Axis & Allies
(AA) Canto 27: Whirlpool
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The evil forces working through mediums are cunning enough not to show their true aims at once. These become clear to the observer only by successive stages, only gradually. Whoever has critically studied the ways of evil spirits will know that they first lure their mediumistic victims or gullible public along the path of self-injury or even self-destruction by winning their confidence with a series of successful predictions or favorable interventions
Paul Brunton
Rudolf Hess
you try to examine
if it is the food that is stale
or the stomach that is sick
Baleka Kgositsile
Dreams of walking England’s tapestried halls,
Two famous Nordic nations to unite,
Waking, now a burning impulse controls,
Taking a Messerschmitt in solo flight
Across the sea
To Scotland’s rugged shores,
Bales out, floats prettily oer heather-coated moors.
Hess was captured by a hayfork,
& prodded to the station,
“You must allow me, please, to talk
With the Duke of Hamilton…”
Churchill puff’d out his cigar smoke,
“This bizarre peace mission
Must never be permitted to prevail,
We’ll fob him off & let him rot in jail.”
Torrid bombshell fell on Hitler,
The mad Reich ‘Number Two’
Made prisoner, squealing anger,
“His mind must be cuckoo…
I’m surrounded by idiots!” the air turn’d black & blue.
The Berghof
May 10th
1941
Cultural Capital
But oftentimes, among my mind,
A Glee possesseth me,
That had I Ballet knowledge
Emily Dickinson
“Where ya going?” “I’m going out!” “Where too?”
“Who bloody wi’, more like!” “It’s just wi’ Ray…”
“Has he got a job yet?” “Dad!” “Look, love, you
Can do better!” “Well, we’re off ter ballet!”
“You’re what?” “Dancing
Sophisticated, like;”
“What, men in tights prancing – tell ’em ter take a hike!”
They had a couple in the Fleece,
Then walk’d to town in the rain,
The music wafted in like peace
As the lithe Margot Fontaine,
Did contort, glide, notes ride, release
Art’s darts time & again
Which sends the audience delirious,
“How could our bodies move so glorious?”
“How was it?” “Smashing!” “Really good!”
“Better than bingo, mam,
Our dad you should take,” “Would I blood-
Y hell as like, just clam
Up, eh? keep yer bloody caviar, where’s mi jam & spam.”
Burnley
May
1941
Ethiopia
Africa my Africa
Africa of proud warriors in ancestral savannahs
Africa of whom my grandmother sings
David Diop
A rugged patriot with fuzzy hair
Stood waiting for his moment to defy
Those traces of mustard gas lacing air,
& raising his rifle, let loose a cry;
Halle’s kingdom
Echoes ten thousand fold,
Hoisting hearts for freedom, to break Benito’s hold.
Colonel Wingate answers the call,
Crackling with warrior zen,
Beside the Blue Nile’s canyon roll
Marches his gallant Queensmen,
Into their steps brave tribesmen fall
From secret mountain den –
Guerrillaring, together, cleverly,
Destroying an outwitted enemy.
Across all Abyssinia
Generalissimo
Suits surrender… on white charger
Wingate, in triumph’s glow
Trots ‘tween the eucalyptus in the shade of Antoto.
Addis Ababba
May 20th
1941
Bismark
It was a macabre song
like the chipped tooth in the sink,
like the handcuffed man stumbling
Luis Enrique Belmonte
At last the target ventures out to sea,
The Sister of the Graf Spree & Tirpitz,
Queen of that unsinkable trinity,
Enough to give any sailor the shits;
Making contact,
Cutting her teeth in blood,
As furious attack’d sunk is the shell-shock’d Hood.
The loss of a capital ship
Strikes the English to the core,
Responding lets her engines rip
As a hundred men of war
Converge upon the last known blip –
& sights her to the fore;
& with the Home Fleet hurtles shells thro’ air,
The target wisely turns for St Nazaire,
But a lucky hull-breach slows her,
Bombarded from afar,
The Dorsetshire administers,
The toothy coup-de-gras,
Sad sailors leaping into waves deep swallowing a star.
Atlantic Ocean
May 28th
1941
Classical Debacle
Say Crete, & there is little more to tell
Of muddle tall as treachery, despair
And black defeat resounding like a bell
John Manifold
Crete raptures like a classical antique
For dread Persophone in springly lust,
Protected by Britisher, Anzac, Greek,
With ad hoc weapons rescued from the rust;
Their foe flies by,
Sky blossoms, gliders glide,
A withering reply, whole sqaudrons crucified.
By Kiwis Malleme airfield held
Beneath relentless Junkers
Gliding to land, shot at & shell’d,
Turning burning wreckages,
Yet cobra-strike contents expell’d –
Hardmen mountain troopers –
Manhandling blocks of heavy weaponry
Tipping the balance back to victory!
As Wermacht westward rolls thro’ Crete,
The Commonwealth withdraw,
One more retreat, one more defeat,
No way to wage a war,
As once again hungry half-men pluck’d from a foreign shore.
Sfakia
May 30th
1941
Secret Wars
Those days of stagnancy & cloudy threat
when the sky is silver yet quite lustreless,
where shall we turn in our indifference?
Attilo Bertolucci
Seduc’d by nasal incense of the East,
Events proceed to move precipitous,
Upon the secret fronts full force releas’d
To hide from view the hippopotamus;
Of German arms
Acute espionage,
Manoeuvring’s alarms embalms with camouflage;
Playing the ancyent game of kings
Seems Schellenberg’s true station,
Arresting all the Russian rings,
Ingrain’d within his nation,
To double agents, on kid’s swings,
Fed false information,
Like Operation Sealion once more,
Shall strike, this summer, at the Saxon shore.
Of course ‘twould be impossible
To stave the truth entire,
But terrible, most audible,
Was Stalin’s Slavic ire,
Whenever someone mention’d an invasion, he’d scream, “Liar!”
Moscow
June 2nd
1941
The Agony of France
Courage, my soul ! now to the silent wood
Alone we wander, there to seek our food
In the wild fruits, & woo our dreamless sleep
P.E. More
The French welcome the Nazi supermen,
Preferring peace to resistance & pain,
Tho’ alters rare, amid occupation,
Bare secretly the cross of lost Lorraine;
Shining spirit
Of old Ambriorix
Repugnant in the spit of one imperatrix.
“Nazi batardes!” Veronique curs’d,
Stubbing out her cigarette,
“They rape our country &, what’s worse,
Les cochons fou have raped Annette!
Somebody has to be the first
To challenge that mind-set,
We must form an arm’d group for resistance!”
“Domain…reviens dormir,” whisper’d Constance.
Slipping graceful to her lover,
Tongue-probing lust to share
‘Tween the covers, like a glove her
Man thrust his hands down there,
& tho’ her pantings sweet her soul was longing for Pierre.
Orleans
June 11th
1941
Fog of War
Without Fortune and prospect, I ignite the fire
Of impatience – the guards of prudence have vanished:
My caravan defenseless in the coming fire
Ali-Shir Nava’i
Stalin tosses his despatch into fire,
“Hitler prepares to invade, screams London,
They only want to plunge us in their mire!”
Molotov reads a note from Washington;
“The twenty third…”
“When will this nonsense end?
Attacking is absurd, Herr Hitler is our friend!”
Good company kept Khan Stemmler
For the conquest yet to come,
Singing songs throughout Silesia
Of Moscow & Lebensraum,
Bearing their blessed Swastika
Stich’d in each labarum,
A battle-banner beaming & unfurl’d,
Full flying to defend the Western world.
By frontier guards passes freight train,
Honouring the treaty,
Loaded with grain from the Ukraine,
Unaware completely
Watching it trundle by them was stormtrooper company!
Poland
June 21st
1941
Canticae Divided I
All that mortal man possesses
has mortality & passes;
everything goes hurrying past
Lucian
As Dante set himself inside his stuff
& made an epic poem from the blend,
As Byron forg’d digressions in a huff
Of satire, thus, at this cantica’s end,
Metaversal
I’ll slyly slip inside,
My poem’s stretch’d dispersal, tryptychs personified!
So here he is! the big, big man,
The man with big ideals,
Thumb-twiddling with his masterplan,
Set to shoot thro’ all the gears,
No Corsican, of course he can
Reduce the Rus to tears –
His army’s momentum – momentous, firm,
Bear’s paws shall be ‘neath which Moscow shall squirm.
Granted, that’s not my greatest line,
But life’s about mistakes,
Each one divines a warning sign
To help us slam the brakes,
I mean Russia? Napoleon? who’d risk such mad mistakes?
Kaunas
April 11th
2024
(AA) Gl’Immortali III
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born
WB Yeats
Apocalypse
Once, in the burning age
of flowing stone
the Devil’s old dark toffee overflow’d
Robin Munro
Four riders climb thro’ the bowels of DIS,
Hooves flashing thro’ flammable Phlegethon,
Splashing thro’ dismally Stygian piss,
To ford the dark waters of Acheron;
Yon Cerberus,
Three-headed, howling hound,
Over Lake Avernus, to stand on Midgard’s ground.
The air grew thick with snort & steam,
Oer the Red, White, Black & Pale,
The Moon took on a crimson gleam,
Bellow’d up a fearsome gale,
Around the hoof what horrors stream,
Pungent in noxious veil,
A thousand Civiallos & their sneer
Releas’d on Earth to furnish curse & fear.
So come the Devil, & the hounds
Of War, & with them, flame,
So come the sounds this world surrounds
& theirs, immortal claim,
& praise their heavens, but they’ll turn to warzones, all the same.
Midgard
Heavenly Counsel
Praise Him, all creatures here below
Praise Him, above, ye heavenly host !
Praise Father, Son, & Holy Ghost
Thomas Ken
Above the flight of Pegasean wing,
In quintessential realms of majesty,
Great God in Heaven, Jove, Over-king,
Sate stupor’d in a state of apathy;
The pinnacle
Of his life’s creation
Has steer’d itself ‘twards Hell’s chasm of damnation.
Unto beauteous paradise
Flew George, Denys & Michael,
Before the gates of Heaven rise
Twelve Saints & Peter’s angel,
Who grants passage, led thro’ the wise
By golden Gabriel
To Jove, slumbering by the holy hearth,
“My Lord,” chaunts Michael, “We return from Earth…
There are dark troubles brewing sire,
Satanus plots a war,
With daemon dire & dragonfire,
The Aesir to the fore,
Lord let us fight!” Jove ponders, “If ye must but just ye four!”
Divinnia
Divine War
Then came a flash from out the cloud,
& a stunning thunder-roll ;
& no man dared to look aloft
WE Aytoun
At first it seems a cloud of far distance,
Choking the icy wastes of Cocytus,
The standards of the King of Hell advance,
Behold! the proud legion of Satanus;
Waving rough sword
In motions of his might,
Behind, a Daemonhorde, above, a Dragonsflight.
As his son & heir-lieutenant,
Swings his hammer, broad Mjolnir,
Proud limbing Odin’s forces went;
From the stallion Sleipnir
Toward the trembling Occident
Points his great spear, Gungnir…
Sol tentatively rising from the East,
Grew too afraid to light the royal feast.
Mars lifts his blade, strike splits the ground,
Bellows a martial roar,
Lor’lein sound startling the hounds
Pacing the Paynim shore,
Whom approach him & approaching yield the first sign of war.
Europa
Death of Venus
Fate’s tree is crowned with thorns;
you can search forever but
no blossom will break its opacity
Hasan Sijzi
Skull-Loki steer’d his steed in freedom’s flight,
Tall oer Europa’s thickest forests & ranges,
& lands upon a mountain of delight,
Lone grey, priest loonranting of its dangers;
Strong steps funnel
Along a moisty cave cave,
Waiting in that tunnel, Love laugh’d & gave a wave.
As Loki lecher’d on her dress
& a face above all art,
The temptress-scented loveliness,
Legs slenderly held apart,
O! the vision of her cestus,
Temple’s resplendent heart-
What man could fight allurements of her charms?
What god could fight her pure, “Come to my arms!”
Plunged was a poison-tipp’d dagger
Thro’ Venus’ heaving breast,
By grey river a murderer
Lay fairest corpse arest
Hair willowing thro’ water, one breaks free from all the rest…
Horselburg
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
Battle Lines
A sacred burden is this life ye bear:
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly,
Stand up & walk beneath it steadfastly
FA Kemble
So, even Fate must pass upon Midgard
The Devil’s ruse had rush’d the Gods to war,
The Lion loosen’d from Britannia’s yard
By Neptune ferried to a foreign shore;
& takes his place,
By Tyr, the Cockerelle
& Toutatis – to face the fearsome hordes of Hell.
The air grows thick as evil scent
Spread noxious clouds applies
A sickly mix, the air is rent
By clusters of night-black flies,
Wyrd Dragonflights hath form’d a tent,
Smoke cloaks the darkling skies,
Some trompblast calls the legions to array,
The armies of Satanus on display.
On clinquant rays three saints descend,
George, Michael & Denys,
A holy blend to faith defend
With physicality,
Blades sharpen’d for the battle, feather’d backs against the sea.
Europa
A Savage Affray
Impetuous brains mistake the signs of God
Too easily. God would not have me waste
My zeal for Him in this wild enterprise
Lascelles Abercrombie
Smoke, flash & shout; a massive, grassy plain,
The Cockerelle of Gaul battles Odin,
Together Tyr & Toutatis lay slain
& all the world was echoing the din;
Auld Saint Denys
Transforming to a Hart,
Chas’d by these tusk-boars three, hoove-pounding as they dart.
To the scene of desperate fight
Enveloping Saint Michael,
Some foulish serpent’s poison bite,
That beautiful bladesman fell,
To morass down in frantic flight
Saint George did dive pell-mell;
To disappear ‘neath flailing tooth & claw,
To burst back with his kinsman, soak’d in gore.
Slow-driven backwards twards the sea,
Albion’s precious moat,
Desperately, defiantly
The Lion rampant fought,
Deep gouges in its surly loins, wylde Harpies at it’s throat.
Europa
Halting Hell
Moloch, why sleepest thou? Beelzebub!
Mammon! & all ye potentates of hell,
Rouse, rouse, your energies
Thomas Northmore
Satanus tried to set the sea on fire
& boil the flesh of Neptune from his bones,
Saint George swings wide his blade, Jove’s first flyer,
Safely whipping flames off with brisk cyclones;
Yet felt a bite,
Pure ichor gushing free,
He fac’d the Dragonsflight with terrible fury.
In raging snick-a-snack attack,
Deus dripping from bright eyes,
Three dragonskulls split with a crack,
To the final foething flies,
& slices wings from bony back,
One heart’s thrust & it dies –
A day of evil darkness pacified,
What dismay’d groans erupting from Gaul’s shore-side.
Dreadful Babababashurath,
The dauphin Lizard king,
Bred wrack’d with wrath, son of ‘Gorath,
Black bone where once was wing,
Sinks deeply with dragonicide, its limp tail following.
Europa
Restless Victory
Disconsolate I go,
The summer looks as cold to me
As winter’s frost & snow
John Clare
‘Tis the end of a terrible battle,
& dully-dimm’d the light that shines for good,
Out of the fight invited Cockerelle,
Corner’d & trapp’d unhappy in a wood,
Just St Denys,
Fled free; transform’d to hart,
Speeds headlong for the sea, hooves pounding as they dart.
Deep in dark Europa’s forest
Feast of victory fair spread,
Whose silver-plated centerpiece
Was the Cock’relle’s head
Satanus raises his chalice
To toast the battle’s dead –
Lieutenants, letting loose a rancid cheer,
Echoed by the war-wonderful Aesir.
Balrog rankles in drunken fit
Abuse hurl’d at the Beast,
“This war is shit! Let’s increase it
& march off to the east –
Enough blood courses thro’ those plains for fifty Fra’aagh to feast!”
Bialowieza
(AA) Canto 28: Barbarossa
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Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream
Iris Murdoch
Diplomatic Breakdown
Begin to learn the patience needed
till the bears’ return, the day
they launch themselves, hungry
George Sipos
Gunflash invigorates the Eastern dawn
& onset marks of dark Barbarossa,
A thousand miles of battle-lines are drawn,
Scale dwarfing the grandstanding of Wagner;
Molotov hears
A hammer at his door,
What arrogance appears? The Reich Ambassador!
“…acts of Russian terrorism
We shall force to pay the cost,
Our rapport with communism
Sadly is forever lost,
Due to Jewish bolshevism
The Nieman hath been cross’d!”
A flabberghasted laugh… a look… a pause…
“& so, at war, our country is with yours.”
A flapping fish caught in a net,
Molotov moved closer,
“Our armies set to meet your threat,”
We shall see… Heil Hitler!”
A click of heels, a strutting out, chang’d Earth’s fate forever.
Kremlin
June 22nd
1941
Unstoppables
Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away
Delmore Schwartz
Professional processions from the West
Mute the birdsongs of Lithuania
Confidence beaming, their co-emptive quest
To quell the Communistic mania
That like disease
From Moscow’s canker spreads,
Pursued with perfect ease against the flapping Reds
Divisions quite disorganis’d,
Disgruntl’d & depleted,
It’s idiotic chiefs despis’d,
Equipment obsoleted,
An army madly mesmeris’d
&, it seem’d, defeated –
In roll’d the oil, “What do we do with these?
“I think, Archangel, now…” sent overseas
Those oil barrels that were meant
To fuel the London Blitz
Were promptly intercepted, sent
For Britain’s benefits,
To drop bomb loads on Berlin, sent to fill the body pits.
The White Sea
June 23rd
1941
Endless Leagues
An explosion – & a friend dies.
And so death passes you by this time.
Next it will be my turn
Semen Gudzenko
Scenery steam’d in sepianic sheen,
Battles of manic annhialation,
The greatest march the world has ever seen,
With it comes its greatest devastation;
Each Kesselschact
Tannenburg remembers,
Admonish’d pockets pack’d with desp’rate prisoners.
Some megalithic Tsunami
Breaks oer the shores of Asia,
Its spearheads roll relentlessly
Across Pomenaria
Sweeping Ukraine to the Black Sea –
Pitiful defender
Builds his bastions from friable glass,
Crush’d effortlessly as the Panzers pass.
The granges growing less & less,
All round the brown steppes band,
Vast & endless, vapid, friendless,
Idaho feindesland –
Stalin’s colossal empire in the palm of Hitler’s hand.
Byelorussia
July
1941
The Axis
Would he of icy clouds a throne carve bright,
Or would the demons of the deepest night
A bar build where the shining stars sweep free?
Adam Bernard Mickiewicz
Von Ribbentrop receiv’d Matsuoka
Schloss Fuschl, gatehouse of the grand Alpine,
“The war is won,” stated over dinner,
“Strike now & English empire’s your goldmine!”
On Berghof peak
Hitler waited calmly,
“This moment scores 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 nation,
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
July
1941
Death Squad
The dim boy claps because the others clap.
The polite word, handicapped, is muttered in the stands.
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back
Richard Hugo
Buscher flavours mincemeat work with relish,
Hunts down the local Party Kommissar,
Whips him, strips him, rips him like a catfish,
Aufklawrong face of burglarizing War;
Penn’d in Juden
Made sad, Schutzstaffel slaves,
“Follow me you vermin, we go to dig your graves!”
Nazi bestiality pours
Oer conquer’d territory,
Sanguinarius Quaesitors –
Einsatzgruppen – kill for glee,
Clipboards notch numbers for the cause
Quite meticulously,
Impressing Himmler with the murder’s pace,
“I must observe a mass shooting take place.”
The bullets whizz, his shoe-shine spit
Splatters with blood & brain;
Edge of death-pit, close to vomit,
The dying squirm in pain,
“These methods are too crude… we must use something more humane.”
Byeloruss
August 15th
1941
Orphans
My question could have been, In what country
will your pillow finally come to rest
and the rain call you home
Nancy Kuhl
Mister sleep misses Kenny & Mavis,
Kept awake by the rumbling punishment
Shaking the distant cottonopolis,
A dull, red glow its torture’s testament;
While down the stairs
A letter is discuss’d
To share it with their cares, or censure it in trust?
They went out as a family
To spend the odd, spare shilling,
On ribb’d sands by the Irish Sea
Run pilots green for drilling,
Quarter’d in ev’ry B&B;
Oer the pack’d proms milling
Young Mavis pointed out approaching sight –
Two air fighters lock’d in thrilling dogfight!
For half-an-hour they fought anon,
& none were barely better
The duel done, all petrol gone,
Engines fail & splutter;
Crashing both on crushpack station, deaths entwine together.
Blackpool North
August
1941
Subjugations
My days were a thing for me to live,
For others to deplore;
I took of life all it could give
Countee Cullen
Buscher rode to the gorge at Babi-Yar,
Black conduit to extermination,
Stripping Jewesses of dress, slip & bra,
He lined them in naked degradation;
Life’s last moments
Wailing in extremis,
Machine gunner opens, delivering death’s kiss.
He rode thro’ warm, Autumnal rain
To a solemn city square,
Men strung up in a greivous pain
Did dance short-time upon the air,
Near them Dosia waits in train,
Voluptuous & fair…
Buscher trots slowly all along her line,
Dismisses the rest, “This one shall be mine…
…Send her to my house in Bremen!”
Beady eyes undress her;
Young Konstantin boil’d up within,
Sprinted home to Mother,
With tear-streak’d eyes he splurted out, “They have stolen sister!”
Kiev
September
1941
Natural Mercy
He surfaces. A screel at first light.
He is alone and at leisure. He is
talking to himself, pecking at the waterfall
Nitoo Das
As souls protected by a wall of flesh,
Defenses stiffen at the Stalin line,
Pillbox & village fortify the mesh
Threshing the sacroiliacal spine
Of Germans clang-
Ing angrily along,
‘Twhere stubborn spearsmen sang their sostenuto song.
“Another filthy prisoner!”
The untursturmfuhrer said,
“Why send him to Kozelshchyna
Wasting water, fuel & bread,
Let’s get rid of him… Dietwolf!” “Sir!”
“Go shoot him in teh head…”
“Where?” “Wherever, just do it…” slow, serene,
The Goddess KARMA, queen-like, chose the scene.
The Russian begs, weeps for his life,
Whos young scar’d eyes did stare
At photo-wife, Deit lifts his knife
& cut the wristbonds bare
“I’m a soldier, not a killer…” & shoots into the air.
Shlisselburg
Sept 7th
1941
Letters Home
Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Czesław Miłosz
Nine torrid months finds Lina’s mind a-whirl,
Still grieving for the loss of her daughter,
“She always seem’d a fit & healthy girl,
How she could have died of pneumonia?”
“My darling wife,
We must give up her ghost,”
Fresh toast & butter knife… Friedrich fetch’d in the post.
“Papa, this is Khan’s handwriting!”
Max snatch’d at his son’s hand,
Tensions delay’d the opening,
Too few contents too soon scann’d,
“All is well! But he is missing,
Mama, his food so bland…
Ev’rywhere the army victorious…
He’ll be home, he is sure, before Christmas!”
“The proudest I have ever been,
My boy he is so brave!”
Xaver’s eye-sheen films with dark green,
Affections he did crave,
So rush’d to join the U-boat arm, for action & the wave.
Berlin
September
1941
(AA) Canto 29: War Wounds
**************************************
All is ruin’d, for fire & the headlong God of War
Speeding in a Syrian chariot shall bring you low.
Many a tower shall he destroy, not yours alone,
While over the roof-tops black blood runs streaming
In prophecy of woe that needs must come
Aristonice
Commander-in-Chief
Then red in the reek of that evil cloud,
The Hun swept over the plain;
And the murderer’s dirk did its monster work
WW Campbell
Striding relentlessly Der Fuhrer breaks
The shackles of his vaulting ambition,
Drunk on stunning success he calmly makes
A crucial & game-changing decision;
“First we shall throw
A cloak round Leningrad
&, ignoring Moscow, swing south to Stalingrad.”
Map after map mural’d the walls
With all of his massive gains,
Whose obsequious generals
Wet as otters in the rains,
“We must mount, soon, the broad Urals,”
Their supreme chief explains,
“& with my duty to this world complete
This world shall ever tremble at the feat.”
Stood representing each army
A six-inch swastika,
From which sat free the Czar’s city,
“For that peasant Mecca,
Let her vanish from Earth’s face, berseigtigen forever.”
Wolf’s Lair
September 9th
1941
Imperial Japan
The Master smiled:
For the Seed that He had set
Broke presently thro’ the mould
Robert Buchanan
Sit amidst the shuku-kei of Basho,
Nibbling upon delectable sushi,
Observe a most engrossing game of Go,
Cherubim up-topping cups of Saki;
Chrysanthemums
Scenting Septembral air,
Gorgeous rainbow pom-poms in riot ev’rywhere.
In their casual Wafuku
War seems very far away,
Geisha passes round rich tofu,
“What of Britain?” she did say,
“Her empire sickly thro’ & thro’,
They won’t survive the fray…”
“True Kido-San,” said Basho, “but, for me,
America our one true enemy…
Such crude embargo set in place,
Forbidden to buy oil,
We feel disgrace, that haughty race
Has set my blood aboil!
Friends! we must win an empire their machinations to foil.”
Kanazawa
September
1941
Prisoner of War
Against the armour of the storm
I’ll hold my human barrier,
maintain my fragile irony
Hamish Henderson
Cradle of Slavic Christianity
Blown up Sergei Stiltski’s own brethren,
Trudging slowly thro’ this depress’d city,
Close to the road resounds an explosion;
Marching to war
Yon Kiev’s anxious hive,
Toward the front’s dull roar, one rifle between five.
A disaster without precedent,
The largest ever troop-trap,
As Hitler wounds an elephant
With a circle on a map,
With Stalin sat impenitent
As broke the thunderclap;
Six hundred thousand survive the battle,
Fenced off in roofless fields like dumb cattle.
“Food!” “Food!” Sergei springs to action
& sprints to this barb’d wire,
Heaving legion of starving men,
Moaning hunger’s desire,
Scrapping for scraps… he caught a bap, tho stale wolf-gorged entire.
Ukraine
September
1941
Drang Noch Osten
The east wind blows rain,
Vexing the rambler.
The road turns to mud
Lu You
Stalin’s laughter haunts Hitler’s garish dreams,
Ghosts whisper, “Delenda est Carthago!”
Come morning konferenz his sol-fa screams,
“I must begin the drive upon Moscow!”
“Perhaps we should
First form a winter’s line?”
“Nonsense! with one last shove the Kremlin shall be mine.”
Those mucky & encouching seas,
Thick, brown, froze ev’ry axle,
The Wehrmacht sinks up to it’s knees,
Jackboots suck’d from each ankle,
Their throttle roar more flagging breeze,
A foundering battle…
While Ollie rifles thro’ the Russian dead
Some sleep-coat stands & stabs him in his head.
Khan blew that black-tooth’d grin away
& dug his friend’s death-hole,
The grave fill’d in, loss felt like kin,
For friendship touches soul,
While from the ruthless Heavens Winter’s first snowflake did fall.
Dorogobuzh
October 7th
1941
Emperor
Dawn —
fish the cormorants haven’t caught
swimming in the shallows
Yosa Buson
Lilts Tojo, admiring, thro’ lush gardens,
Yon lotus buds with flowers commingling,
Thro’ palace halls tapestried with legends,
To the throne of a line everlasting:
Bows low he there;
Below his Emperor,
Sate on his dragons-chair, flank’d by vase & flower.
His excellency, Hideki,
Has gain’d Hirohito’s trust,
“How long must we let them treat thee
Like some coolie in the dust?
We must attack our enemy,
To strike first is a must,
To destroy our great Pacific rival,
Yamamoto wills your heart to battle!”
The starsoul thinks, then with a sigh,
Lets War loose with a nod,
A time to fly, a time to die,
In service to their ‘god,‘
Strains Japan’s soul, all set to burst from Wisteric seedpod.
Tokyo
Nov 3rd
1941
Fortress Malta
This is the dark time, my love,
All round the land brown beetles crawl about
The shining sun is hidden in the sky
Martin Carter
Mussolini blames his woes on Malta,
“Allow this hornet’s nest no hour of rest,
An unsinkable aircraft carrier,
From now keep her activity depress’d;
She is the knife
Press’d on lines of supply,
Her people full of life, then they will have to die.”
The Maltese met Il Duce’s rage,
Determin’d on liberty,
Imprison’d in an island-cage
They’ll dig themselves to safety,
A second neolithic age,
For faith’s first family;
Living life in a limestone catacomb,
Candles & prayers lighting up the gloom.
Fighting for their little country
They’d help a global cause,
‘Tween Italy & Tripoli
Attack’d the Axis stores,
With submarines & wellingtons, force all the wrack of wars.
Mediterranean
November
1941
Day in the Life
The brittle aromatic sage, which,
Trodden down, gives forth a fragrance that hangs
Upon the air, as broken bodies bleed
M Wilmoth
Dust devils swept the deadlock of Tobruk,
Dead heart of this most dreadful of dead lands,
The molten, hostile sky of the Menluk,
Medusa’s blood-serpents squirming thro’ sands;
As Dawn slow grows
Eager for the slaughter
Tommy Sumner arose… life short, but days shorter.
From out some mess tin Tom did shave,
Nobble-knee’d in khaki pants,
White knight of a Crusader wave,
Carthaginian elephants,
Whose citadels turn totall’d grave,
Flames licking from the vents…
& with a best mate shot on either side
A brown-eyed boy from Burnley nearly died.
As Billy writhed in agony,
On hot sand worm-guts spill’d,
How terribl’y veterancy
Such hellish sights did build,
‘If mi number int on it,’ Tommy thought, ‘I sha’nt get kill’d!’
Cyrenaica
November
1941
Slavic Sore
To learn from trees, from skyward-aiming poplars,
how humble, and yet upright, to remain.
To understand that what they keep imploring
Magda Isanos
On continental Europe all is plain,
All, all fallen in Hitler’s eager hands,
But for the neutrals – Sweden, Suisse & Spain –
& one bold bunch of rugged mountain bands;
When he can say
Veni, Vidi, Vici,
Must surely come today, into that wild contree
His legionnaires onslaughting crash’d,
But again Tito stands firm
Neath Stuka, Krupp & motar blast,
Of a wrathful donnersturm,
As shades of night were falling fast,
A partisanic squirm
Out of his grasp, up to the mountainsides
Into safe regions, led by local guides.
These fearless, spirited, unique,
Indomitable men
Play hide & seek, while week by week
The Wehrmacht try again –
Sensing their liberation, now, is not an ‘if?’ but ‘when!’
Montenegro
November
1941
Glimpse of Glory
they are making you fight a treacherous war,
you were not born in snow
you do not know snow, come back
Akhil Katyal
Fascisti race to the gates of Moscow,
Ran ragged in her ruin’d environs,
Ice-caked at thirty-five below zero,
& the Russkis still scrapping like demons;
Skirting the verge
Of that fabled city,
One last glorious surge must seize them victory!
Kampfswagon engine warm’d by fires,
Khan’s company advances,
On reconnaissance’s acquires
Most mythical of glances,
In nearing distance Moscow’s spires
Flutter like goldfinches,
Rough volley of gunshot disturbs the dream
For motley crews of workers on them stream!
With the Panzers frozen solid
A few leagues to the rear,
Entrench’d Russian, with wrench & gun,
In action ever near,
With pisgah sight those spires espied… mist shrouds… then disappear.
Khimki
December 3rd
1941
(AA) Canto 30: Explosion
**************************************
The barbarians are to arrive today
C.P Cavafy
American Opinion
It is imminent; in the sudden smell
of wet grass and stir among the frangipani,
in the straight tense fence-posts in half-light
Wong Phui Nam
Rita clocks off another working day
Making deadly accoutrements of War,
Collected her ever-increasing pay,
Then nipp’d in for a whiskey down Hank’s Bar;
Conversation
Deepens at the refill,
“I did not raise my son just to die for Churchill!”
“I fought,” said Hank, “In Flanders’ mire,
Back in Nineteen Seventeen,
Pull’d Britain’s chestnuts from the fire
In scenes like ya’ve never seen,
Just so that lousy old Empire
Remains our global queen!”
A tear slipp’d from the corner of his eye,
“Y’know I saw a lotta good men die.”
She drains the glass, gush’d from her core,
“God bless America!”
Walks thro’ the door to Ned’s new store,
There buys a newspaper,
Front pages dominated by sour-face Mister Hitler!
Jerkwater
December 5th
1941
Pendulum Turns
My country is my pride & glory!
The great Soviet people in a headlong rush
Of fiery lava will wipe out the fascist gang
Nikolai Tikhonov
For those friends having fail’d to run the course
Willie’s harp sang a sad & lilting dirge,
Breakfasting on the flesh of frozen horse,
Sweat froze to Khan at his madnesses verge;
Reduced to rags,
Barely untermenschen,
O torn & tatter’d flags, O worn & shatter’d men!
Over Moscow’s frozen river
Came Zhukov’s counter-attack,
Fresh soldiers of Siberia,
From many a hunter’s shack,
Spirits fortified by vodka,
Snowsuits upon the back,
Supported closely by planes & cannons,
Shall pulverise those exhausted Germans.
Thus perishes the same retreat
Which slew the Grand Army,
Raped with defeat, scraping ice-sheet
Men trudge dejectedly,
Homes burning, & potatoes, to express tough enmity.
Russia
December 6th
1941
Pearl Harbour
Sometimes I fly at dawn above the sea,
Where, underneath, the restless waters flow—
Silver, and cold, and slow
Paul Bewsher
Sol’s portal rose Impayen from silk sea,
Illumes a rain-thrash’d fleet thro’ morning mist,
Upon the flat-top of the Akagi
Yamamoto crushes pearl in fist;
World-airwaves fill,
“Tora-Tora-Tora!”
Instreaming for the kill, screaming, “The Emperor!”
They burst on battleships in rows
Like Samurai hard charging,
Swin-streaking swordfin torpedoes,
Underneath the whizzing wing
An awful & unlawful show,
Noble ships exploding,
Day of Lusitanian proportions,
Flys everywhence across the world’s oceans.
“KERWHOOM!” The West Virginia
Joins the sunken others,
Oklahama, Arizona –
But not the carriers –
Thro’ chance or fate, steaming at sea, peacef’ly on manoeuvres!
Hawaii
December 6th 1941
08.15
First Strike
You have blown out beauty
with a breath, torn her,
dealt her the death-wound
Salvatore Quasimodo
Barb’d hornets flew all over Ohau,
In lethal waves obsessing for the kill,
Too slowly the realisation grew,
“We are being attack’d! This is no drill!”
Amidst the hell
That burnt at Hitcham Field
A Yankee gave a yell behind a Browning shield.
This all-American hero,
While pals hugg’d nearby ditches,
Spread lead, fed with deadly gung-ho,
“Ya yella sons of bitches!”
A cracking shot plunged some Zero
Into football pitches,
Crash-landing & smashing into a post,
“Goddam! That slant-eyed mother fucker’s toast!”
With the morning’s carnage over,
With no more death to spread,
Each warrior – in good order –
Atop the white wave sped,
Leaving Hawaii belching smoke & Hirohitan dead.
The Pacific Ocean
December 7th 1941
09.30
America Goes to War
A million, ten million, singing, “I am ready.”
This the sun looks on between two seaboards,
In the land of Lincoln, in the land of Grant & Lee
Carl Sandburg
Thin veil of snow covers the capital,
A little ice drifts on the Potomac,
An all together pageant of wonderful,
Oblivious to enemy attack;
Dines Rooseveldt
Inside those Whitehouse walls,
The perfidy hard felt, the murdering apalls.
News-tickers read the deed aloud,
What words to be receiving,
Rude shock electrifies the crowd
Jaws dropping disbelieving,
A father’s tear slips sad & proud,
Portending his grieving…
Deep in the Dustbowl Carlton park’d his car
To race into the kitchen babbling ‘Ma!
Ma! Where are you?”‘ About the farm
The workers gets the gist,
“Don’t join the army, boy, stay calm,”
“But Ma, I must enlist!”
She tried to soothe him with soft hands, but strokes a pearl-clench fist.
Jerkwater
December 7th
1941
Rewards of Patience
We that so glory in your high decision,
So trust your goal;
All Europe in our blood, but yours our vision
ES Swift
Face sighing stern, lips draining brandy glass,
Marlborough’s blood congealing for the fight,
Depress’d with this unpleasant presentness,
No way to win the Wars at all in sight;
Blimp from dinner,
Cheeks half-cock’d all aglow,
He gestures his butler fetch in the radio…
As he twiddl’d with his diamonds
Tun’d to service with a clink
“… attack’d the Hawaiian islands…”
Splash, spit, splurt, out burst his drink,,
“All the tides & all the oceans,
Dare this be what I think?”
By private line he reach’d the President –
To serve his hopes, it seem’d, an angel sent.
“God be with you!” how civilly
Men end a friendly call
His boyish glee vees victory,
“So we’ve won after all…
Now Hitler’s fate is seal’d,” he utters with a sterner drawl.
London
December 7th
1941
Sunrise
The sun that in the East does rise
Drapes clouds with golden gown,
O’er seas and peaks it sails the skies
Bernhard Severin Ingemann
Harvesters of Hirohito’s blessing
Invasion-fleeted, surg’d across the sea
Nippon’s naval majesty expressing,
To manifest, at last, their destiny!
Sacred crusade
On wings of iron & fire,
The White man will be made to choke on his empire.
From Cathay down to Mandalay,
Oer Kota, Thailand & Guam
The Sunrise burst with roaring ray
Across colonial calm
Cheap stars of tin hacking their way
With masterful sword-arm,
The whole of West Pacifica ablaze
Night, pitch-black, lay upon the deep,
Splinter’d by moon’s bright glow,
Towards shores steep sea-soldiers creep
Steep’d in deep bushido
The only sounds were motor whirrs until the sandy blow…
Malaya
December 8th
1941
Axis Expansion
O how impossible it is for the ill-fated
Poet to know his destiny. How can he say
By whom he will be slandered, hated
Yuli Daniel
A date to prosper long in infamy
& many a death sentence rubber stamp
With Hitler’s face, the world’s arch enemy
Whose mistress switches on the bedside lamp;
Marettimo
To Turin & Trieste,
Armour’d armadillo snarls at the Eagle West.
Il Duce war declares, city
Eternal senses unease,
With depthless minerality
America, overseas,
Is royal with reality
Brains cool’d by logic’s breeze,
Ciano gaz’d down the Via del Corso,
“Yankee tanks will clank up here – I know so,
When bucket tears shall clear the blood
Fill’d by the widow springs…”
But then who could stop that fresh flood
Of fashion, Fascist kings
Determine mass reactions of the mussolinilings.
Rome
December 11th
1941
Releasing Wolves
What will we do
when there is nobody left
to kill?
June Jordan
As packs of seawolves rise from rock & reef
Like children unbridl’d to a garden
The U-Boats in conjubilant relief
Unleash’d to focus an ocean’s cordon;
To win this war
Old Britain must be starv’d
Thro’ merchant shipping tore a darkness sharply carv’d.
As Schellenberg rakes thro’ the files
From comprehensive sources
An accurate report compiles
For Heydrich on the forces
Of American Anglophiles –
Metals, oil & horses;
“Eighty-five to ninety million tonnes
Of steel?” “Yes sir!” such massive numbers stuns
Hitler… “Unsinn!” Goering retorts,
“What absolute nonsense
He crafts reports to convince courts
Of his self-importance,
Better let psychiatrists tend this mental disturbance.
Berlin
December 13th
1941
(AA) Canto 31: Dangerpitch
**************************************
‘A soldier’s life is terrible hard,’ says Alice
A.A.Milne
World War
Hurry, oh fast-flying Time, fly more quickly!
In my new armour I faint, I am choking.
I shall alight, with Death holding my stirrup
Mikhail Lermontov
Rommel is retreating to Gazala,
Barbarossa nears annihilation,
Closing net sets Hitler to the ponder,
Torn open by timely escalation;
With vital blow
An ally ne’er vanquish’d
Has ridden to the show in ways he would have wish’d.
Summoning the Reichstag android
Rose Hitler, virulently,
“We cannot this world war avoid –
The responsibility
Of that half-Judaiz’d, negroid,
Capitalist country!
Standing side-by-side with the Emperor,
I have declared against America!”
Whi
As the claque joy demonstrated
A twinge shook Goering’s gut,
His long waited, ever-fated,
Mad nightmare nailing shut,
A Reichmarshall woe-whispering, “Now Deautschland is kaput!”
Berlin
December 11th
1941
Resettlement
Stooping in solemn grief, down the muddy trek
Moves the sad cortege. The scrawny little nag
Slowly draws the hearse, stretching its long neck
Vojislav Ilić
The Star of Poland, stitch’d in yellow band,
Marks the arm of every human Jew,
That on the pack’d platform with Grunfelds stand –
A cattle wagons clatters into view;
Peasant & Priest
Into that cramm’d space sent,
Trains lurching to the East, towards resettlement.
As frightful freights of pity flow,
Desperation stagnates air,
One welcome smile softens the blow,
Waited Jakob calmly there,
To lead them thro’ a grey ghetto,
A flat for all to share –
Two rooms & one tiny lavatory
Was all there was to host his family.
Nikki slipp’d to the ghetto wall,
The sign ‘Verboten’ said,
Chasing the roll of her wee ball,
The sentry shot her dead…
Wailing kinah to side & sheloshim the Grunfelds sped.
Warsaw
December
1941
Death of Khan Stemmler
He said to us, his eyes like candles,
“Men! Isn’t Moscow there behind us?
Let’s die for Moscow now
Mikhail Lermontov
All across the front the counter-strikes start,
Spurr’d on by vengeance, Stalin & Smirnoff,
It seems as if the ghosts of Bonaparte
Have fled the cannonades of Kutuzov;
Adolf aghast,
Thin hair afleck with grey,
“The army will stand fast, we must not fight like Ney!”
Footed firm with heavy losses
Germans slow the grand Russian,
But now invincible hubris
Defeated to depression,
Like Sargon’s curs’d calamiities
With the Kullumaean…
Without his fingers, toes & half-a-nose
Khan staggers lifelorn thro the drifting snows.
CRACK! CRACK! He falls awrith with pain,
Snow red-stain’d where he bled,
The warm breaths wane, the bloody mane
Of some befang’d wolfshead
Brushes his cheek, rips out his throat… today the pack well fed.
Russia
Christmas Day
1941
Malta Silenc’d
So they buried her, & turned home,
a drab psalm
hanging about them like haar
Kathleen Jamie
Christmas passes &, without a victor,
Hitler curses Calypso’s hardy isle,
From whose short airstrips, serving Valetta,
Afric’s convoys attack’d mile-after-mile;
As Rommel starv’d,
Suez vein flows open,
Sundering forces, halv’d twyx Saxons & Russian.
Malta’s besieg’d by brutal means,
As Mussolini’s navy
Convok’d bloodthirsty Hagarenes
Who’d throttl’d her from the sea,
Old churches blown to smithereens
By codotteiri
Leading Luftwaffe; air-stips pulveris’d,
At last this pestilence is neutralized!
Merchantmen to Sicilia’s
Fair shores of saffron flow,
Thro’ siestas topless sailors
On decks spread tranquilo;
Below, tanks gloop with petrol to ride the Libyan plateaux.
The Mediterranean Sea
January 4th
1942
The Final Question
You’re our country’s lost property
with no office to claim you back.
You’re polluting our sounds. You’re so rude.
Jussawalla
Heydrich receives Hitler’s whim thro’ Himmler,
Schutzstaffel konferenz to Wansee borne,
Yachts dallying on a gentle water
Sumptuous luncheons laid on level lawn;
Gfromfinger-licks
& champagne guzzl’d hard,
Men dawdl’d thro’ dorics of a v
“The time hath come for Endlosung,”
Chirp’d Heydrich over brandy,
“The very last blood-drop be wrung
From the Jews methodic’ly,
& spare us not avenging young,
Raise hands if you agree…”
This act of villain faith wraithweevils share,
Adds Eichmann, “Let us breath, a cleaner air…
At Auswich an innovation
Successfully was tried,
The gas Zyklon… deportation
Shall drain Europa wide,
In fifty months more than ten million Jews will have died…”
Berlin
January
1942
Soviet Stoicism
at regular intervals,
one dry leaf after another
falls from the tree
Vinod Kumar Shukla
Snow falls with a blizzard-bitter harshness,
Yet onwards, ever onwards, rolls the war,
God mighty canon-Krupps sent to oppress,
The celebrated ‘Venice’ of the Czar;
Constant shellfire
Rains down on every side;
No redoubt to retire, no bunker for to hide.
Despite worsening misery
Of the hungry, cold half-dead,
Men kept alive through poetry
& the sawdust in their bread,
But none hold onto sanity
With bellies barely fed,
Beloved pets spit roasted, streets of fear
As first few little children disappear.
Krasnaya fills with men & guns,
Oktober’s famed parade,
The sights of sons & fathers stuns,
The women in the shade,
Saluting Vladamir’s statue off to the front they fade.
Leningrad
January
1942
British Ocean
I will go & lie inside his body,
Go down in the sea where they buried him,
& stay with him there
Ifaluk Atoll
The waters of the world a wild whirlpool,
Ships sucking into sub-infested seas,
Here wolfish packs of hunter-slayers rule
Across convulsing convoys, like disease!
Atop the main,
Tho,’ Germans second best,
Like fleets of France & Spain, & bottled up in Brest!
Three German warships & their men
Desperate for home waters;
Scharnhurst, Gneisnau, Prince Eugen,
Adash the Channel waters,
Courting no man with Nelson’s ken
Commands Britain’s forces,
With English radarstreams cleverly jamm’d
They’ll run the flimsy gauntlet to Deutcshland.
Amid Hanseatic safety
& the Norwegian fjords,
Hitler’s navy rejects the sea
& slowly rots the boards,
Imprinted on their psyches is the sharp of Deptford’s swords.
Coast of Europa
Feb 15th
1942
Fall of Singapore
Blowing from the west,
Fallen leves gather
In the east
Buson
The Tyger of Malaya gains his name,
The teeming jungles stain by bosky blood,
On England’s empire comes an eastern claim,
Built as it is on soft, tropical mud;
An army runs
Pell-mell to Singapore,
Where vital forts & guns stuck on the southern shore.
Shane Slater fed into the fight,
A total, bloody shambles!
Watches Shonan, the Southern light,
Fair cauldron of world peoples,
Bow meekly to the Tyger’s might,
Tyrant without scruples,
Dehumanizing all who surrender
“Cowards call yourselves, kill yourselves better!”
Miserable, defeated men
Choke the road to Changi,
Shot & beaten, none have eaten,
Luckless & footweary,
Facing uncertain futures in useless captivity.
Singapore
February 16th
1942
Manzanar
What longs to leap is impassioned
As the sound of strings he tuned and strummed,
Pulled, plucked and put aside for years
Anand Thakore
The Feds are swooping down on the Issei,
Arresting them for racial ancestry,
But left alone both Gerry & Iti,
Yes! even tho’ those lands the enemy;
From recent years
To Fourth Generation,
Pleas fall on empty ears… “But we’re American!”
As smirching citizens intern’d
In barracks’ concentration,
Precious land liberties were spurn’d
Despite the proclamation
Sign’d by the free, a freedom earn’d,
When, in celebration,
Each Fourth July confetti showers fall –
A child looks up at the camptowers tall
& with a frown did ruminate
On gunmen in the sky,
So to the gate where green men wait
She skipp’d & ask’d them,
“Why Am I in here?” they could not say nor could they simplify.
California
February
1942
(AA) Canto 32: The Siege of Malta
**************************************
Malta of gold, malta of silver, malta of precious metal,
We shall never take you!
& from her ramparts a voice replied,
I am she who has decimated the galleys of the Turks
& all the warriors of Constantinople & Galata
Badajoz
Digression
Such dire encroachments to prevent in time,
Demands the critic’s voice – the poet’s rhyme.
Can our light scenes add strength to holy laws?
RB Sheridan
I pledge a motion for the grand digress,
Which poems of this nature may include,
Some may question its appropriateness,
Yet others think the moment rather shrewd;
To all accounts
I offer further gloss,
Bless’d by those faithful founts, the Crescent & the Cross.
As we walk among these pages,
With a mind to phantsize,
Ghosts have willow’d down the ages
Forming phantoms in the skies,
As the cataclysm rages
Twix Axis & Allies,
We find the legacies of former times
Have influenced the varnish of these rhymes.
The Knights of Saint John, & their swords,
Seek out new naval base
Departing Rhodes, darting Whale-roads,
Like pirates at a pace,
To settle on a treeless rock & fortify its face.
Malta
1530
War’s Promise
I feel that I am the king of time
I possess the earth and everything on it
and ride into the sun upon my horse
Nizar Qabbani
The Peacock of the World rose from his throne,
Wishing a land-lock’d sea a Turkish pond,
“The fish of Malta is the stepping stone
To Sicily & all the world beyond;
That obscure rock
Insults us & our queen,
Thus from their viper-dock we’ll drive the Nazarene.
My finest force I shall employ,”
Added Allah’s deputy,
“These sons of dogs ever destroy,
Tho’ they earn’d my clemency
When I was young & full of joy
Thro’ my first victory,
& I allow’d them honour after Rhodes –
No more shall we suffer their vile marauds.
Our scimitars their throats shall slit,
Dragut, prepare the fleet!“
Yearning credit, gurning merit,
Gen’rals kiss jewel’d feet,
Then divan leave, planning the heathen’s ultimate defeat.
Istanbul
1564
Call to Arms
My grandmother is calling her goslings
My mother is summoning her hens
The sun has vanished into the ocean
Marilyn Chin
Grave news flies to Grandmaster De Valette,
Tho’ days of armageddon clamour near,
From coming frays his faith shall never fret,
To him the infidel inspires no fear;
“Prepare the walls,
Cancel every corso!”
The clang of cannonballs rang thro’ Saint Angelo.
Across the world the summons sent
By ship & sweat-stain’d horsemen,
“Brave knights fly back to the Convent
Go fight beside your brethren!”
Soon many-a-foreign accent
With one voice sang, “Amen,“
Renewing vows at the Sacred Altar;
Each man determined to die on Malta.
Outside, in strangest summer rain,
Four thousand strong Maltese
Shall march & train with men from Spain,
As on the ocean breeze
Soft scented Turkish incense wafted slowly overseas.
Birgu
May
1565
Muslim Landing
From the depths of the ocean
a crocodile in search of a destiny
spied the pool of light, and there he surfaced
Xanana Gusmão
From watchtowers the warning cannon ring,
The Sultan’s fleet arrives as a vast fan,
With livestock & the still-green crops of spring
Many to Birgu & Mdina ran;
Dead beast & dung
Poison’d the Marsa wells,
Songs of devotion sung as witches flung their spells.
That armada sail’d round Gozo,
To show that the sea was closed,
Then at the Marsascirroco
Made anchorage unnoppos’d,
As skiffs ferried his war-cargo
Their old commander dozed,
Untroubl’d by the course of coming days,
Sure on him, soon, the Sultan should heap praise.
Dreams were woken by Mustapha,
First sword of the army,
“My young Pasha, what’s the matter?”
Yawn’d adm’ral Piali,
“This is no time for sleeping, we must seek the victory.”
Marsaxlokk
19th May
1565
The Fall of Fort Saint Elmo
‘Tis a true & faithful saying –
‘Greater love how can there be
Than to yield up life for thee’
Bishop Doane
Dawn lifted rosy wave-breaks to the shore
Where swept a moment of sickly slaughter
For stubborn struggles, say the laws of war,
May never be allow’d normal quarter;
The Knights prepare
To make their final stand,
One crippl’d in his chair, sword tightly in his hand.
Breachward the Janissaries pour’d,
Pride of the Sultan’s power,
All inside gutted on the sword
Yet not one Knight would cower,
For, still, the Maltese Lion roar’d
For one murderous hour –
Until its throat was cut, then stone-dead fell…
Mustapha stepp’d into that groaning hell,
“So small a son has cost us dear,
Then, what price the father?”
More shots men hear, them very near
Five knights fled thro water,
Guided by Toni Bajada safely, cross the Harbour.
Birgu
June 22nd
1565
Pivotal Point
Like cormorants that seek a submerged prey.
An angel of destruction guards the door
And keeps the peace of our ancestral home
Henry Head
By boat & tower came the great assault,
The Port of Castille reeling neath the blow
All seeming lost, but for that thunderbolt
The gods upon our mortal minds bestow;
Hospital horse
Roll’d down Mdina’s ramp,
Set on a killer course to burn the Muslim camp.
As every able-bodied Turk
Rush’d toward the walls in waves,
The christians perform’d such work
On their wounded & their slaves
That thro the smoke of battle’s murk
A road of error paves –
When verged on perfect triumph Pasha hears
“Relief is sent,” fulfilling all his fears.
He march’d his army back to base,
Of enemy no sign,
His fuming face wick with disgrace,
Neck-heckles, shiver-spine,
“Where are these men from Sicily, the victory was mine!”
Marsa
August 7th
1565
The Last Assault
In an embrace which was warm and fiery.
I sinned surrounded by arms
that were hot and avenging and iron
Forough Farrokhzad
As mines explode in animosity
Toni Bajoda shot up in his bed,
Tho’ wounded he’d discover’d energy,
Men, from the sacred infirmary, led;
All gallant friends,
Tho’ most could barely stand,
Upon this strength depends the freedom of a land.
As knight shields fill’d walls warp’d by mine,
Courageous Callachio
Join’d by the Maltese at the line,
Equal with corragio,
Toni took toll of twenty-nine,
His knife well-loved the foe,
So much an arquebusier took aim,
& sent shot flying in a flash of flame.
Tho’ wounded, in a world of pain,
Toni did not falter,
Brave Muslim bane heaping his slain,
Sacrificial altar,
Fed by force indivisible, “I shall fight for Malta!”
Senglea
August 18th
1565
Gran Sossorso
When liberty is headlong girl
And runs her roads and wends her ways
Liberty will shriek and whirl
Archibald MacLeish
One hundred days of daily hearing, “When?”
Sicily’s Viceroy sends vital relief,
Below Mellieha disembarks his men,
Mustapha strokes his beard in disbelief;
“How many ride?”
“Nigh twenty thousand sire,
Combing the countryside!” “The army may retire.”
All thro’ the night the camp was struck –
As the Maltese heard them yell
Them for more attackers were mistook,
Standing arms, set to repel,
Then saw to sea the foe had snook,
& rang triumphant bell,
Amplified across the purple clover,
“The infidel has fled, the siege over!”
Come dawntint were bells still ringing,
Folk stepp’d outside the wall,
Some dance, some sing, some tear-shedding
On bleeding knees did fall,
As all about black bodies burst, curs’d by the murd’rous maul.
Birgu
September
1565
The Relief of Malta
And so when I saw you, nightmare island,
Fade into the autumnal night
I felt the tears rise up for my land
George Barker
Mustapha heard the news he had been fool’d,
Just six thousand form’d Sicily’s relief,
Piali’s caution was soon over-ruled,
“Land ten thousand & meet us up the coast!”
How felt the Turk
When forced back onto land
For more of war’d black work, with peace so close at hand?
Dispirited once brave men are,
Heads filling with dying fear,
Hard galloping down from Naxxar
Swerve the fresh-faced Chevalier,
Men from Mdina & Mgarr
Now on his flank appear,
Enough to finalise his rising doubt,
Cohesion turns to rabble turns to rout.
Some with his friends, some limping lone,
Crawl to the coastal crack,
Shelves of sandstone bare blood & bone,
Christ-sword plunged in their back,
Turks plunging towards safety by the shrill, “…& dont come back!”
Saint Paul’s Bay
September 8th
1565
(AA) Canto 33: Mortal Struggles
**************************************
To delight in conquest is to delight in slaughter
Lao-Tse
Close Run Thing
In this leafy orchard is a nightingale,
a nightingale whose songs are the dawn
and take me into the light
Farzaneh Khojandi
Stalag Luft bustles cudgel-goons & drones,
‘How terribly boring,’ thought restless Bligh,
Now sauntering to Flight-Lieutenant Jones,
Who spies a twinklefox in Nigel’s eye,
“Tonight’s the night!
Are the cutters ready…”
Life’s value actions bright for life & liberty.
Stars fire & thro’ the wire they went
With never a half-look back,
Shunning Sol’s harvest fluorescent,
March’d thro’ night’s covering black,
The dark Black Forest three weeks spent,
They climb’d into a stack…
Dawn swallowing the last of her moonbeams,
The Ranz des Vaches resounding round their dreams.
To gunshot & Teutonic shout
They woke up with a fright,
Rough bundl’d out, fell’d with a clout,
They stood up to such sight…
Almost touching the Heaven slopes of some Helvetian height.
Hoch Finstermunz
March
1942
Axis Encounters
The world is changed with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
GM Hopkins
The Axis met, the Palace of Klessheim
Saw less a meeting, more a monologue –
Mussolini kept noticing the time,
By Ciano sitting like a nodding dog;
A dirge of hours,
Permitted, none, to smoke,
While Hitler on them showers an avalanche of talk.
“Comrades of the fascist Jihad
Let us combine our forces,
Strike from the southern launching pad,
Conquering the Caucasus,
A prompt capture of Stalingrad
Cuts off Red resources,
& following, roll up the Volga’s banks
To penetrate Moscow upon all flanks!”
Whom in that room could e’er resist
Daemonic charisma,
The mesmerist slams down his fist,
“Yes, let’s march together,
To meet Japan in India, then raze America!”
April 30
1942
Duty’s Call
I am maddened with words
and no-one has managed to tell me
why the men are killing each other
Lucia Sanchez Saornil
As colossal, topographical quilt
Forg’d from old photos of the coast of France
While Aimee Gardner watch’d her flowers wilt
She wonder’d if her snaps would stand a chance
To join the spread
& somehow help the war,
A flash of postal red, a letter thro’ the door…
…Her steam train scythes inside Euston
She foliates excited,
Her taxi drills her thro’ London,
Such handsome fancies sighted,
Met, then, Captain Selwyn Jones,
Who cigarette lighted,
Said, £what do you think of Germans?” “Hatred
Yes, violent hatred unabated.”
“Where are you from?” “Miralabeaux.
I’m French essentially,
My husband, tho’, was born in Bow,
He’s true blue bells Cockney;”
“Missions there are, but you must abandon your family…”
London
June
1942
Edda’s War
To be yourself not who you were taught
Not the shell in which you are caught
Not the trivia in which you are embroiled
Sudi Nshimiyimana
Principesse opulence entices
Those rich gerachi & their arch affairs,
Plagued by the instruments of their vices
“So boring now,” sigh’d Edda, to the air
Her Condor rose,
The Eastern Front awaits,
To tend the wounded rows & mend men’s broken fates.
The sun’s exsiccativity
Has drain’d the plains of verdure,
Where powerful velocity
& hours of droning tergure,
Observes no change but the gritty
Black stripes, brutal merger
Of arms, the like of which the world ne’er had
Those charr’d ski scars speeding to Stalingrad.
At last she fac’d the Red Cross tent
Among ochelic ranks,
“May I present Edda – Muss…” “Splint!
Now! Tell Il Duce thanks,
Now put this cunting apron on & scrub those fucking planks!”
Kotelnikov
August 3rd
1941
Swinging Pendulums
for everything in the room was blood-red.
On the window sill, the flowers almost dead.
And all our daily things smelt of the abyss
Leonid Martynov
The winter offensive melts with the snow,
Two great enemies lay down exhausted,
The roads dissolving to a muddy flow,
The front is fix’d, time swung to count the dead;
The German’s score
One million underground,
The Russians many more, what first titanic round!
“Comrades of the fascist Jihad
Let us combine our forces,
Strike from the southern launching pad,
Conquering the Caucasus,
A prompt capture of Stalingrad
Cuts off Red resources,
& following, roll up the Volga’s banks
To penetrate Moscow upon all flanks!”
The pendulum swings back due East,
Stalin’s armies pounded,
More men releas’d, the net increas’d,
All reserves surrounded…
To hoard such feasts of prisoners twelve fresh death camps founded.
Kharkov
May 12th
1942
Burma
Where he makes the rifles cough,
Stutter. Where the reveille
Is staccato majesty
Gwendolyn Brooks
Thro’ fetid swamps Basho drove his forces,
A filthy bunch of Scousers fell upon,
Had them tight-bound at their soft surrenders,
& order’d bayoneted one-by-one;
Blades wipen’d clean,
Under tropical moon,
They press on thro’ the steam to liberate Rangoon.
Thro’ monsoon & malaria,
With barely a bulldog stand,
The British army in Burma
Thro’ a jungle nightmare fann’d
“Yer on yer own fer India!”
The one clear-cut command…
Retreating, in fullness of confusion,
Leafy trails of chaos & destruction.
Basho cross’d the Irrawaddy,
Drove yon the border line,
Eyes sol-lit see raw junglerie
Upon the hills recline,
First bulwark of far-reaching Raj ‘neath Siva’s bleaching shine.
India
May
1942
Unread Letters
graves with girls.
taken too soon.
too brutal
Koleka Putuma
As Eleanor Stemmler felt herself good,
She couldn’t help but cringe beneath her hat,
Vile members of the Sicherheitsdienst stood
Behind her on the train, what awful chat!
As Russia fell
They’d roar’d all thro’ Ukraine
& drove the Jews to hell, two hundred thousand slain.
That night, with Max, she tried to share
This gossip from the sectors,
Horrescent rumours everywhere,
“Tis nothing but conjectures!”
Her husband huff’d, without a care,
Cold as debt collectors,
“But darling, what if, what if it’s all true?”
“But if it is, my love, what can we do?”
“My friend,” she said, “to Kaunus sent,
I’ve written twenty times…”
“Tis innocent, maybe they went
Elsewhere…” as midnight chimes,
Within the silence marital rise minds in violent crimes.
Berlin
June 2nd
1942
Australian Spit
Youth it enflames, but age it cheers,
I would go back, but not return
To twenty but to twice those yeers
Aurelian Townshend
‘The strongest man is mightiest alive,’
Remembers, each dawn, Shane Taylor Slater,
Determin’d, for his father, to survive,
Sensing chances come, sooner or later;
‘Til then, withstood,
All miseries & sun –
Like bluebells in a wood men wilted one-by-one.
To handle such sadistic sin,
Bear such crude brutality,
Phenomenal self-discipline,
Freed from personality,
Was vital, as with dog-bite grin,
Vanishes self-pity,
To live life in the present every day
& all those happy past-lives hold at bay.
For this is where true torture lies –
Not tied to bamboo cane,
Hounded by flies, as back & thighs
Bull-whipp’d by men insane –
Men’s captive reminscences bring them the upmost pain.
Burma
June 6th
1942
Midway
Our seraphs of white mercies
Shall hover around the ruin.
Their wings shall stream upon the flame
E.B.Browning
Nippon probes the fog-shrouded Aleutians
Those last, little islands near Hawaii,
Four flat-tops flying high the rising suns,
Their flagship, Yamamoto’s Akagi;
Up from the decks,
Like cranes leaving a lake,
Accelerant, convex, each ‘dauntless’ clouds uptake.
The dateline cross’d from east to west,
Men steel’d their hearts for valour,
Arising on horizon’s crest
Climbs the target carrier,
In single file planes faced the test,
As, at Balaclava,
The gunneries response is amplified
Crescendowards, ‘twas surely suicide.
The Yorktown sunk… by fate, by luck,
By broken naval codes,
Brewsters amuck those four ships struck,
& so, as Hampton Roads,
Those precious airstrips safely kept, the war’s one true crossroads.
Pacific Ocean
June 7th
1942
(AA) Canto 34: Impasse
**************************************
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country
George Scott
Inferiors
So then, to tell my story, here I stand.
The dress’s tint, though bleached in bitter dye,
Has not all washed away. It still is real.
Gertrud Kolmar
Since Wansee’s vow Nazis have maximis’d
Their social lordship over all the Jews,
Trapp’d in a den, as them dehumaniz’d
In piecemeal motions, widen’d by the news,
This slow process
Of expropriations,
Doubles each day’s duress, & its degradations.
From public pools prohibited,
Purchas’d newspapers denied,
Debarr’d from buying firewood,
Civic central kept outside,
Electricals confiscated
With telescopes, as died
The shining light of man’s modernity,
Portcullis closes for eternity.
On recremental lives deposed,
Like swine lacking odour,
Good schools are clos’d, warm homesteads hosed
Down with soapy water,
Evicted, cramm’d in hungry camps… cattle to the slaughter.
Germany
June
1942
Death of Heydrich
Only a tiny drill
Can turn into powder
The hardened one
Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming
King Wenceslas’ crown adorns the Hangman
Of Prague, who rules his province arrogant
Enough to be guarded by no real plan…
Thus went his Mercedes, his doom’s advent;
Two patriots
Plot assassination,
Sneak-bomb back’d up by shots… fear waltzes thro’ Tschechienne.
While all around the manhunt raged
Killers refuge in a crypt,
But still ruthless Gestapo gaug’d
Their whereabouts, & so tipp’d
Soldiers of the SS, engaged
This church as bullets ripp’d
Rank on rank from desperate defenders,
“Reserve your last bullets t’avoid tortures.”
Einsatzgruppen dealt the disgust
Of the German peoples,
Beaten & cuss’d, male peasants thrust
Inside cellars, stables,
There set alight, their homes destroy’d, their wives shot thro’ the skulls.
Lidice
June 9th
1942
Clandestine Protestations
I love to see thee bring to naught
The plans of wily men;
When simple hearts outwit the wise
Frederick William Faber
“The herd mentality has serv’d us well,
Irresolute & shallow as them led
Wither we are leading, Heaven or hell!”
“It matters not, as long as them well fed
By daily trucks,
Diets of galling stones,
Which grab & cut & suck soft marrow from hard bones.”
Like children, in untutor’d throng,
Overbrushing what looks strange,
Good women, sensing things were wrong,
Felt powerless of change,
But thro’ Von Moltke blew a song
Tho’ dangerous in range,
Solanaceaen intelligentsia
Clambors up from cellars, & together!
Helmuth advis’d the High Command
With secret plans to skew,
His name demands each shame disbands
With sisyphean due,
Not, “what you do’s horrendous,” but, “what does it gain for you?“
Berlin
June 26th
1942
FC Start
Never say no to any
Delight which your life bestows.
Grasp it with hungry senses!
Ingeborg Flood
Kizmenko was march’d inside the warehouse
Known by the name Bakery Number Five,
His countrymen as quiet as a mouse,
Just happy to be working & alive;
With joy he saw
Friends from the Dynamo,
& by them on the floor, Lokomotiv Moscow!
As certain persons of this world
Live life as they are meant to
The flag of FC Start unfurl’d,
Russian red & Ukraine blue,
As team thro’ intense training hurl’d
Such expectations grew –
& in the end, whatever might befall,
These dusty kickabouts sooth’d heart & soul!
Upon a happy summer’s day
When dreamer’s lived the dream,
Nazi leeway, they’ll get to play
Romanian starcream,
& goal-by-goal dismantled them, such was their splendid team.
Kiev
July
1942
White Rose Bloom
Whilst fearful battle breaks at dead of night
Heroes ! rise & play your part
The stars will lead you with their friendly light
Roger Scicluna
As darker powers seas & shorelines weave,
Releas’d from their subboreal syndrome,
Hans Scholl & Alex Schmorell frontlines leave,
Disjointing from the bucks that first left home;
Compell’d to write
Leaflets of common sense,
To flog & put to flight cognitive dissonance.
They quoted, quite extensively,
Novalis, Aristotle,
To castigate the bourgouisie
Goethe, Schiller – terrible
Truths told of Fascist Germany –
Most unfathomable
T’would be if Hitler were to win his wars –
Form leaflets mail’d thro’ academic doors.
First Von Moltke read the letter,
Then read it three times oer,
Subnubilar to Luminar
He found a dozen more,
& sent them all to Stockholm for reprintment, spore on spore.
Berlin
July
1942
The Russian Front
the vegetation is of iron
dead tanks, gun barrels split like celery
the metal brambles have no flowers or berries
Keith Douglas
Ravenous warfare, widening regions,
Town hall dominoes sporting swastikas,
Lungbursting songs of conquering legions,
Interrogateries & massacres;
We’ve never seen
A battle of its ilk,
Blood-bolter’d gallow-queen enrob’d in sallow silk.
Tho’ northern impasse yet remain’d,
That lock of arms humungous,
Destruction of the South unchain’d
By supercharg’d invaders,
Another mass of mileage gain’d,
But, with less surrenders –
Thro’ battle’s college wiser men are born,
The Red Army was skillfully withdrawn.
“Get me Von Paulus on the phone!”
“Mein Fuhrer?” “You must take
Stalingrad – ALL of it must fall!”
Gen’rals groan’d in the wake,
“Silence, my will insconced in fate, the Bolshevik must break.”
Vinnitsa
July 23rd
1942
Camp Eingost
And now I know what ails the world: Power
Humility dies on its very own emaciated neck
Even cockroaches rise
Rira Abbasi
Life weary, yet life loves to linger on,
At least in Warsaw some know family,
One restless morn th’ess-ess form a cordon,
Shunting away the old ones, forcibly;
“You will be sent
To safe & special camp,”
But reality meant extinguishing life’s lamp.
The Starbearers pack’d tight without
Water nor ventilation,
Days trundle by ’til rough shout “Out!”
A primitive train station,
Old Hersz is fill’d with gnawing doubt
At the explanation
That for these showers they must strip to skin,
He kiss’d his Kaiser’s cross & crept within.
The Harikvah soon screaming roar,
As hissing swirl’d the gas,
Squirm, writhe & claw… alive no more
They search’d each mouth & ass,
& form’d possession-mountains, ditching deep the warm corpses.
Treblinka
July 22nd
1942
Desert Surge
With grey arm twisted over a green face
The dust of passing trucks swirls over him,
Lying by the roadside in his proper place
Gavin Ewart
On a day suffocating & stormy,
Resplendent bloom’d the Rose of Jericho,
Til’ crush’d beneath grinding machinery
Of Afrikans advancing row by row;
Led by Rommel,
Darling of the masses,
To conquer the Kanal & claim the Caucasus.
With flair & flourish he attack’d
Scudding hard & calcin’d earth,
Battle’s hot, corrosive impact
His to steer by right of birth,
Tobruk’s quicksand captured intact,
Much bloodspill marks it’s worth,
A port from which a warring conqueror
Could drive the British out of Africa.
To Alamein the Eighth withdraw,
Digging-in defences,
Midst Cairo’s War th’embassadour
Urns his secret papers.
As the Fleet, from Alexandria, flees for safer harbours.
Egypt
August 7th
1942
Malta Starved
‘See you tomorrow, then.’ Tomorrow,
it is certain, never comes.
Evasions & delays recur
Macedonius the Consul
There was no spring in Malta, forty-two,
Nothing lives on a nervous volcano,
When waters fresh tainted by dusty dew
In blown by senses-seizing scirocco;
No food to spare,
Guarding pets with shotguns,
& only prickly pear replac’d those sunken tonnes;
When siren sounds incessantly
When, rampant, typhus fever,
When fighters bare from Italy
& no-one dare relieve her,
This princess isle this of liberty,
Even best believer
Grew weary at the hunger & the drain,
Til Mass restores each heart with stoic strain.
How long can an honest nation
Bide her tongue & suffer?
Thirst, starvation, no salvation,
Oer grim futures hover –
When lacking arks of flour & oil; comes, soon, cruel surrender!
Malta
August
1942
(AA) Canto 35: War Rage
**************************************
I cannot, I do not wish to die.
I love life – I love this grass, this earth, this air
Tolstoy
Game of Death
Learn by our friendship to create
An immaterial fire,
Whose brightnesse Angels may admire
Thomas Stanley
“Come mother, the match is kicking off soon!”
Shouts Konstantin, blood-rushing FC Start,
Whistling a happy Ukranian tune,
Sweet strains of which were nestled deep in heart;
Heroes emerge
Behind great Trusevich,
Onto the grassy verge, then spread around the pitch!
Eleven versus eleven,
Hitler white & Stalin red,
As the Russian Number Seven
Scores a bullet with his head,
Konstantin was shot to heaven,
A year of fears far fled…
Free kick fies from the foot of Kuzmenko!
& now, at last, the ball finds Klimenko,
Who dribbles around the goalie,
But choosing not to score
He hoofs it screaming skillfully
Back to the midfield four –
Hysterical with pride the Stiltskis ride the thunder-roar.
Kiev
August 9th
1942
Operation Pedestal
& only the drowned hears
stay calm –
& obeys, not the drowning
Henneh Kyereh Kwaku
A convoy pass’d the safety of the straits,
Sailors survey’d the scene as once did Scott,
But his soiree was not left to the fates,
That tranquil sea tempest of shell & shot;
No man dared bunk
The plan steam’d on & on,
As ship-by-ship was sunk twixt Skerki & Cape Bon.
The war roll’d on right furious;
Malta’s harvest, all afloat,
Hard beset by swarms of stukas
& Davidian E-Boat,
Throwing hell at the destroyers,
Whose carrier support
Fought out long running battles down the Med,
For oil & fruit, for vegetables & bread.
Above Valetta’s long main street
Into the boiling sky,
Six Spitfires meet, to save the fleet
They could but only try,
As west, into those jaws of death, they could but only fly.
The Mediterranean Sea
August 13th
1942
Forcing Divisions
Every one feels dread;
Every bird wings to its mate.
Every thing springs through the earth
Aneirin
A summons, screaming demons in red ink,
Sent to the Spiegelmans, Vladek look’d numb,
“What is it, love?” her husband pour’d a drink,
“All Jews must go to the Dienst stadium…”
To go no good,
Not to go no better,
So join’d the fleshy flood before the gauleiter.
Whole families forc’d to divide
Kids & old folks to the left,
The right side clearly the right side
Where the young & strongest sift
Vladek watch’d as his sister tried
Five spirits to uplift
Her children, fatherless now, three long years
Among them now their grandpapa appears….
“Dad!” Anna shouts, he was just here
With us!” “He must have snook
Across…” a fear descended drear
Elsewhere the ‘left’ were took
Gone with a wave, a nod of head, & one last love-fill’d look.
Sosnowiec
Aug 20th
1942
Operation Edelweiss
Lord, these are Thine! With soldierly tread
Without a tremor they go their way,
Singing a hymn they march ahead
Lucian Watkins
Three Oberstdorfers face their greatest test
Driving, higher, vision after vision
Blend ‘Nil mortalibus ardui est,’
With the 21st Mountain Division;
Their Reich war flag
Into a rucksack squeez’d,
Heel-leaps starting to drag as conversation wheez’d.
Beyond the pass of Chotju-Tau
The Caucasus were climbing
A simple case of here & now
As when the bards start rhyming
& magic, confiscating now,
Pearls with perfect timing,
There’s poetry immortal, & the heart
Yearns nature’s best breathtaking works of art.
Western Eurasia’s highest ground
Conquer’d by Germany
The bag was found – with slapping sound
The flag was flapping free,
A deed, indeed, piquing the company of Calliope.
Mount Ebro
Aug 23
1942
Stalin’s City
My dish, my tumbler,
here in the tin-plate
I’ve scratched my name
Günter Eich
The Sixth Army thunders to the Volga,
The Swastika hoisted over Elbrus,
In front – unending acres of Asia,
Behind – the widest wake of conquerors;
Resting their flank
Upon the deep, dark Don,
Onwards advanced each tank, onwards & ever on!
With sleeves roll’d up, sporting short pants,
On mountain slope stood Willie,
Watching apartments, parks & plants
Of this white cubist city,
The first hint of caution supplants
Invincibility!
For infesting the city & the plain,
The Red Army seems set to fight again.
Above shored-up defences pour
Fourth Richtofen Air Fleet,
Planes by the score have brought the War
To level ev’ry street,
The will Man gains to resist ills soul-temper’d in the heat.
Stalingrad
August 23rd
1942
Montgomery
The Ark waits,
Lord,
the Ark waits on Your will
Carmen Bernos De Gasztold
The world is at arms, the world is ablaze,
Nigh ev’ry man now forced to choose a side,
What days are these? These are darkest of days,
Stripping a man of dignity & pride;
The battle lines
To breaking point pull’d taut,
Der Fuhrer’s grand designs to be or be distraught.
Churchill threw the pink-skinn’d Monty
On imperial mission,
Stood before the beige Eighth army,
“We must win by attrition,
Defend the Nile from the blue sea
Down to the Depression…”
His troops entering oaseas of calm
In whose auspices they must face no harm.
All round the village rose the purr
Of Shermans beautiful
With knowing burr, the spirits stir,
“Sole way to slay Rommel…
Dig ‘em in along Alem el Halfa at the double!”
El Alamein
August 25th
1942
El Alamein
Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.
What is there to be or do?
What’s become of me or you?
William Empson
Stiff-borne by dreams from his fade-worn Fuhrer,
Fraught by an all-expectant Germany,
Ill on the air of the wide, wide Delta,
The Pyramids in immediacy;
Rommel orders
His neurasthenic men,
“Boys, rev up the panzers, advance them once again.”
Droving North of the Quattara
These iron-clad caravans
Rode the ridge Alem el Halfa
To the Somuan Shermans
Hanging tough – from sandy shelter
Shells titubated plans;
He paus’d, the pale moon growing paler still,
Up from the south warm sandstorms shriek & shrill.
Dust settles on a dead terrain,
Enmein’d with armour’d hulk,
Glancing in pain, long lists of slain,
“A tanker has been sunk…”
He took the news heart-sighing, “Call it off!” & left to sulk.
Jabel Kalakh
September 3rd
1942
Order of the Red Star
We shall go along roads beneath the stars,
so that Plotsk straightens its shoulders,
so that Poznan shall know freedom
Sergei Narovchatov
These unreal times, this petrifactive age,
When impudence of Nazi kings impinge
On Mother Russia, who great war will wage,
Wreaking the bloody claret of revenge;
A nation’s fate
Upon its fight insists –
To hound, exterminate invaders with mail’d fist.
Women in their millions dress
For liberty thro’ battle,
Meeting ‘Monsters of Wickedness,’
Embracing, fanatical,
Ev’ry danger, every duress,
Ev’ry heretical
Enemy, what deep love for Russia grows,
Unfolding with their passion for the cause.”
As throats enamel’d sing, “for me
A meter dig of soil,”
Gethsemane’s fresh family
Prepares to disembroil
Their country from the chaos of the Nazi’s vast despoil.
Tula
September 13th
1942
Black Gold
Whither, unfortunate wretch, have I strayed,
Thus of thy bounty to lie disinherited –
I alone whilst every other is paid?
Publius Papinius Statius
A flight of spitfire falls from sommer sky,
Lands as precisely as migrating drake
On isles astride the highway of supply,
All alone in this hostile Axis lake;
Thro’ constant fire,
Urged on by deep belief
That crown’d heads of empire must send to them relief.
Harbours of expectant children
By sad & weary farmers,
Drop-swap nervous conversation
Cheering for the Port Chalmers,
The Stars of Melbourne & Brisbane,
Clad in shatter’d armours –
Survivors of this keystone of the war,
Then the Rochester Castle made them four!
The convoy limp’d, or tow’d to port,
Join’d by vital tanker,
Tho’ ten ships short brave sailors brought
Salvation to anchor,
Soon submarines refuel’d scented Axis ship & sank her!
The Mediterranean Sea
September 15th
1942
Mumble Words 