courage & faith ; vain faith & courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away
Lord Macaulay
Satanus, at Jove’s goodness, sneers disgust,
Prepares angels once more to rebel,
To cast them up the planet’s fissur’d crust
Where Mosca banish’d, once, to depthsy Hell;
Like Legionnaires
They gather, band, & form,
Surmounting cirques of stairs, the Devil’s daemon-swarm
As big fleas attract little fleas,
Sat on their backs to bite ’em,
& fleas even smaller than these
Find them & then alight ’em,
So, in ever-dwindling degrees,
On ad infinitum,
Evil pulses thro’ gods, thro’ priests, thro’ men,
Thro’ animals & back to fleas again.
More fallen angels take to air
With creak & scrape & hiss,
Ascend from where their kindred share
The cinder-swept abyss,
Ascending high & everwards for Heaven’s realms of bliss
Hell
Heroic Counsel
I find a strange knowledge of wind,
an open door in the mountain
pass where everything intersects
Lorna Dee Cervantes
High upon the snow-clad slopes of Snowdon
Britannia brandishes her family,
Empacing by her faithful Gwydion,
Awaiting Neptune’s first emissary;
Green Merman comes,
Darp’d in coral sharkskin,
The sounds of horns & drums… the meeting may begin.
Phoebus the drouthy scene illumes
As serious parlance cooks,
Zephyrs ruffle Ra’s ostrich plumes,
Her Majesty nears the crux,
“I sense the Harbinger of Dooms,
Rough cancer fills the flux,
The testing time forespaken draweth nigh!”
“Come the day,” shouts St£rling, “who’ll fight, who’ll fly.”
The loyal company, & true,
Cries ready for the War,
Violet Vishnu skims skiey blue,
Ra sails for dusky shore
Neptune accommodates Dagon, the Lion roars it roar!
Britain
Hell’s Legions
Lust for gold in the dreadful couch
Red as with blood are the heavens in flames
The roof-tops collapsed, a sight to appall
Dietrich Eckart
The long-horn’d one climbs to the Sapric Crag,
Roars out cross the Valley of the Dead,
Where groan dark woods, where drags his angry flag
Thro’ jagged trees that under him did spread;
Plague host appears,
A shamblegang that sways
& stumbles under spears, burn grass to smoky greys.
Em’rald-navell’d Asmodeus
Battle’s black protagonist
Let’s three hook-tooth’d & bulbous crows
Blood suckle his royal wrist,
Then cast them high, all Heaven shows
A shudder as he hiss’d,
“Sky, thou herest me! Sky, thou feareth me!
Sky, when seest me, shudder before me!
His army wades the River Styx,
Fording its torrid flow,
Picks scythe-topp’d sticks do tip & mix
Advancing row-on-row,
As replicants incarnate sluggish forwards scratch on slow.
Hell’s Fifth Circle
(AA) Canto 19: Invasion
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Oh, more or less than man – in high or low,
Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs necks thy footstool, now
An empire couldst thy crush, command, rebuild
Lord Byron
Pawn Moves
Under the white flag as he advanced
They say he stood bravely, never winced
As the first bullet pierced his lungs
Ruthven Todd
Aft shouts of war the shafts begin to fly,
No longer men must idle day-long days,
The sun was barely half-an-hour high
& all the Lowland Borders were ablaze;
Wilhemina
Rushes across the sea,
The crooked Swastika denuding majesty.
Rules re-writ for modern warfare;
First possess total surprise,
Then wholly dominate the air;
Thro’ th’Ardennes a phalanx flies,
Cheval-de-frise embatter’d bare
Beneath the Stuka skies,
‘Rev–Rev–Rev,’ three lines of polish’d Panzer,
Wait as if with Nelson off Trafalgar.
King Leopold laments the end
Of proud neutrality,
Forced to defend, his German ‘friend’
Is ravaging freely –
Men learn from history they’ve nothing learn’d from history.
Brussels
May 10th
1940
The Top Job
I was among you; I was sad, unearthly.
My words resounded everyplace.
While all of you just mocked me
Andre Bely
Chamberlain winces under back bench brays,
His government attack’d on every side,
Embarras’d, all, by Norwegian affrays,
The time has come to win back England’s pride;
As angers grow
Disillusionment grew,
“In the name of God, go! Let us have done with you!”
At the regal heart of kingdom,
Prime Minister retires, backs
His choice successor premium,
Elderly Lord Halifax,
Then news comes in from Belgium
of Germany’s attacks,
“But it must be Winston,” his Lordship splurts,
“The only one who’ll hit them where it hurts!”
To Churchill royal summons fly,
Soon to his majesty;
“Do you know why I’ve summon’d thy
Sel?” “No, ’tis beyond me…”
A laught, “Please form my government,” a poignant, “Certainly.”
Buckingham Palace
May 10th
1940
Lightning War
War! The winds are sighing it,
The hill birds are crying it
To the valley’s uttermost bounds
WH Ogilvie
Deep amidst the forested Sedan Gap
Rommel’s panzers re-fuelling for free,
From some deserted garage steals a map
To guide them all thro’ champaign to the sea;
The tanks oil full
No time to hesitate,
Breakneck into battle, for waiting games vexate.
As pontoons creak beneath the tracks,
Blitzkreig rolls on guns blazing,
France buckling under wide attacks,
Morale ever descending,
At last ! the Gallic backbone cracks
Sedan’s surrendering –
Rommel photographs a ghostly fortress,
Whose scenes of slaughter sanities emboss.
Down daggletail, rag-taggling roads
Fox thrusts his lethal lance,
the air explodes as carts & loads
Crush’d by ceaseless advance,
Once more Prussian milit’rism galls Gallic arrogance.
France
May 14th
1940
Arras
all dying isn’t sad
there is the dying that precedes the living
and that’s the secret kind
Ketty Nivyabandi
Defeat seems such a certain circumstance,
The Allies losing battleplans & pride,
The British cut off from the rest of France,
A state of siege upsetting ev’ry side;
At Charleville,
His boots muddy once more,
Hitler calls a council to clarify his war.
The orders whipp’d along the ranks
To wait their coming orders
Before Gravelines, refresh the tanks,
Secure the army’s borders;
What anger rode the riverbanks,
Thro’ the Wehrmacht’s warders,
Pois’d on the brink of total victory
His acts & dreams seem contradictory.
But little did those soldiers ken
The reason why they’d froze,
For Hitler, then, the Englishmen
Aryan juxtapose,
& all they needed was a Bismarkian bloody nose.
Charleville-Mézières
May 24th
1940
Britain Stirs
Now over the map that took ten million years
Of rain and sun to crust like boiler-slag,
The lines of fighting men progress like caterpillars
Louis Macneice
German Arms form an arm-like corridor,
Fist punching up thro’ Flanders to the coast,
Not wheel’d to Paris, as lost Bismarck’s War,
Tho’ given up is Galleini’s ghost;
Spirit thought fled
Seizes the Cinque ports,
The ghoul-songs of the dead blew thro’ abandon’d forts.
Adm’ral Ramsey climb’d Henry’s keep,
With a Nelsonian stance,
Gazes across the hoary deep
To the distant dark of France,
Where brave embattl’d Britons heap
Slim chips upon one chance…
Slipping back to Blighty via Dunkerque…
“It’s crazy, but I’ve got to make it work!”
For once the British do not reel
Before the German gale,
From Grand Fort Phillipe, down to Lille,
Let fresh defence prevail,
From now each deep, bloodletted inch be fought for tooth & nail.
France
May 27th
1940
Slaughterhouse
A deadly bullet gliding through my side
Lies heavy on my heart. I cannot live.
I feel my liver pierc’d & all my veins
Christopher Marlowe
Ninety-nine of the Norfolks surrounded,
Sick of France, the French & the Luftwaffe,
Endurance & ammo nigh exhausted,
Bullet-bitten… hon’rable surrender…
Not welcome here,
With fresh, scourging duress
Fensmen filling of fear, the infamous S.S.,
Disgusted at how well they fought,
Rifle home with hammer-butts,
Upsprunging crude kangaroo court,
With falsest dum-dum bullets,
Finding the long, the tall, the short,
Guilty; by bayonet
Them march’d off into line, promis’d no harm,
With hands-on-heads they file by Duries Farm.
Twin barrels of two maxim guns
Shoot murd’rous swathes of lead,
Hot scarlet runs, England’s brave sons
Now sweet & fitting dead,
Or groyners stick’d like old, sick pigs, or pistol’d thro’ the head.
La Paradis
May 27th
1940
Fall of Belgium
Disconsolate I go,
The summer looks as cold to me
As winter’s frost & snow
John Clare
With the line along Lys lying broken,
Leopold calls General Derousseaux,
“Best seek a ceasefire for beleagured men,”
Then pell-mell breaks for the Anvaing Chateaux;
All hope is gone
As a gladsome Fuhrer,
Offers only unconditional surrender.
As Belgium’s capitulation
Ends the bloody killing spree,
Twenty miles of unmann’d’ station,
Between Wipers & the sea,
Opens up to devastation
& Hitler’s infantry,
Coming as a most terrible surprise
To these medieval-minded Allies.
Of his stubborn neutrality
The King now counts the cost,
But dares not flee while his country
To providence is toss’d,
“I have decided to remain, the Westeren cause is lost.”
Wynendale Chateaux
May 28th
1940
Monty
That wretched wire before the village line
Rattles like rusty brambles or dead bine,
& there the daylight oozes into dun
Edmund Blunden
All hope was burn’d by Belgium’s bare defeat,
The onus falls on one to save the day,
Retrieving lines of severing retreat,
Night falls, & he ingages at Roublaix:
Twenty-five miles
Travers’d thro’ anxious night,
Now safe behind earth-piles awaiting dawn’s own light.
The Wehrmacht push, & how they push,
Impassionate with killing,
Against a rock that rides the rush,
Oblivious to shelling,
Monty inspires his men to crush
All that bloody schnelling –
The gifts of victory soon his to reap,
Those very precious twenty winks of sleep.
In one short hour the courier
Predicts a coming rout,
“Do not bother me…” “But sir!”
His patience snaps in shout,
Yells, “Tell that blasted brigadier to turf those rascals out.”
Louvain
May 29th
1940
Dunkerque
The old dead Captains fought their ships,
& the great dead admirals led the line.
It was England’s night, it was England’s sea.
Robert Nathan
Panic grips the fabl’d British army,
Her soldiers splinter’d into shatter’d shards,
Her wounded bench’d to face the enemy,
Her bodies rotting, her ordnance scrap-yards;
But for one lot,
Led by Ervine Andrews,
Whose pure Parthian shot let loose tho’ they must lose.
In soft barnthatch did Tommy ‘ide,
Wi’ captain & five more men,
Beneath them fifteen Germans died
(& they’d do ‘em all again),
Two poor survivors fled outside
Raw-scalp’d by Billy’s bren;
“Let’s scarper boys!” young lads fleshly blooded
Wade thro’ Flanders fieldscapes freshly flooded.
By dune collars up piles the kit,
“Look lads, just like Lytham!”
A Messerschmitt swoops down, to spit
Death’s teeth, O hangman’s drum,
Then inland hangs… they brush off sand, “Yer don’t get them on prom!”
Malo-les-Bains
May 30th
1940
(AA) Canto 20: Evacuations
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I hate England by instinct & tradition. I hate her in my own name & in the name of my ancestors. The day may come when the nations of Continental Europe will unite to overthrow the tyrant with his reputation of invincibility. Perhaps the day is near
Henri Baraud
Monty Muses
No half men these
No black coats ink stained
But fighters war grimed
Geoff Pearse
As angels of death from Nilfheim descend,
The satanic strength of the Schutzstaffels
Oerwhelms those motley mobs who play pretend
At war – Bernard Montgomery dwells
Upon his own
Battle philosophy
& how ’twas hammer’d home by Britain’s enemy.
As Allied tail-end went to bat
Upon a sticky wicket
Said Monty, ‘that’s the end of that,
War’s now a game of cricket,
But serious, the starving rat
Slinking in a thicket,
Waiting weak creatures, innocent, to pass,
Then pounc’d on, ripp’d apart to formless mass!
As forces floop in ghostly rout,
Small matter of revenge
Made Monty pout; “Deer swift, bull stout,
Solid as Stonehenge
Fuse must we Tudor armies for to face this rude challenge.”
Dover
May 31st
1940
Air Support
At Dunkirk I
Rolled in the shallows, and the living trod
Across me for a bridge
Sidney Keyes
As chaplain preaches calm on bended knee,
His prayers tumbling out from parching lips;
Men-laden craft creep slowly out to sea,
In hopeful silence bobb’d those lidded ships;
Firm officers
Check chaos with their guns,
“Form a queue you blighters, I’ll shoot each git that runs!”
Shark’s Head in swinking triumph rolls,
Its jubilant pilot gloats
At two rickety, wooden moles,
Those pathetic little boats,
Those cold, exhausted, starving souls,
Grasping for filth that floats;
“How long until Der Fuhrer will prevail?”
He spies a goofy bird upon his tail…
…The labours late-night of boffins
This new ‘Spitfire’ deploys,
Messerschmitt spins… wings dorsal fins…
Pack’d beaches burst in noise;
“‘’Bout bleedin’ time!” screams Tommy, “three cheers for the Brylcreem Boys!”
Malo-les-bains
May 31st
1940
Death of a Frenchman
Sacred friendship! heav’nly fire!
Unmix’d with gross impure desire;
In thee we’ll live, in thee we’ll die
Robert Fergusson
Only Lille deserves the honour of France,
Endures a losing battle to the end,
La Garde in front of La Belle Alliance
Would have been glad to frame these soldats ‘friend’;
Full fierce they fought
Like rigid rocks of Rome,
& ev’ry second bought some son sends safely home.
After many an adventure
Two poilus find safety’s grace,
Howling bagpipes call to muster
Bearded dregs of English race,
Out of copious wine cellar,
Fell some drunken disgrace;
Together they all stagger thro’ the night,
The last few boats for Dover to alight.
Boarding the pack’d Saint Helier
Henri slips, then falls &
Screams out, “Pierre!” soon oil-slick hair
& lone, ring-finger’d hand
Are gone, leaving no trace but shallow footsteps in the sand.
Dunkerque
June 2nd
1940
Echoes of Defeat
Alas! where there were woods,
I see flag-poles standing.
Men have swept nature’s nest away
Bewketu Seyoum
One last, dissarrang’d dragnet of soldiers,
Stretches to breaking points both boat & crew,
Alas, when rear guards reach empty beaches,
Crass shrieks of British perfidy ensue;
They’d fought to save
Those footsteps in the sand,
Them gone across the wave, gone to the promis’d land.
“…the odious apparatus
Of the Nazi privateers
We shall fight on fields & beaches,
Offer I: blood, sweat & tears,
If the empire of the English
Should last a thousand years,
Then let men say this was her finest hour!”
Churchill’s balsam plants Pendragon power.
The floating corpse of poor LeGrand
Wash’d up close by Calais,
Above, huge band of gen’rals stand,
Bedeck’d in sylvan grey,
Viewing those cliffs… pecking the waves, an eagle surfing spray.
France
June 4th
1940
Enter Italia
Be with us through the lingering night,
Protect us by thy holy might,
Let no vain dreams our sleep disturb
Magnus Felix Ennodius
Upon the hour Il Duce will decide
Around the gaunt & lonely ruins rose
This modern Rome, whose mind personified
With dark & fierce face greets the applause;
For war? For peace?
He, only, owns the choice –
The cheers & clapping cease, as with a husky voice,
“France wallows in decadence,
While the British do the same,
But youthful rejuvenessence
Tho’ Italy flows, whose fame
& ancyent, lofty permanence
The sea could never claim;
Run to your weapons, th’Ausonian shore
Be watchful of, for we are now at war!
Expecting loud ‘bravissimo!’,
Cough-silence reign’d instead,
Round & below the palazzo
Murderous murmurs spread,
“Whatever happens now {a whisper}, fascism is dead.”
Rome
June 10th
1940
France’s Ignominy
He sat down in his chair
after watching
thirty thousand peasants die
Mercedes Durand
How they fought on the field of Alesia!
How they conquer’d crowns with Napoleon!
How they endured the seige of the Kaiser!
How they bled at the bloodbath of Verdun!
Thro’ Paris flares
Peaceful fait acomplit,
Ominouscent declares theirs was open city.
As ageing Petain chair’d the meet,
His cabinet divided,
“Gentlemen! We must accede defeat,
To battle on misguided!”
“To Africa let us retreat,
Fight like corner’d tigers!”
“Oui! If we go we shall retain our pride,”
“Non! Prison camps will cloak the countryside!”
“What of our comrades, les Angliches?”
“They offer union;
To fight, they wish, right to finish…”
“Tis naught but corpse fusion,”
Says Petain, “Soon her neck shall be wringing like a chicken.”
Bordeaux
June 17th
1940
Seasider
‘Tis vain to say – her worst of grief is only
The common lot, which all the world have known;
For her ’tis more, because her heart is lonely
Hartley Coleridge
Sue Johnstone drifts to London Bridge Station,
Jumps on a train escaping to the sea,
Leaves London’s diamond civilisation,
Inspiraling hornet activity;
Infinite air
Of this midsummer’s day,
Wind ruffles thro’ wash’d hair, so good to get away.
East Croydon first, then Three Bridges,
Plouhshar’d scenery serene,
Rusted bangers building hedges,
Signposts nowhere to be seen,
At Brighton hops she on a bus,
Winding to Rottingdean,
To stretch tired limbs on pebbledashing sand,
“I’m sorry, lav, civilians are bann’d!
We’ll mine the beach this week,” he said,”
Sue stood up, brush’d down skirt,
Her pretty head was full of dread
Building to full alert,
Temper’d by thoughts her little ones were safe from hate & hurt.
Sussex
June 21st
1940
Peace in our Time
They chose silence
feigned blindness
pleaded ignorance
Cecil Rajendra
On the date Napoleon saw JUSTICE
Decree to the defeated her disgrace,
Petain begs Hitler for an armistice,
His rabbit trapp’d inside a paper chase;
Momentous ask,
As retribution piques,
That little corp’rals task accomplish’d in two weeks.
Midsommer graces stately trees
Girdling a verdant clearing,
From a polish’d black mercedes
Der Fuhrer leaps out jeering,
At this place, at his enemies,
Uncouth contempt searing –
He blows into the carriage where Berlin
Let Paris & her allied wretches win.
The ghosts of Gallic millions
Cried, ‘what did we die for,’
Civilians, Dominions,
A universal roar,
Extinguish’d by the wishes of Evil’s conquistador.
Forest de Compeigne
June 22nd
1940
Conqueror!
I am, with luck, the very future
Of this afflicted people who
Is shown the path and how to tread it
Grigore Vieru
Clear as crystal in his reminiscence,
The world-historical adventurer
Tours poppy fields; here was youth’s full vibrance
Expended as lowly despatch runner;
“How good & true
Our sacrifice now seems!”
He sighs, while driven thro’ the city of his dreams.
Embedded in his consciousness
Were the palaces & rues,
The operatic spaciousness
Ev’ry artist soul imbues,
Electrical vivaciousness,
As if prolific muse;
Swift papparazi following his lead
Yon Arc & Tower to the Invalides.
.
He gazed thro’ the sarcophagus
Into his hero’s core;
Soft silences, stood glorious
On Alexander’s shore…
“This city truly wond’rous, let us make fair Berlin more!”
Paris
June 23rd
1940
(AA) Canto 21: Evolutions
**************************************
Another year!—another deadly blow!
Another mighty Empire overthrown!
And We are left, or shall be left, alone;
The last that dare to struggle with the Foe.
‘Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low
William Wordsworth
Art Lovers
Who will save my soul from a crash?
Only snakes could let their skin be fallen,
People lose the soul — not the flesh
Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev
From pilot on the Galilean Lake
To arch-apostle preaching ‘God’ abroad,
Well, Paris, where he’s clearly on the take,
Plundering artwork load-by-priceless-load;
Whilst at the Ritz
Sitting in finest rooms,
No Christian whose bits brick’d up the catacombs,
But conqueror, whose master’s reign
Moves ready to rule us all,
The Louvre fills a special train,
Destination Carinhall,
Some tinpot temple to obtain,
Apollo in his thrall,
When culture, this new epoch for mankind,
Destin’d to be shap’d by the German mind.
The nights went whores-in-tights, & drugs,
The days spent feasting long,
On Afghan rugs with laughing glugs
Of cognac, when in song
He’d dance beside the gramophone in toga, bling & thong.
Paris
June 26th
1940
Sonderfahndungliste
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Martin Niemöller
Beyond braggart brainage & bland oestro
The Nazi was a nasty phantasist,
So Schellenberg, the SD’s best maestro,
Order’d to author a ‘Special Search List,’
Thousands of names
Of Britons to arrest
To wipe away their names, cleanse Britain for a nest.
On this most murd’rous of appels,
To face their final curtain,
Was Aldous Huxley, HG Wells,
Virginia Woolf for certain,
With Noel Coward’s tricksy spell
& Dowding, from Merton,
Also to face the Einsatzgruppen squeeze –
Boy Scouts, Masonic lodges, clubs like these.
He’d sav’d the first name, wrote it last
Then underlin’d three times;
Derang’d, disastrous, fiend who’d cast
Us all in war’s deep slimes,
Yes, Winston Churchill, hang-draw-quarter him for all his crimes.
Berlin
July
1940
Protecting Hegemony
Of Neptune’s empire let us sing,
At whose command the waves obey;
To whom the rivers tribute pay
Thomas Campion
No highly-strung ally left to pamper,
Saint George’s subjects, huddl’d at the fire,
Petering on nearly empty hamper,
Most thankful for the bonus of empire;
Whose trump card held,
An oceans’ mastery,
Since Alfred’s Danish geld the key to victory.
Brave sailors pack’d in ev’ry bunk,
Off floats a fresh flotilla,
The French marine has grown defunct
Yon stoutly stone Gibraltar,
“Please, sink thy ships or they’ll be sunk,”
Sweeps oer North Africa,
& everywhere that fleet was compliant,
But for one dock… HMS Valiant
Flings flaming shells on former friends,
The fire was return’d,
The shelling blends, the shelling ends,
The French ships sunk or burn’d,
A lesson of necessity the adm’ralty’s long learn’d.
Oran
July 3rd
1940
Lend Lease
And he began to chide the titan sun :
‘Fool that thou art ! No wonder men deride thee
To lie all night with dawn, as thou hast done
Geoffrey Chaucer
Roosevelt stirs cautiously to action;
Betied by bonds of culture, tongue & blood,
Firmfeet steeping forth from isolation,
Helping that vital fight for right & good;
Circumvent
Rules of leagues & lawyers,
Manifests heaven-sent rifles & destroyers.
Fifty ships they’ve saved from scrapping
Gain bases from old Britain
To chain a Carribean string
Of forces American,
If ever Fascist foes fling
Armies over ocean,
Their fleets would be destroy’d before the shore –
The fright’ning foresights of a future war.
As ship-by-ship that steaming team,
Up Solent soon appear,
These angels seem that safely stream
Thro’ docks of joyous cheer,
With sailors buzzing to survive to buy a pint of beer.
Southampton
July 12th
1940
Fallen Giants
No longer hosts encount’ring hosts
Shall crowds of slain deplore
They hang the trumpet in the hall
Michael Bruce
Guilty men of France thy names are legion
Whose third eleven kind of fellows deal
Conspiratorial – race & region,
Pride imprison’d in a supra-bastille;
Things could have gone
The other way for sure,
When De Gaulle will’d “fight on!” but Petain’s will de jure.
The Lion – Scotland, England, Wales -?
Hitler’s Boa Constrictor?
The choice was made, what tipp’d the scales
Was the age-old vendetta;
Quebec & Crecy’s tragic tayles,
Agincourt, Trafalgar –
What can we do when reason’s in a cloud
Of bitterness, but pander to a crowd,
Disunity, inertia, sent
To the slippiest slope
The reticent, the hesitant,
Who sens’d the only hope
For national redemption was be slaves then break the rope.
France
July 14th
1940
Vital Days
I dare not look into his eyes anymore,
His eyes are blazing with the five poisons
And it can easily control and capture souls
Tsering Woeser
Swastikas hanging from the Brandenburg,
Hitler skulks back to the Reichschancell’ry,
Aft Belgium, Holland, France & Luxemburg,
One more army, determin’d utterly;
A giant map
Frames the situation,
One dew-bejewel’d gap protects that damn’d nation.
“A fleet of mine layers shall build
A bristling ballustradus,
The legions then may land unkill’d
From Ramsgate to Lyme Regis,
Soon British fields for Berlin till’d,
But first remember this,
That only one pre-requisite is there,
We must control the all-important air.”
From the glades of well-won battle
Twelve Knights made Field-Marshal,
Full-favour’d sons gifted batons –
Goering’s lust not yet full,
His baton must be kingsize… with ivory enamel.
Berlin
July 19th
1940
Dunkirk Spirit
This name shall be the symbol for the soul,
A new Promethean triumph in defeat,
And find its place in the historic scroll
EJ Pratt
Nothing to come seems unrealistic,
Morale stabs an amorphous entity,
Horsham deem’d ‘smug,’ Oxford ‘optimistic,’
Godalming ‘defeatist,’ Ipswich ‘happy;’
The battle-front
Drifts into British streets,
Prepar’d to bear the brunt of all that Berlin metes.
This is no day to save the stags,
Conscientious objector
Branded, “a rat-thing wrapp’d in rags,”
Then worse, “a bloody traitor,”
Sniff housewives sat beneath the flags,
Waiting for Herr Hitler,
Sipping weak tea, suggesting, “Bloody Huns
Are parachuting in disguis’d as nuns!”
A motivating spirit charm
Envelops Britain’s mood,
From storm comes calm, when safe from harm
World Peace shall be renew’d,
‘Til then they’d have to buckle down like neighbours in a feud.
Great Britain
July 24th
1940
Factory Floor
Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory
Elizabeth Bishop
Charlie took Patrick up Healeywood pen,
To do their bit & dig for victory,
Water’d the veg & fed each clucking hen,
“Looks like we’re ‘avin’ scambled eggs fer tea!”
The town below
Grim-chok’d in chimney haze,
“It’s busy lad, y’know, just like in th’olden days.”
Rose skivvies in the weaving sheds
On shirts fit for a soldier,
On blankets for the pilots’ beds,
On soft hats for the sailor,
On berets for the captain’s heads,
A crude kind of tailor
Hard-toiling, as the lasses goes to work,
To turn around big losses down Dunkerque.
The ‘home-go’ blows, she rush’d outside,
In charcoal black-out night,
The street-lamps died, her only guide
A dicky-shine-a-light,
Lit haggard flags until her ragged door warm’d into sight.
Burnley
July 28th
1940
Censorship
All beautiful things draw near & come to me.
I dream upon a woman’s glorious breasts,
And watch the dew-drop & am glad with the birds
Sri Aurobindo
“Brother, come out & play, before you leave
For battle!” prattling Xaver collars Khan;
Of course he went, “What glory we’ll achieve,”
Sports Khan as whizz’d they up the autobahn,
Reaching great port
Beside the Western Pond,
Where sailors records brought from Britain & beyond.
With jackets flash & poise perfect
Felt they very fine indeed,
What music moved thro’ these select
Young socialites… a stampede
Of jackboots… “Our youth must reject
This filth – heroic deed –
At the front this Nigger-Jew jazz transcends –
When leave you Moringen go tell your friends.”
Khan Stemmler kept his cool, his calm,
Claiming them just passing,
Well did he charm, when safe from harm,
Happiness amassing,
They ran, giggling ‘neath streetlights, in friendship unsurpassing.
Hamburg
July 31st
1940
(AA) Canto 22: Battle of Britain
**************************************
In order to win the war Hitler must destroy Great Britain. He may carry havoc into the Balkan States; he may tear great provinces out of Russia; he may march to the Caspian; he may march to the gates of India. All this will avail him nothing., It may spread his curse more widely throughout Europe & Asia, but it will not avert his doom
Winston Churchill
Home Guard
We got a tank-trap too, y’know,
though I cain’t tell ‘e where t’ go
T’zee arr zecret, long an’ wooden
Beau Parke
The Battle for France is truly over,
The Battle of Britain has now begun,
The Royal Air Force versus Luftwaffe,
Her nine hundred outnumber’d three to one;
Vague Sky-lines drawn,
Cautious, star-cross’d fencers,
A first few flights are flown, nose-probing weaknesses.
Sarge hands out two rounds for practice,
“That’s all the top brass could spare;
Lads, aim yer rifles straight at this
Scrawny scarecrow with straw hair…”
As man-to-man his misfits miss,
“Ya bleedin shower, there
Won’t be a second chance wi’ them Germans!”
This time that scarecrow cut into ribbons.
As Sarge shouts, “March!” off they all sail
Into the nearest pub,
Pints of real ale, a Great War tayle,
Plus Mrs Braithwaite’s grub,
Not looking like Britain’s front line, more like a rambling club.
Scarborough
August 1st
1940
Alderangriffe
The mountain trembles to the echoing sound
Of falling rocks, that from her sides rebound.
Each day all respite, all repose denied
Nizami Ganjavi
Black Bentley slinks thro’ Royal Tunbridge Wells,
Crunching begravell’d roads to Calverly,
At Four A.M, punctual as hotels,
Into dark morning’s ill-lit mystery
Out steps Dowding,
Man at the Air Force helm,
Appointment by the King, ‘Defender of the Realm.’
‘Sir,’ was chauffer’d to the centre
Of his Operations room,
“Morning girls, what news the weather?”
“Clear from Deal to Ilfracoombe!”
Cathode BLIPS were growing louder
Bulbs scarletting the gloom,
Models traverse imaginary air,
The stick-work of a master croupier.
“…forty… sixty… eighty… & more
Bandits fast approaching
The Southern shore…” with clammy claw
Pluck’d thistle struck Dowding,
“Send five squadrons to intercept,” his ties unloosening.
Biggin Hill
August 13th
1940
Royal Air Force
I had one faithful comrade
‘Ere we heard the trumpet’s call,
And we pledged our hearts forever
Johann Ludwig Uhland
Crackling speakers announce men to their fate,
The summonstir to scramble & to fly!
“Queen to Bishop seven… that’s check & mate!”
Squeals Ginger up to Squadron-Leader Bligh,
From “Tally ho!”
To cruising thro’ blue skies,
With bold “Bandits below!” they swoop to scoop a prize.
“…in the field of human conflict
Have so many owed so much
To so few!” O how hearts were prick’d
By Churchill’s Tyrtaean touch,
“You know, Nigel, we shan’t be lick’d!”
Both of their spirits such
They crave the day, & that day’s victory,
As if they wait for Spain off Tilbury.
Bligh conducts a daisy-cutter,
Keen to renew the fray,
No time to dine, a swift woodbine,
“A wizard show today!”
The ground crew shout, “She’s ready Nige!” to cockpit, “Chocks away!”
RAF Kenley
August 15th
1940
Spycraft
Mighty the Son who caused our wound –
Him our pursuit can never reach
even were we to raise a host
Mor MacFayden
Beneath the radar screen lone dornier
Ploughs thro’ clouds… from it, leaping overboard,
Danish agents of the Nazi Abwehr
Drift across starlight… on yanking rip-cord;
“What beautiful,”
They thought, “English contree,”
They land… an ankle’s break… “Go, go on without me!”
Hans Schmidt, National Socialist,
Alfred’s fabl’d vales,
Taking photos like a tourist,
Til a shady guy from Wales
Subfluvials a secret list
Of safehouses… avails
Him to… “remain cautious.. avoid the ports,“
Firm handshake & a wad of five pound notes.
By spire & streets, & all around
SNAP-SNAP went camera,
When gone to ground the secret sound
Of his small transmitter,
Hamburg informs of troop manoeuvres thro’ the area.
Salisbury
August 20th
1940
Bombing the Reich
From among us we have sent out
Into the enervating dusk
One little whining beast
Mina Loy
They watch’d the wonder of the Milky Way,
Where Phaeton’s crashing chariot did scorch,
A splash of stars awash with Hera’s spray,
Like glitter in the trail of Luna’s torch;
As mondenschein
Silvers the cloudy seas,
Wings steel’d & aquiline float on propeller breeze.
Chic Xaver basks in revelrie,
Infesting the late night bars,
Vesta’s disturb’d tranquility
As whine-sirens sound for Mars,
Flak throws up flash’d hostility
Where searchlights sweep the stars…
“O what disgraceful form of War to wage!”
Shout sleep-robb’d storm’d round shelters in a rage.
She crawls outside to count the cost,
Picks up the sky-pamphlet,
“The War is lost while you are boss’d
By Hitler’s cabinet…”
“Now they have started something!” “Der Fuhrer shall finish it!”
Berlin
August 28th
1940
The Blitz
In fight for life found class distinction fades,
dying never showed a discriminating face:
serge or barathea alike to Hun or death
Peter Fahy
The scales are tilting from Fighter Command,
Empty steel seats at meal-times ev’ry day,
How terrible the strain upon that band,
When here they come again, the cross & grey!
Twelve hundred planes
In eight-square miles of sky,
Bringing the burning rains to churn the old Thames dry.
At an expos’d heart of Empire
Has the world curtail’d all sense?
Sirens squeal & children cry a
Lament for lost innocence,
Mason’ry crumbles into fire
As Andersson’s defence
Lies mangl’d in a corrugated heap,
Beside which crumpl’d infants charr’d asleep.
The half-lights shine beneath the ground
On tunnels & platforms,
Tho’ songs abound sleep passes round
These snoozy, fidget dorms
Of whiskey, fags, soft sneaky shags & hopes for lonely homes.
Kings Cross
September 3rd
1940
Flirting & Danger
Is it the leaving of life,
Knight, or the yearning to die,
Darkens that notable brow?
Ricarda Huch
Yes, give them trivial frivolities,
Transient pleasuring, inbetween flights,
If by day they dare death, send them jolities
Scented treasures of Arabian nights;
From mortal drunk
Unto utter terror,
Young flyboys practice punk, ’til a fatal error.
As Nelson held the windward line
& Collingwood the lee,
To them, most votive & divine,
More than gasoline, was tea,
& sex, of course, when arches spine
In writhing ecstasy,
Such as the time young siren, Anna Tweed,
Lay fertiliz’d by Nigel’s siring seed.
They waited for them at the base,
Whenever planes did drop
Right out of space, her anxious face
Full fretful ’til the flop,
When she espied her sweetheart’s plane who’d this day dodg’d the chop.
RAF Kenley
September 8th
1940
Inferno
starlings flying in formation,
sudden sharp turns, steep ascents,
swarm on delightful swarm
Jesper Svenbro
Paladin Goering hurls his armada,
English airmen currying twards demise,
Another Phlegra, another Zama,
Unfurling upon frail, blue meadow skies;
“Now is the time!”
Ring-fingers fist a THWACK!
From Cherbourg to Trondheim the Luftflotten attack.
Nigh on ev’ry plane was scrambl’d
As the bloody crux was fed,
What battle royale entangl’d
Thro’ the smoky swirl-skies spread,
When the fate of Britain dangl’d
On such a slender thread?
Unless such loss of pilots sooner staunch’d,
Tomorrow would see the invasion launch’d.
Christ-blood streams from a crucifix,
Rains onto streets aflame,
Firedrake antics like sixty-six,
But this time Lady Dame
Shone brilliant defiance as wave after wan wave came.
London
September 15th
1940
Bligh’s Capture
It’s been a terrible trip;
you should be happy you have survived it
Statistics prove that not many do
Naomi Lazard
There is a heat at the heart of battle
Which only the heroical may bare,
Molder’s aim unlooses brutish rattle,
Sends Ginger smithereening into air;
Life-scything cry
Peals from that pilot’s end,
Poor Squadron-Leader Bligh has lost his perfect friend;
So fell upon the Major’s tail
The bleak, red mist descending,
Lets off such lethal eight-gun hail,
It seem’d t’were never-ending,
Such rages yet condemned to fail
Via skilful wending…
For in pursuit of vengeance being blind
His shores of native safety left behind.
Some sharp-eyed coastal battery
Hath clipp’d the wings off Bligh,
His chute free, proclivity
Drifts slowly thro’ the sky,
At muzzles in a field emits a bitter-season’d sigh.
France
September 19th
1940
(AA) Canto 23: King Arthur
**************************************
For those who have undertaken the same hard task habitually go far into the past for their themes; some occupy themselves with events a thousand years old, others are ashamed to halt there
Petrarch
Arthur’s Birth
The Cymry will be lamenting
While their souls will be tried
Before a horde of ravagers
Taliesin
Cupbearer! Come & fill these horns of mead
& toast our eager vessels for the song,
Adorn our thought with helmet, spur & steed
& charge with us along the first furlong;
Romanitas
Thro’ Britain has collaps’d,
The cause calamitous, Barbarian relapse.
With Henghist came the Saxon stock
That is forever England,
The Britons suffer such crude shock
Both Pendragons understand,
This weather-change wears to the rock
The soil of this fair land –
Best fields them yielding year-on-bloody-year,
Yearning for some messiah to appear.
Such wishes Heaven understood
As to Tintagel drew
A force for good, rich Pictish blood
Wee babelet courses thro,’
From lovers’ born in moonlit tryst, when kisses taste of dew!
Cornwall
478
Arthur the Warrior
Legend has it
That within the chalice
Was an elixir of courage
Kimolisa Mings
Burning with the Caracallan edict,
Lamenting how his motherlands were torn,
Earth-sent to show each Saxon, Scot & Pict
The purpose & the reason he was born;
Our young hot-head
Ascending thro’ the ranks,
Prays nightly by his bed, sending sweet Christus thanks!
As the river was his border
There an inch he never gave,
Fighting battles in good order,
Mettle tests Orestes-brave,
Each battle’s night he pour’d a
Libation for the grave
Of Geraint, still alive inside his blade –
Until, at last, the Saxon forces fade.
King Erbin granted Arthur leave
To seize himself good lands,
“Son, to achieve this feat believe
Men’s fate lies in men’s hands;”
“My Lord,” said Arthur, kneeling, as decorum’s lilt demands.
South Cadbury
506
Camelot
Ten different kinds of birds I have identified
By their calls & songs as we sit here
Under a darkening sky of June, drinking our wine
John Heath-Stubbs
Lord Arthur made a tour of new lands won,
Finding a ruin’d Roman city there,
But not so rough, & when the tough work done
His capital grew famous everywhere;
A noble court
To serve a nobler king,
A place for days of sport & nights of lovemaking!
As labia his lips enclose,
Like lillies kiss a river,
Her goblet-naval’d belly rose
Like aspens all a-shiver
On mountain winds; she curls her toes,
Thanks her pleasure giver,
His touch to her was ointment pouring forth
Upon strawberries wilding in the North.
Now comes his love, love caliph-fierce,
Love quick’ning blow-by-blow,
Broad blade thrusts pierce, he raids her ears,
As serendip, in tow,
Draws tantric, velvet magic thro’ heroic libido.
Virocolum
507
Guinevere
Sae, in my heid as birdsang
Faas throu simmer treen
Is the thocht o my luve
Sydney Goodsir Smith
A marriage of remembrance, & the dance!
Him stag & she a panther, as they tore
Across the merrie courtyard, such romance
Has never since been seen, or seen before;
From Delilah
Stroking brave Samson’s head,
To Julius Ceasar in Cleopatra’s bed.
Alas, as Ceasar soon replaced
By his ‘friend’ Mark Anthony,
Queen Guinevere was daily faced
By a young knight in her e’e,
Whose peach-soft lips she long’d to taste,
An Absalon was he,
& in his dreams he, too, spent nights with her,
Broken by morning’s birdsong’s warning burr.
Feigning distance nonchalantly
They knew it in their core,
As wifely she a family
To Arthur’s bloodline bore,
She wish’d that good Sir Lancelot was hers for evermore.
Castle Knucklas
509
Love & Lust
This war!
I am tired
of a husband who never sleeps
Chenjerai Hove
More regions yield to Arthur’s sceptre-sway,
Saint Dyfig crowns him king ‘neath Llandaff spire,
The Cymry all united in a day,
Happy partners in a happy empire;
Thro’ giftery,
Perstoic shows of force,
& gentle foe-amis, his reign shall run long course.
Young Mordred gambols round the court,
Arthur his foster father,
Scribes sacred scriptures daily taught
But this young scamp would rather
Practice at sword-play, well he fought
Other boys much older
& slaying one he pleaded innocent,
“Twas accident!” Medrawt knew different.
He wander’d into mountain hush,
Out collecting spiders,
The gasp… groan… gush…. of lovers rush
Spying naked riders,
The loins of Lancelot enqueen’d, squeezing apple ciders.
Powys
514
The Death of Lancelot
Oh what pain it is to part !
Can I leave thee, can I leave thee ?
O what pain it is to part
John Gay
Things said on the road are heard in the grass,
King Arthur broods upon his rough disgrace,
“Such scandal here shall never come to pass
& of this deep betrayal leave no trace…
But first I must…
Must I? Yes, I must see
Her breasts of devil lust, her nest of treachery.”
The next time Guinevere steps took
On love’s illicit meeting,
Follow’d was she out to that nook
By yew trees & ewe bleating,
There gave she Lancelot that look
Ah! twas all too fleeting,
As Arthur watch’d on, face as grey as ash,
The lovers were arrested in a flash.
In agonies his best knight died,
Whose blood did gloop & gush,
“Come back to bed, naught shall be said,
Died, he, in an ambush,
& shall be buried hon’rably…” Her hopes! Her heart! Her crush!
Powys
514
The Battle of Mount Badon
Oh, you, warriors,
For the people, be the vanguard.
Without resting day or night
Dài Jìtáo
As druid’s epics never write themselves,
For to avenge the exile of King Caw,
Against King Drustan’s pack of Pictish Elves
& for his mother’s blood-right he shall war;
the Gorsgodd rides,
Three hundred nobles strong,
Upon those restless tides which elevate this song.
The sun had not yet took his throne,
With golden paint applying,
Before hot blood & blocks of bone
Sent through the battle flying,
The battle done by early morn,
Hundreds dead & dying,
A thousand prisoners, all in a line
Of Picts, depress’d, the dragon’s limping spine.
King Arthur drew his Hittite blade
& cut a thousand throats,
While Clerics prayed, as Delphi made
Blood sacrifice of goats,
To please the gods, to please HIS god, to hell each shade demotes.
Lammer Law
516
Camlann
The bull, conversing with nature.
Moves off into the meadow,
White horns planted
Nikolai Alekseevich Zabolotsky
The best part of two hundred thousand men
Have come to share this dreich & dreary space,
A floating moor above Dunnichen glen,
The hunter & the hunted at the chase;
Weakening eyes
Dividing men three-fold,
“Sire, is that very wise?” “Sir Kai, do as ye’re told.”
Merlin sat silent oer the scene
From Rheged he had wandered,
At bardic school, barely nineteen,
On poetry had ponder’d,
Oer murder ghastly & obscene
Somebody had blunder’d,
For Arthur was failing his final test,
This mad, dim, weird, grim battle of the West.
Mordred espies his ‘family,’
With heart-beat scenting blood,
Cross combat he, bearbeitely,
Ghosted beneath his hood,
Then shook a knife thro’ Arthur’s ribs & dropp’d him where he stood.
Dunnichen
537
Death of Arthur
Then say, as his divine embrace
Destroys the mortal parts of you
I too am of that royal race
A.D. Hope
What good a kingdom when a life force fades?
What use are riches when your end is near?
What help is power when we join the shades?
What use remorse when one can shed no tear?
Death, dark & dread,
Lay cold bones upon him,
So very nearly dead, light winch’d in ever dim.
As gravity dictates our end,
When precipices crumble,
”Sir Bedevere,” he gasp’d, “Old friend,”
Throat horsey, hoar & humble,
”My blade with thee I do intend,
Do not fudge or fumble,
But in that lake o’er there it ye must throw,
Never let it be clutch’d by Saxon foe.
For while it stays unhidden there
Our souls they shall not rule…”
A gulp of air, an angel stare,
Beard spittl’d in red-drool,
King Arthur dies, his famous blade lobb’d in that flaming pool
Inchyra
537
(AA) Canto 24: Deepening Wounds
**************************************
If I ever smell of a Resurrection, or come a second time on Earth, I will pray God to make me born in England, the Land of Liberty
Montesquieu
Kick-Back Peace
That ancient tree, don’t let it fall
Until old age is knelling;
So many things it can recall
Hans Christian Andersen
The spirit of King Arthur is at stake,
Churchill declares his strivance to restore
To France her liberty, like Francis Drake
Preparing for Armada by the shore;
Kenning, again,
Just as when Bonaparte
Defeated was in Spain, there shall his fight-back start.
Gibraltar was the vital key
To Suez & to empire,
To lose Madrid’s neutrality
Would be devastatic dire,
Thus bribes were plann’d painstakingly
To meet each man’s desire –
Franco’s own brother & top generals
Suddenly invested in minerals,
Then from Swiss bank accounts brand-new,
Lapp’d up London’s largesse,
As agents flew each one withdrew
Two million or less,
& crocks the Fascist Latin bloc’s abortive obsolesce.
Zurich
September
1940
The Living Blitz
My precious life I spent considering
What I should eat in summer, wear in spring.
Vile belly ! take the crust ! tis crust ! ’tis nobler food
Sa’di
As sirens fire, up to his office roof,
For visions halieutic Norman climbs,
He’d lost too much at cards, so rose aloof
From crude & clutter’d fleshpits of these times;
As was his right,
Special immunity,
Felt he, death’s chances sleight in such a vast city.
Perusing London’s ‘Bright Young Things,’
Play ‘No Man’s Land’ twyx dances,
Sense-numbing battle slowly brings
Growing insouciances,
Borne stubborn by phlegmatic wings,
Tea-time in the manses,
As all, through the capital panoply,
Grew calm, as sleep panope in the sea.
“We share such bloodymindedness,
If Hitler thinks we’ll crack,
He’ll find in us the kind that does
Not kowtow to attack,”
Thought Norman as his cautious chauffer roll’d into the back.
London
October 1st
1940
Destiny of War
Cut him off. He can take care
Of himself. Take root in the earth,
Or go hunting with wolves
Charles Simic
Refraining from his guttural bombast
Hitler convers’d calmly over luncheon,
“The season for the sea-invasion pass’d,
We continue the bombing of London…”
Truths sadly aired,
“This war now beckons long,
Tho’ unfully prepared our will shall prove too strong.”
“England” spoke thwarted conqueror,
Cousins willing to admire,
“Has subjugated India
But with superior fire,
Her Raj precursors our Russia…
But… her global empire
Must be destroy’d when all the fighting ends,
When all I wanted was to be their friends.”
“Russia!?” what resipiscent surprise!
“Why yes, it has to be…”
Divining eyes drift to the skies,
“…Our one true enemy,
Whose rabbits must be swiftly slain or chain’d in slavery.”
Berlin
October
1940
Open Neutrality
Thy spirit, Independence, let me share:
Lord of the lion heart & eagle eye,
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare
Tobias Smollett
As ‘Victory Itself!’ the platform paced,
“How dare this… this… little cuckold be late,
When schemes, without my help, would go to waste!”
In steaming, clanking, came a train of state;
Franco of Apain
descended with a smile,
That smirk’d with a disdainful, strain’d bandito smile.
With podgy face & squeaky voice,
His ally’s presence grated,
“Friend, can there be no other choice,
Our fascist front far-fated?”
At once, the high-pitch’d whine annoys,
Brash & unplacated,
“I cannot let your soldiers march thro Spain
Who want no new Napoleon again.”
“Napoleon!” “Such foreign force
Would only cause unrest,”
A stubborn horse, no change of course
On him the snake impress’d
Despite his wily gaze, left grazing on be-medall’d chest.
Hendaye
October 23rd
1940
Civilian Fightback
I am older & have been far away
In different corners of the world –
I have seen all that I expected
KC Steven
As Big George Foreman threw his very best
By the Congo, at Muhammad Ali,
Then ‘punch’d himself out’ – right hook! comes to rest,
Spreadeagl’d like a toss’d aside dolly;
The Nazis fling
Reaming draining strength
Warpassion weakening, their last must come at length.
In the belly of the barrage,
With battle rattling dentures,
Shunning all shield & camouflage,
Old soldier of the trenches
With his dear wife, their temple Taj,
Shrugs away the wrenches,
When dropping bombs send rubble toppling down,
Crossing the arteries of London Town.
How mellowly these spouses sit
Lunching to sirenwails,
“Names not on it just won’t get hit!”
Again, the Fuhrer fails
To fray the fighting spirit where an Englishman prevails.
Peckham
October
1940
Tiger Frisking
Drizzles surge into deluge, and,
Absorbing mother’s tears of agony
Purl out from prison grills
Varavara Rao
He noticed how the spotted hawks in flight
Pass’d on wide pinions thro’ the lofty air,
To where some steep, untrodden mountain height
Caught the last tresses of the Sun God’s hair;
Leaving the scene
Of Franco’s betrayal
Despite all that has been Franco remains neutral!
His carriage furnish’d lavishly
With the treasures of the Loire,
He rode the Transalpine to see
Marshall Petain at Montoire,
Conducting high diplomacy,
“Will Vichy join the war?”
The Marionette joins the Caudillo
By answering with such ungrateful, “no!”
Thro’ Piedmont he makes his way
To lily Tuscany
Finds Il Duce scripts his own play
“My friend, my grand army
From Albania pours to Epirus & Thessaly.”
Florence
October 28th
1940
Death of Sue Johnstone
Under the searchlights tied
In bows of cellophane,
Your camouflage is night
Geoffrey Dutton
Night falls & yet the pigeon flocks take flight,
Docks shining with an eerie daytime glow,
Up-spurting flames, the stark stench of cordite,
Those flail-a-fall-a rafters row-on-row;
Above them all
Those gutsy herren came,
Relentless to their goal, a capital aflame.
Beyond the bonnie estu’ry,
Yon its looping curvatures,
Each anti-aircraft battery
Pointed accusing fingers,
A bubbling, peasoup cemet’ry,
Devilish defences,
A lottery, & at thy number’s root,
You’d better bag yersel’ a parachute!
Her blazing staircase made her freeze,
The wailing flames arrive,
Upon her knees, thro’ smoke & wheeze,
“At least the kids survive!”
Clutching slow-melting teddy bears, their young mum burnt alive.
Poplar
October
1940
Strange Meeting
As long as the sky whirls
You will be my redemption
And my doom
Reinaldo Arenas
Molotov admired the rich, Reich heartland,
Conducting his formal tours d’horizon,
Von Ribbentrop shook firmly by the hand,
Concealing deftly the escalation;
How plushly lay
That old painter’s study,
Whose helfer sniff’d to say, ‘Velcome to Victory!’
As Vyacheslav faced Der Fuhrer,
He was never overaw’d,
Outspeaking the master speaker,
Show’d his tongue the sharper sword,
“Tell me of this New World Order…
What of your plans abroad…
Stalin is concern’d while court you Finland…
What will come of your duel with England?”
Sirens fumigate the building,
Grey shelter tense with fear,
Explosions ring, awful thudding
Comes scudding ever near,
“Dis var is von!” “Then whose are those & why are we in here?”
Berlin
November 13th
1940
Britannia’s Waves
The sailor’s wives
At Capo le Case
Have sad songs
Paolo Volponi
Among mountain isles of Homer’s musing.
From His Majesty’s ship, ‘Illustrious,’
Swordfish uplift, birds on a double wing,
Black specks against the sunset to the west;
The seas bleed red
Beyond Ionia,
From where beige killers sped to distant Puglia.
As Il Duce’s fleet caught sleeping
By the British planes in rows
Into waves like salmon leaping
Went their famous torpedoes,
Murder & destruction reaping
With rough & violent blows
Destroying with a stalely-sure aplomb
The proud ‘Littorio’ touches bottom.
Two more battleships share ger fate
Three more suffer greatly,
As strange sensations congregate
Thro’ Italy’s psyche,
Faint inklings of disaster for them & Mussolini.
Taranto
November 14th
1940
(AA) Canto 25: Manoueverings
**************************************
Only the dead have seen the end of war
Plato
A New Rome
He had, yet wanted all Releefe.
The Prop & Ruin of the State;
The People’s violent Love & Hate
John Cleveland
The Generalissimo took supper,
Settl’d in his leather with Chianti,
Imagining sat with Calphurnia
Discussing tribal Gaul’s hostility;
His brilliance
Unecho’d in the field,
Valletta’s fine defence offers the meagre yield.
Churchill builds strength in wily stealth –
East of Cyrenaica
The pieces of the Commonwealth
Force Egypt’s ancyent border,
In fiery line & perfect health
To claim an Uttica –
When Italy’s panic-stricken warbands
Flee Bardia & dune-sunk, lunar sands.
Pride-swallowing Mussolini
‘Neath Hitler’s stern voice squirms,
“Fuhrer! help me! my grand army
Rack’d with retreat & worms!”
“Of course, my friend, but in the end it must be on my terms.”
Rome
December
1940
Churchill’s Stoicism
Come bombs, & blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans
John Betjeman
Those fairy-lights which grace Piccadilly
Each Christmas are, this year, black’d-out bomb-rough,
Who’d have thought that war could raze a city,
The shape of things to come comes soon enough;
Up Churchill rose,
In him all hope intern’d,
Thro’ him resistance flows, thro’ him the worm has turn’d.
Aft breaking fast with steak & wine,
He inspects old London town,
Whose passage clapping people line,
A rallying, “Are we down?”
On all sides, “NO!” “We shall be fine!”
“God bless King George’s crown!”
“Whatever Goering hurls us from the air,
We’d rather die in London than despair!”
P.M. returns to pens & lamp,
Still sirens stretch & roar,
The shelter damp, an aide-de-camp
Asks how they’ll win the war,
“Fight on & hope America walks thro’ our open door.”
Whitehall
December 10th
1940
Extravagances
Let them bestow on ev’ry Airth a Limb
Open all my Veins, that I may swim
To Thee my Saviour, in that Crimson Lake
James Graham
As Jodl sits with Hitler by the fire,
He was allow’d, for once, a glass of Scotch,
“Of this skirmish with Engliand, how I tire,
Especially when, upon my own watch,
A monster waits
Slavering to the east
As if infernal gates were prowl’d by growling beast.”
“Russia?” “Of course…””What will you do?”
“Well, invade in ‘forty-one,
For by the fall of forty-two
Our dominance might be gone,
Churchill will make a dirty stew,
Beef’d up by Washington,
You’ve seen how Stalin gobbles lands-on-lands,
Deutschland shall be a part of his demands.”
“A pre-emptive strike…” mus’d Jodl,
“Indeed, the plan quite clear,
A citadel impregnable
Forge from this hemisphere –
& guard Europa’s shores with Schweizergarde halberdier!
Berlin
December
1940
A Daring Escape
I’d sooner sleep on the moor
in a lonely snug hollow
a clump of rush at my side
An Ciaran Mabach
“I must away into the big wide world!”
Sang survivors of the down’d Luftwaffe,
Beyond the wire the last soil layers curl’d,
Uncorking Oberleutnant Von Werra;
Fellow escapers
He bids auf weidershein,
Then offs for fresh capers, to steal himself a plane.
Brassy bold down the police station,
“Sir, my name is Captain Van Lott,
I’ve crash-landed my Wellington,
Another plane must be got…”
To an airbase promptly driven,
Suspicions grew awfully hot,
“I’ll check your credentials with Aberdeen,
There’s a war on you know…” Werra, unseen,
Slips thro’ the toilet window slick,
Sprints to a Hurricane,
Whose mechanic flicks engine’s tick,
Its pilot mounts the plane
“Get out!” the Duty officer’s aimed pistol halts the train.
RAF Hucknall
December 20th
1940
Death of Eleanor Stemmler
Darkness more clear than noon-day holdeth her,
Silence more musical than any song :
Even her very heart has ceased to stir
D.G. Rossetti
“I’m delighted to tell you Frau Stemmler
A sanatorium has been founded
With facilities to help your daughter…”
“They will take good care of my beloved?”
“I’m sure they will,
All prospects beckon fine,
Now if you could just fill these forms in & then sign…”
Eleanor enter’d the abbey,
Breathing air quite crisp & clean,
Hippocratic morality
Sacrificed to cleanse the gene,
Guaranteeing supremacy,
Small matter of hygiene –
When feeble-minded deem’d unfit to live
By eugenists no doctor could forgive.
She went out her for a country ride
With excited patients,
Cool monoxide hard pump’d inside,
When closed the precious vents,
She died crying, “Momma!” desp’rate fingers scraping dents.
Hessen
Christmas Day
1940
Eastern Lights
One within in a crimson glow,
Silently sitting;
One without on the falling snow
Isa Craig
Yuletide comes in bells & yet no victor,
Der Fuhrer spends it with his Channel troops,
Thought sunken dark increasingly in Russia,
No more to leap thro’ Molotov’s tight hoops;
The time feels right
To cross the Rubicon,
Drafting all thro’ the night, ‘Directive Twenty-One.’
Egoist Napoleonic
Spurtles, “This Soviet threat
Let us stem all thro’ the Baltic
Both sides of marsh-wide Pripet,
Surrounding armies wolfhunt quick
Shall close all in a net;
Moscow has grown whore-rotten with intrigue,
Crumble she must before our bold Blitzkreig.”
Turning his back upon the West
He faced the dawning lights,
With Budapest & Bucharest,
His Axis satellites,
Advancing legions shall surpass Alexander’s Hoplites.
Eurasia
January
1941
Bombing Malta
in this bleak rain
even the monkeys seem to want
little straw cloaks
Basho
As when warm muskets curb’d an Age of Swords
Henceforth sealanes control’d from shifting air,
Where swooping hawks patrolling old whale-roads,
Drop lethal loads on all who’d venture there;
’Illustrious,’
The Axis lust to sink,
Now batter’d furious but one blow from the brink,
She limps into the Grand Harbour
& sleeps a sitting target,
Regia Aeronautica
For the coup de grace was set;
But breaching Malta’s theatre
By hell-let-loose them met –
Attack after ack-ack attack was made,
More brave, more foolish than the Light Brigade.
The heart of all hostilities
Bomb-pounded long & hard,
The Three Cities’ Fatalities
List round a wreck’d dock-yard –
What took the Turks three months to raze one night has equal scarr’d.
Senglea
16th Jan
1941
A Second Daring Escape
Vagrancy and imprisonment
Have deprived me
Of my best days of my youth
Ai Qing
Train scythes thro’ Canada’s Arctic semblance,
Its German inmates clamouring for ‘go,’
Persistence pays, Von Werra sees his chance,
Knocks black bars out, dives head-first into snow;
Such moments come
For those who dare be bold –
The frail breath of freedom turns misty in the cold.
Trekking thro’ freezing wilderness,
Warm’d by determination,
Light-twinklings his endeavours bless,
From the banks American,
The long Saint Lawrence thaws her dress,
Channels ‘tween ice floes run;
A rowing boat stolen, lacking an oar,
Now set out drifting for the safer shore.
Footfall… to some old folk he drew,
“Is this Amerika?”
“Why yes, but who the hell are you?”
“I am an officer
Of the German Air Force… I am… I was a prisoner!”
Ogdensburg
January 24th
1941
Desert Fox
how voracious time is, the herd of bodies
has gone for a moment, disappeared
among the rowboats and schooners
Olga Khvostova
As Rommel took first steps on Afric sand,
All about servants of the fiasco
Load ships, evacuation was at hand,
Arms strewn as if by Trasimene’s flow;
He cocks his cap
Thigh-cracks a riding whip,
“Someone get me a map, I want to take a trip.”
His plane flew lofty on the tour
Of simmering hot Syrte,
Sang some nomadic troubadour,
“What beauty & how ghastly!”
Italians straggling the shore
Yon mud-baked Benghazi,
With British flags proud flying everywhere,
“We shall build our fresh defences down there!”
Between palm-leaf lined boulevards
Parades the Werhmacht grey,
Like picture-cards, ev’ry ten yards
& what a hand to play,
When his aces, the Panzers, have arrived to join the fray.
Tripoli
February 14th
1941
(AA) Canto 26: Strugglebound
**************************************
By the will of the Mediterranean people the ‘British Episode’ in this sea is finished
Il Mediterraneo
Allies
Man now his Virtue’s diadem
Puts on & proudly wears
Great thoughts, great feelings came to them
Lord Houghton
Great Britain spends the last of her dollars,
Threadneedle’s twinkling bullion bled dry,
If ever should she be victorious
Give her the means for bartering supply;
What vision rests
In Rooseveldt’s rare brain,
“Tis in our best int’rests the battle to sustain.”
The policy that was lend-lease,
Pleasant child of the New Deal,
Reflected climes of prosp’rous peace;
Aircraft, shermans, ships & steel,
Minerals, cereals, obese,
Serve up a vital meal,
Providing Britain’s back bone with its meat
Cost waiv’d until Old England’s on her feet.
Without warfare’s foremost sinew
All bids for triumph fails,
Magnate & Jew stitch wealth into
Britain’s heroic sails…
Tis not the longest sword but deepest purse that e’er prevails.
USA
February
1941
West End North
Our mother is praying, our father is gone
To the forest, on wolves to make war.
Oh sing us a ballad, the tale then repeat
Goethe
A letter came from Burnley, Lancashire,
Jess Linscott of the Vic Dame Sibyl saw,
Some thirty years ago, would offer her
& her company a safer place, but raw
& quite uncouth
Compar’d, when, with London
But surely, sir, forsooth, the show must carry on!
The troupe of Thespians doubl’d
With the best of Sadler’s Wells,
T’where townsfolk once were troubl’d
By the Pendle Witches’ spells
Where in bedrooms seven huddl’d –
Like Cambridge matin bells
The factories woke them every sun-up
“Don’t worry, cock, this’ll keep yer chin up.”
The landlord pours a pint o’ stout
Sibyl sips delicious,
Thro’ coal & clout, there was no doubt
These lads o’ Lancashire,
“The finest in the county too!” were now all friends of her.
Burnley
February
1941
Balkan Conquest
The winter fly I spared
Was captured by
the cat
Issa
As when she join’d the Kaiser’s sorry fight
Bulgaria bedazzl’d by Berlin,
Selling her soul to please the Tripartite,
This time a greater Germany must win;
When midst the pack
Howl with the wolves ye must,
Fears of frightful attack worse than the bite none trust.
& so the Yugoslavian?
Forg’d from sterner spiritus,
Born of the loins of horseback Khan
& the daughters of Hellas,
Harden’d to war by Suleiman
& Turkish scimitars?
Have found their prince, thro’ promise threat & bribe,
Tying their limping realm to Hitler’s tribe.
The bad news filters through land,
The lust for battle calms,
Large armies standing down, disband,
Surrending their arms,
But for those buried in the woods or hidden in the farms.
Yugoslavia
March 26th
1941
Family Tradition
Chuala mi an reido ciuin
A cluich
Le guaim na h-innealan
Victoria Maciver
Bruce Slater struggled with the tractor key,
His right arm nigh useless without a hand
Whose bones lie pick’d clean at Gallipoli,
Buried in Anzac Cove’s more crimson sand;
Then came on his
Son Shane with feisty spring,
“Pop, back down in Alice, the army’s recruiting!”
Silent time overcame the scene,
Broken roughly by Bruce spit,
Altho’ the moment long foreseen
Heart-strings may still twinge a fit
& tho’ he’d barely known nineteen,
“Go son, go do your bit!”
Shane whoop’d with joy as he hugg’d his father,
That night they tuck’d in the Bush together…
The fire crackles as the stars
Sprinkle light thro the murk,
They talk of wars, Bruce shows the scars
Inflicted by the Turk…
“Son, soldiery is one days fighting for five weeks of work.”
Northern Territory
March 27th
1941
Axis Axle
Look, one war giving birth to another
one war crawling out from between the
legs of another, out of the rubble
Warsan Shire
Von Ribbentrop receiv’d Matsuoka
At Fuschal, gatehouse of the grand Alpine,
‘The war is won,’ stated over dinner,
‘Strike now & England’s empire must be thine!’
On Berghof peak
Hitler waited calmly,
‘This moment is unique in all of history!’
They found him in a warlike mood
& Spring’s rejuvenation,
‘Brother, when battle is renew’d
This won war will be well won,
When if ye act upon thy feud
With Rooseveldt’s nations
I promise thee Germany shall assist,
& smash those Allies with our Axis fist.’
A gasping captain makes him jolt,
& Matsuoka smile,
A lightning bolt, ‘The Serbs revolt,’
A demon spits its bile,’
‘Then we shall bathe their babes in blood & burning corpses pile.’
Berchtesgaden
March 29th
1941
Operation Retribution
In rejected heaps by a monotonous road
The old simple delights were left to lie
On the wasteland of life’s descent to night
Sri Aurobindo
To war eveil the devil ne’er could win,
The pensive Yugoslavic spirit push’d,
“Before we set the hounds upon Stalin,”
Hiss’d Hitler, “upstart yokels must be crush’d;”
Crucial delay?
Or insignificant?
To mid-June from mid-May his ‘Barbarossa’ went.
As war expand it’s theatre,
Ira furor brevis est,
Russia’s borders stripp’d of panzer,
Infantry peels from the West,
Goering prepares his Luftwaffe,
While restless Budapest
Hugs Hitler’s Janissarian legions
With men & arms, lording o’er the Balkans.
Belgrade receives the Stuka’s lay,
The reeling Serbs take flight,
Melting away, some other day
Continuing the fight,
Tito spitting at swastikas flitting into the night.
Yugoslavia
April 1st
1941
Confidence in Confidence
Never in this world is hate
Appeas’d by hatred
It is only appeas’d by love
Dhammapada
Sense hinting at the mentally diseas’d
Von Runstedt reach’d Der Fuhrer’s office late,
Instead of anger found his captain pleas’d,
Excited even, “Do not under-rate
Just what it means
Vast Russia to invade…”
His ‘destiny’ down leans on fingers widely splay’d.
The Russian army is a ghost,
That barely a man shall show,
At six to ten weeks at the most,
our men shall march thro’ Moscow
From Black Sea beach to Baltic Coast
Our Swastika shall glow!”
“I must protest,” said Runstedt, condescending,
“in this I can see no happy ending,
Just leagues on leagues of bloodshot tear,
Sir, no single season,
Shall disappear the Rus, their sheer
Size belies all reason…”
“Dumkopft! doubting my destiny’s tantamount to treason.”
Berlin
April 4th
1941
Conquest of Greece
Outside Eden the earth was imperfect,
the seasons changed,
the game was fleet-footed
Judith Wright
In certain spots the Earth resembles God,
When mountains range unclimbable, when birds
Take perches where the Titans rarely trod
& Hesiod left trembling over words;
A dream, indeed,
& those who dwell there would
Defy Il Duce’s greed with ev’ry drop of blood.
As Mussolini gave a sigh,
Asks Hitler & his horses
For help, sends Hellas in reply
The Wehrmacht’s vast resources,
Conquering hot Thermoplylae,
While, on Mount Olympus,
As round them herds of mountain goats canter’d,
Swastikas were on the summit planted.
The city of the violet crown
Grew grey & strangely still,
Tourists look down on the old town
From Acropolis hill;
& photograph’d the Parthenon for fraulines & the thrill.
Athens
April 27th
1941
Birth & Death of Brian Davies
Who are you and where do you come from?
You have killed my mother, father
Even my brothers and sisters
Patricia Mercy
How joyous when a newborn cries its first
Now sucking glibly on its mother’s teat,
His father’s swelling pride in bells shall burst,
Life understanding life ne’er seem’d more sweet;
Wild sirens sound,
Death soars in from abroad,
Bombs battering the ground along the old Mill Road.
What did you think of life, my child,
Before that bad bomb’s striking?
Thy little ward all whitely tiled
I hope was to thy liking,
Murmurs of conversation mild
Spear’d by tearful scriking,
With that warm milk you seem’d to quite enjoy
For those few minutes, you & Lawrence Foy.
“Ee-ya, la! They’ve bomb’d nan’s chip-shop!”
“Bloody, bastard fokkers!”
Kill-spheres still drop, caught on the hop,
Huskisson’s poor dockers –
But most of all slain babies names remain e’ermore to shock us.
Liverpool
May 4th
1941
Mumble Words 