Axis & Allies
(AA) Canto 45: Grappling Tides
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If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf
Nikita Kruschev
Conquest of Italy
Food is scare now, & men are scarce
Whole villages burnt to the ground,
New cities in disrepair
Michael Hamburger
Languor usurps the last coragio,
The fair share of the fighting has been fought,
No faith to summon Jupiter Stator,
Arms thrown aside men made for safest port;
From Alpine mists
The Tramontana blows,
Summoning fresh fascists, vile packs of Nazi crows.
As when the mighty Alaric,
A Magister Militum,
Entering the streets sardonic
Of old Mediolanum,
He with instancy laconic
Beat Visigothic drum,
Announcing to these Ceasar citizens,
“I seize this land, my daughters, & my sons.”
Altho’ the temple of Janus
Hath closed it’s doors to war,
Hitler’s panzers, like tight lancers,
Roll with a clank & roar,
Thro’ Rome’s gorgeous museum streets pepper’d with tombs of yore.
Rome
September 10th
1943
Operation Oak
No subject for immortal verse –
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse
Cecil Day Lewis
Vex’d by the betrayal of Italy,
As acts she some common adulteress,
Hitler is torn between deep loyalty
For his companion’s latest distress;
But friends are friends
& if them curs’d by strife
& on thine aid depend, what nobler thing in life!
Five men are summon’d to his lair,
All brimming with devotion,
“Italy! what think ye of there?”
Silence but for one captain,
Who fix’d him with a solid stare
“I am an Austrian!”
The rest were dismiss’d, instant decision,
“I offer you a sensitive mission
There is a man I care for true,
T’would mean the world to me
If, soon, would you go to rescue
My friend, Mussolini?”
“T’would be a great honour,” saluted Otto Skorzeny.
The Wolf’s Lair
September 5th
1943
Eastern Bloc
It happened in a land of farmers
on Hilly Balkan, far, far away;
A troop of students died martyred
Desanka Maksimovic
Tho’ hate burns under illustrious eyes,
Tito attacks diplomacy’s charade,
His revolution used by the Allies,
Greets Stalin as an old party comrade;
But on his back
Scars of thirty lashes,
Still echoing the crack of those captive thrashes.
“Some twenty divisions need we
If Belgrade be freed from yoke,”
“You’ll have an entire company…”
Stalin breath’d out swirls of smoke,
“…Restore King Peter’s regency;”
Tito cough’d on a choke,
“Impossible! the people will rebel!”
Earning Stalin’s respect &, “Very well,
But what if ever the English
Land on a Balkan shore?”
“We would resist, our only wish
Self-ruling, as before;”
“My friend, we must frustrate the West when we have won this war.”
Moscow
September
1943
A Dramatic Rescue
A ! Fredome is a noble thing !
Fredome maiss man to hair liking
Fredome all solace to man gifs
Robert Barbour
Humming Heinkels drew gliders deft in tow,
Releas’d them on the buxom welken swell,
Now floating to Gran Sasso, far below,
Capp’d by snow patches & this white hotel;
From splintering,
Flimsy, crashdown gliders,
Strong men rush outpouring, like brave gladiators!
The bungling gaurds jump’d out of bed,
Caught in canine siesta,
Il Duce shouts down, “No bloodshed!”
Some damsel in her tower,
A gen’ral rais’d goblet of red,
Toasted, “To the victor!”
Gobbl’d one gulp by Otto Skorzeny,
“Mein herr, please take me to Mussolini!”
“Der Fuhrer bids ye form fascist
Republic North of Rome…”
Hitting the gist Il Duce kiss’d
His saviour, “then back home,
I’ll go?” he mumbl’d humbly, sunken shadow in the gloam.
Abruzzi Apennines
September 12th
1943
Rejuvenations
It is time for me to go to attack Germans
& I want to carry your name forward
If only in my battle cry ‘Ura’
Sergeant Vlasienko
Moscow’s Bears awake from hibernation,
Claws sharpen’d for coming reconquista,
Azazelian annihilation,
Torrents from a horrent-arm’d ballista;
Stalin demands
Every god-damn German
Expel’d is from his lands, or rots there in the sun.
Altho’ they knew the war was lost,
& drown’d in diarrhea,
Each man morphs to a sturdy schloss
To fight on for Der Fuhrer,
An iron or a wooden cross,
Loyally together,
For if great Germany wins not the war,
What else in life is there worth living for?
From Smolensk to Sevastapol
The Wehrmacht, on the rack,
Bred in battle deadly skilful,
Are daily pulling back,
Bursting each mouse-trap circle thro’ exfiltrative attack.
U.S.S.R
September
1943
War’s Shadow
I know not, ah! sweet streams, despair of knowing
When I shall come again; for as I go,
And ponder why, ye fill me with such woe
Luis Vaz de Camoes
Armour’d car swept up the serpentine road
Of the mount of Saint Benedict’s abbey,
General steps out, clutching silver sword,
Eyes saccading oer the Liri Valley;
A position
Ruling wide area,
“They must take it before Casilina…”
Boot nails echoed round the cloisters
Where stood Dom Gregorio,
Flank’d by seven very pious
Monks of Montecassino,
“To stay here would be dangerous…”
“No! no! we cannot go!”
“Very well, but may I suggest, promptly,
Transport thy treasures for safe sanctuary.”
They placed gold-laced legatura,
Corali, tapestries,
Mellin, Conca, Solimena,
& bibles in lorries;
Each guarded by two monks driven to Roman galleries.
Italy
October 16th
1943
A Game of Chess
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart
Hangs on & howls, biting at air
Howard Nemerov
Pale workers spend a hard-earn’d half-an-hour
Huddl’d around blindfolded Botvinik,
Exercising, barely, deep chess power,
He beats some patzer with a knight’s fork trick;
Their foreman’s cough
Disturbs his ego show,
Taking the blindfold off, a message from Moscow!
Comrades perus’d thro’ the pages
Of this amazing letter,
“It seems, Mikhael, you are famous,
No more the mere sheet cutter,
With you lies Russia’s fate in chess
When the war is over…”
“Yes,” said Botvinik “a war we shall win…”
Nobody there dare doubt his knowing grin.
That night he mind-mapp’d the Dragon,
Sharp Yugoslav Attack,
White’s H pawn on the sixth… “White’s won…
What’s this?” An exchange sac –
Forth, with exploding forces, flow’d the the fury moves of black.
The Ural
October
1943
Irma Greese
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
Charles Bukowski
As iron clang rang Five AM apelle
The Strafkommando’s punishment detail
Was hers today, she’ll make this day like hell –
Into the wagon went them, weak & pale;
Beyond Auschwitz,
Thro’ fields of fat & stout
Beside the piles & pits Greese hisses, “Out! Out! Out!”
To the sounds of falling timber,
& the break of brittle bones,
Overseering all September,
Lumping logs & hauling stones,
She would drift off & remember
Last night’s eloping moans
With Doctor Mengele, beside his fire;
She succubus, him breathless with desire.
Her callous zeal was recogniz’d,
Rank-ascent rewarded,
Deftly devis’d deaths she disguis’d
As work widely applauded
For in such supraheathen days, evil brides are lauded.
Auschwitz
October
1943
The Swiss Role
There is delight in singing, tho’ none hear
Beside the singer : & there is delight
In praising, tho’ the praiser sits alone
WS Landor
Shrugging danger away with hearty laugh
For the heart of France brave Monsieur Holland
Risks godless torture for to photograph
These strange sites that somehow concern England;
Blueprints hidden
Within a sack of spuds
& fresh disguise woven – a cutter from the woods.
Rolls of barb’d wire the border close,
Switzerland shuns Vichy France,
Grey guards pass by, the tension grows,
Michel dashes at his chance,
But caught by wolfhound, on its nose
Punches firm annoyance,
Then thro the jagged barbs he cuts a path,
To reach his adventure’s safe aftermath.
He cursed the city’s atmosphere
Burgeoning with profits,
The Jewish fear left great wealth here,
Substantial deposits –
Accounts not to be honour’d without death certificates.
Zurich
October
1943
(AA) Gl’Immortali V
Poetry wants something enormous, barbarous, savage
Denis Diderot
Stand of Pyerun
Wind stokes the chill of the snow,
Snow borrows the wind’s grim might;
Frenzied ‘willow-floss’ panics profuse
Feng Meng-lung
Lord Pyrun, god of thine eastern tempest
Why worryst thou so? O! What a day it is,
The Hordes of Hell advancing from the west
& nothing but the hearthside deities
Of house & home
Peppering spacious steppes,
Out of the rusty gloam rocking their quadriceps.
As interplanetary coils
Do screech when them are bended,
As churning ocean squirms & boils
When streams of Kaos blended,
As when the fake-veil’d sinful soils
Virtues long defended,
As when men rage, flay’d by bubonic plague,
So does Satanus armies cross the plains!
Hard in the van four horseman trekk’d,
Ground hoof-hauls to a halt
A vast prospect by foes bespeck’d
Awaits the great assault,
That starts in flashing lightning & a smashing thunderbolt!
Edge of Asia
Duel of the Nile
By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,
Each horseman drew his battle blade,
And furious every charger neighed
Thomas Campbell
Mars donn’d a breastplate of gong-bronze gleaming,
Sharpened his broadword & polish’d his shield,
Lowered his helm, with the god-sweat streaming,
Sets out a-marching to the battlefield;
Across the seas
With one ginormous bound,
Landed amidst palm trees thrust up from sandy ground.
He follow’d the sacred Iris
Wherever the bird did go,
When, with a gasp, ‘what bliss is this,’
All in the valley below
Lay gorgeous Heliopolis
Beside the Nile’s wide flow,
As black plumes of War Kites are donn’d by Ra
His broadsword’s scarab-stone a shining star!
Towards their duel two old gods dash
Both leapt into the air
As great blades crash spark showers flash
Mars yells! Breastplate fell’d bare
So, fled to Atlas mountains, said, “I better, must, prepare!”
Africa
King in the Mountain
Here is a song
That stags give tongue
In Winter snows
William Martin
Thou catalogue of island gorgeousness,
No wonder, here, King Arthur’s spirit drew,
When Avalon became but nothing less
Than prison cell, unable to renew
His form on earth
So under Torr Maol
Awaits a ghoul’s rebirth – from his brooding gaol.
Twyx Muileann Gaoithe & KNock Dubh
Emnerg’d the first of Britons
Whose veins refill’d with blood red robe
That spill’d by hack’d down Saxons
Flesh pressing via a feeding tube
Body caparisons
When picking up Excalibur once more,
He rais’d it high & wav’d it with a roar
The world was his to set aright
& now, the second time
Has form’d to fight the shadowlight
To shine away the grime
That like false witness coats our lives with scandals, lies & slime!
Arran
Exotica
High battle for the word unsaid,
The song unsung, the cause unled
The freedom that no hope can gauge
John Drinkwater
Above the sacred sites of Shangri-La
The star temple climbs where Vishnu resides,
Watch’d by these ancyent spirits from afar,
Blessing his mind with bliss & more besides;
Fabulous wings
Of golden Garuda,
Whispers of Hindu kings enter the Preserver.
L’immortal met three lithe lizards
In a mystic kind of war,
As a wonderment of wizards
Whisk’d from Vijiyanagar
Conjur’d up whirlwinds & blizzards
Aiding their battle star,
Hurling two wounded dragons to the ground
The other panick’d with pathetic sound.
Desert-wrapt beside Meru’s vaults
Enstatured Indra stands,
Like angry Colts the jagged bolts
In each of those four hands
Went thundering to finish off the Wyvrn in the sands.
Asia
Gryphon Dawn
Love held them up to the universe
they listened to the stars. These days
poets are locked in their machines
Abbas Beydoun
Uncle Sam harbors at the Half-Moon Bay,
With war engines & eagles for the flight,
Gwyddion leads them on their lofty way
Amidst the mountains clad in snowflake white;
Britannia,
Most splendid banqueteer,
Has spread a grand dinner as battle draweth near.
While thunder-clouds rumble & pour,
St£rling & Buck$ recanting,
Employ an age-old astral lore,
Middle of a magic ring,
Where lions give a mighty roar,
& eagles beat their wing,
Sharp lightning struck those stone grey druid rods,
Great gasps of wonder rush’d throughout the gods…
Before them paw’d the claw’d Gryphon
Sleek-wingéd & rough maned
The prime weapon, the stallion,
Auld oracles ordain’d,
Lit by an iridescent gleam, the divine blessing gained.
Stonehenge
Struggle at the Gates
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
WB Yeats
Under daemon banners flocking like crows,
As Hydra-necks thro’ forest valleys wound,
Leads, Barbarossa, Asgard’s brave heroes,
Pillaging villages, all that they found
Was put to waste;
While in their monstrous wake
Four horsemen, brazen-fac’d, scour’d every wapentake.
Forc’d on the backfoot Pyren fought,
Tho’ spirit army scatter’d,
He conjur’d up a fire-flaught,
That many swanhelms shatter’d,
Arms sunder’d by a fireslaught
Down steep gorge-side clatter’d…
Staying attackers, as, on either side,
What stormcraft halts the abbadonic tide.
Pyerun summons a Polevik
Both grass & mud clinging
My spells grow stricken, so, full quick,
Fly off to the Ice King,
There, beg my brother for his help, for proof him show this ring…
Gates of Asia
Indifference of Allah
Alone on Lykaion since man hath been
Stand on the height two columns, where at rest
Two eagles hewn of gold sit looking East
Trumbull Stickney
Hino mounted the marvelous Gryphon
There with Saint George took to the trembling skies,
An important diplomatic mission,
Below their a thousand towers rise;
Atop the sky,
O city of the Djinn,
A flight of Pegasi escorted them within.
They were formally presented
To the court of grand Allah,
But their presence there resented,
“In your fight with Valhalla,
With all deity demented,
I shunn’d the theatre!”
“My noble king,” said Hino, “We protest –
Agents of thine did strike us in the West!”
Great Allah grew indifferent,
“But nothing can be done,
As evil-scented devilment
Exists beneath Heaven,
I cannot control all accounts… our discourse here is done.”
Babylon
Jove’s Vanity
Arise & take thine ease,
For thou art lord; & these
Are but as sprinkled dust before thy power
Lord de Tabley
Thro’ realms empyrean flew Gabriel,
Jove lay luxuriant ‘neath floscule fan,
Unint’rested as minions of Hell
Spread suffering & helplessness thro’ man;
“Your majesty,”
Th’archangel duly bow’d,
“I have a dream for thee,” & conjured up a cloud…
“Tis one shared by those lunatics,
Idolaters of Hitler…”
Across quintessence picture flicks
Of some darken’d chiasa,
“Where there should be a crucifix
There hangs the swastika…”
For Gabriel, it seem’d, eternity
Pass’d pleading to his master’s vanity.
At last was heard that sovran voice
Run thro’ rushing waters,
“Cast is my choice, send the envoys
To the Saintly Quarters,
We are to war, send for the steeds, summon my Sky Daughters!”
Divinnia
Warring Gods
The wind suffers of blowing,
The sea suffers of water,
The fire suffers of burning
Laura Riding
From Asgard & Ausonia hath come
A wealth of Arms, Mars chose two shining spears
& with a beating of his battledrum,
Takes desert roads, where, shaking off his fears
Prepares once more
The African to face
Who like a sunny star, descends from outer space.
Ra whispers ancyent sorcery,
Tis the sacred call to arm,
Round a rare & regal valley
Lilts the chorus of that charm –
Ragged mummies march steadfastly
Below this locust swarm –
As thro’ their ranks strides a Scorpion King,
Those howling hounds reduced to whimpering.
Battle ensues! tooth, axe & claw
Thro’ mummy-mass Mars wades,
Tears rags & gore, but still they roar,
Apep slain by Ra’s blades –
Mars flees by flying chariot as day’s dread battle fades.
Africa
(AA) Canto 46: Spiritgrind
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Where there’s life there’s hope
Terence
Savage Rape
Look how rough & coarse my fingers are!
I dug ditches close to the city, hammered
together rough coffins
Ol’ga Berggol’ts
“At last! At last! The bastards are going
& we shall know freedom!” sings Christina,
All round evacuation full flowing,
Rejoiceful, she turn’d the calm road’s corner;
But froze, face grey,
Four soldiers hanging there,
Into an alleyway they dragg’d her by the hair.
The spittle spat with hate & spite,
Lashing out with fist & tongue,
For love of life she put up fight,
But of course they were too strong
& raped her thro’ the dead of night,
None of them thought it wrong
To throw her barely breathing in a bin…
Next morning found by frantic Konstantin.
By now those Germans were long gone
& there his mother died,
An old Russian gave him a gun,
Clutch’d tightly as he cried,
“I shall avenge my family!” such hate to rage inside.
Kiev
November 6th
1943
Blood Schism
Why are you so cold?
& why do you lie with your eyes shut?-
You are not very old
Stevie Smith
“This lunatic age” sighs Friedrich Stemmler
Battling elesovetskies tooth & nail,
Will kill us all…” “Silence!” roars his father,
“The Fuhrer is the one who shall prevail!”
“But I have heard
Such horrors of the East,
To win this war absurd, our armies are deceas’d.”
“Hitler shall make right everything!”
“But Herr Hitler’s a buffoon!”
“Say one more word & I shall bring
The Gestapo to this room”
“Max! What the hell are you saying?”
This man was not her groom,
“Cover yourself in shame – he is your son!”
Huff-fac’d Max puff’d off, rough with what he’d done.
“Perhaps, perhaps, Friedrich was right,
But how, how could this be?”
They sat that night, silent, polite,
United family,
“Father, they are recruiting for backwater Normandy.”
Berlin
November
1943
Intellectual Rebellion
I tore down my thoughts
roped in my nightmares
remembered a thousand curses
Ishmael Reed
Despite enosomanian mis-state,
Some hear for certain, some the truth yet speak;
Enlighten’d few, refusing malform’d fate,
Take supper with Von Moltke every week;
Form’d to allay
The Brown Plague that renews
Its bloodbath every day, with vodka, hock & views.
As the field hare from a spaniel
Whips & darts, discussions flow,
“Armies without a general,”
States Von Stauffenberg, quite slow,
“Become unoperational…”
“Assassination?” “No!”
Von Moltke burst, “Hitler & his party
Must live to bare responsibility!”
To muse on Germany’s defeat
Strictly is forbidden,
But minds here meet as chaffless wheat,
Open hearts unhidden,
Share thoughts of tower’d ivory in stately-lidded den.
Kreisau
November
1943
Savage Battle
Ayla feels
that this start of the new day
is the end of the world
Gelu Vlaşin
As tho’ sailing on dreamy manoeuvres,
The majesty of air-space deem’d complete,
Protected by twelve aircraft carriers
America has launched a battle fleet
At the Gilberts,
Where surged the young marine,
Tween cool volcanic spurts yclad in em’rald green.
Lush saplings rush in from the sea
& plung’d into the cauldron,
Tho’ courageous mamertini
They moulder’d by the dozen,
Boys screaming out “Mommy! Mommy!”
Held pendulous chaudron…
Safe only in the space where Amtrak rolls
Unless, above them, snipers in the boles.
The twin-cylinder’d flamethrower
Blazes holes & trenches,
No surrender, “The Emporer!”
Such a grisly business,
Barely a handful faced disgrace, rest are sable corpses.
Tarawa
November 20th
1943
Bombfall
We there, in strife bewildering,
Split blood enough to swim in :
We orphaned many children
Thomas Love Peacock
That old maxim, ‘two wrongs don’t make a right,’
Forgotten on the so-call’d ‘Master Race,’
Trafalgars of death bombers every night,
What terrors on a new-born baby’s face;
A droning noise
Comes crawling from the west,
As Churchill’s Murder Boys face their most fiercest test.
Thro’ shudder-skies aflak with shot
Muscles ack-ack fully-flex,
Bombs rattle from a pepperpot
On a virous Volkssturm vex,
Dropping on them what London got
But plenish’d quadruplex,
Ths is the night aggressive war blazed home,
As when the son of Gunderic razed Rome.
As empty ten thousand shelters,
When sounded the ‘All-clear,’
Coriaceous, emotionless
Watching a lynch mob near
This ruin’d British airman begging wounded, sobbing fear
Berlin
November 24th
1943
Home Run
Oh, yes! With uncertain pace
I trod your forest lands,
And on your river banks
Jose Rizal
Bligh gazed upon the golden coast of Spain,
Desanlace of this latest aventure,
Saw only friendly faces on the train,
Far from those at the start of his saga;
Back in Colditz,
Nervy, knife-edge moments,
With Fritz checking tickets & well-forged documents.
He rode his luck to Switzerland,
Compassment the Northern Star,
At Geneva he shook the hand
Of a man named Jean-Francois,
They drove thro checkpoints seldom mann’d
To Perpignan, by car,
Where with a gourd of wine, a quart of cheese,
Young Miguel guides him cross the Pyrenees.
The Holy Grail! Empiric Rock,
His heart leapt up to see,
In sublime shock he made a dock
Of the Royal Navy,
“I am an escaped airman, could you spare a spot of tea?”
Gibralta
December
1943
Jaded Dreams
Such his arrows crossed inviolate regions,
that the rivers scarcely dared to enter,
and such he was pouring out his heroic legions
Jose Santos Chocano
Encaved in a distant reality,
Good German blood staining his vegan hands,
Entranced by ghosts & Himmler’s theurgy,
His officious imperium still stands;
While one-by-one,
His cities well destroy’d
The Allies prime weapon has dragg’d him to the void.
As Hercules donn’d last tunic
& died by his own poison,
Throughout the Reich, full bubonic,
Spread his proud war’s contagion,
Reduces homes to ash & brick,
Morbid devastation!
A bulletin! For him a worse bombshell,
Most of the VI sites destroy’d as well!
He rampaged with his jaundiced eye,
“This must be treachery!”
Drugg’d blood-supply soaring sky-high,
The traitor, “Who is he?”
Clinging sadly to slender threads of dwindling destiny.
The Wolf’s Lair
December
1943
Strange Festivities
The way to respect Christmas time
Is not by drinking whisky or wine,
But to sing praises to God on Christmas morn
William McGonagall
Christmas? “Fuckin’ Pissmass!” Patrick spat,
The death of his best brother blaz’d his brain,
He saw him laughin’ in the cracker hat
He’d always win, that tug-of-war’s long reign;
As Christmas cracks,
Pat Sumner felt like shit
Full of fake santa sacks it just wasn’t worth it.
Painful to ever reconcile
Still spaces at the table
Whose faces heap’d up in a pile
Of memories & fable –
An anecdote, a knowing smile,
Then… that folded cable,
Remember’d in the drawer where it stays,
Festivity solemnity did glaze.
Pat hit the slopes of Pendle Hill
On Boxing Day, before
Leave days instil belief & will
To trundle back to war,
Part of the spartan manhood set to slam some guarded shore.
Lancashire
December 26th
1944
Return of Rommel
I have swum too far
out of my depth
and the sun has gone
Robin Robertson
Hitler summons his favourite marshal,
Still could he stir that dusty soldier’s soul,
“This year they must try & cross the channel,
I give you France & the Atlantic Wall…
From Kirkenes
Around the Norman shore,
Down to the Pyrenees, a thousand miles or more.”
As he tours the sea defences,
Twitchy gen’rals round him host,
“Incomplete!” agreed consensus
Shattering Der Fuhrer’s boast,
“We must stop them on the beaches
In one day at the most…
If we do not then this War will be lost!”
His voice grew deep, concern’d & edged with frost.
He waves his Field-Marshal’s baton
Like wanded wizard hand,
Foxish vision sinks one-by-one
Obstacles in the sand,
To rascalise destruction when occasions make demand.
Le Vivier
January
1944
(AA) Canto 47: Enslavement
**************************************
Only the dead have seen the end of war
Plato
Death of Ciano
When partners can’t agree
Their dealings come to naught
And trouble is their labour’s only fruit.
Ivan Andreevich Krylov
See how fluctuating fortunes of war
Can be embodied in a single soul,
A prince addresses emperors no more,
Condemn’d to wallow in this Bourbon hole;
But one more day,
For his strong insistence
On toppling Il Duce earns a curt death sentence…
So… put he a pen to paper,
Converse started to confess
How his idol, & Herr Hitler,
Plung’d this world into their mess…
Smuggl’d out by darling Edda,
Tuck’d in her peasants dress,
The Truth! Salvaged for all posterity,
As enter’d, she, Switzerland, secretly.
He sat with his fellow ‘traitors,’
Before the gangster law,
Those dull soldiers were poor aimers,
(One shot him in the jaw),
& fell he groaning… as he died they’d shot him five times more.
Verona
January 12th
1944
Slave Labour
The sick bay was Heaven itself
An oasis for its inhabitants
In a desert of inhumanity & grief
Maria Joffe
They drew them from the children of Dachau,
Four corners of a suppliant empire,
Mere animals to pull the Nazi plough,
Dragg’d thro a steadily stagnating mire;
Slow work’d to death,
“Such waste to slay early,
Until it’s dying breath it can make you money.”
Thetis spat out a freezing spray,
Soak’d thinning rags on Sergei,
Whispering to himself each day,
“You must survive… do not die!”
Busying round a windswept bay,
Sand sticking in the eye,
Burying scores of deadly little mines
According to Rommel’s murd’rous designs.
How girding was each night to hear
This sweet canary sing,
End drawing near, thro’ death & fear,
Patient & enduring,
“Turn it up Stiltski…” “…World service… the Russians are winning!”
Bolougne-sur-Mer
Jan 15th
1944
Old Fathers
Oh, happy life ! To rove the mountains wild,
The waving woods, or ocean’s heaving breast,
With limbs unfettered, conscience undefiled
Anne Bronte
The darkest hour is that before the dawn,
By Slavophilic internecinum
Along the Valambrossa freight trains blown,
Halting at the sidings of th’abysm;
What ghastly smell,
Foul & nauseating
Ill-welcomes them to Hell… “Line up for delousing…”
They come to where the Grunfeld’s stood
& choose the two old fathers
With Heidi pale, whose thinning blood
That daily weaker courses,
All hugg’d & kiss’d the best they could
Until they kick’d Moses,
Yanking three kinsfolk from good family,
Put on the path to ash-eternity.
Stripping naked, they march to where
A sweet ensemble play’d,
“Why do you stare?” punching the air,
Brick chimney… all hopes fade,
Two brothers face death hand-in-hand, breath poison’d as they pray’d.
Auschwitz
January
1944
Enter the Mustang
So desperately
The leaves cling
To the departing fall
Shiki
Another daylight raid, up went the planes
Messerschmitt & Fockewulf – foes arrive
With yellow tail that effortlessly gains
Upon his finest pilot that survive
Rolls Royce purring
“Mustangs, sir!” “Fuck, look how
Fast they fly, sighs Goering, “Good, god the jigs up now.”
As Reichmarshall with sheepstuck state
Stood gaping up at the skies
As airforce once without compare
Defers to the flinderize,
Too heavy hung them in teh air,
Luftwaffe cut to size,
Whose bitty portions battle-chewe’d, spat out,
All while the raindrop bombs landed about.
He rubs the rouge in from a tin,
& dons Adonis wig,
Clean plucks his chin & summons in
Some prepubescent sprig,
& rapes young screams entwining with the whinings of his pig.
Berlin
January 23rd
1944
Gates of Hell
Poison from syringe in selected snakes
mix and add
In the colours of sighs and many worries
Giambattista Marino
The Spieglemans had gone into hiding
But not their son, by now he would be dead
Troglodytes behind false walls dividing
Refuse bunkers, swap emerald for bread;
Giant black rats
Scuttle as they huddl’d
For heat, instead of chats – kiss’d, caress’d, cuddl’d.
As Death must only be delay’d
However roll days so fair,
One wistful night their plight betray’d
Two hares in a sharing snare,
& now this new kind of afraid
Surrounds them everywhere
Thro’ punches, trucks, thro’ dogs & trains & shouts
Their bodies maul’d, while minds digest all doubt.
Train halts, & high above the gate
‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ did sneer,
A touch as fate would separate
Two soulmates, as appear
Entangibl’d, those tayles, “they’ll kill us all, & now we’re here!”
Auschwitz
January
1944
Nine Hundred Days
I wake. Yes, it’s a coffin lid.-With effort
I reach my hands out and I call
For help. Yes, I recall the tortures
Afanasy Afanasevich Fet
As the Nazis abandon positions
Proud citizens commence their rejoicing,
When only anthropophaginians
Tormented by what future’s dice may bring;
So stoical,
What fervour, phase-by-phase,
Did prove indelible those long nine hundred days.
All the city an allotment,
With not one empty metre,
Surviving all that hatred sent
Their way by mister Hitler,
Blessing the sacred sacrament
Of them & Saint Peter,
For faith can even compensate for food
When love of God lives fulminant imbued.
The guns grew silent as, at last,
To regions in the west
The war hath pass’d, the days newscast
Tho’ joyous, firmly stress’d,
Altho’ they’d won their liberty, ’til victory, no rest.
Leningrad
January 27th
1944
Cooking Pot
every tree a ghost
from the injured root
rising up mute
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Blood bubbles from the beak of bead-eye crow,
Reality worse than our harshest dreams,
All night appels stood in the sneering snow,
Life quite enslaved by what Satanic schemes?
& that vile smell,
Like rubber burning sweet..
At last they hear the bell, when lining up to eat,
With hunger rumbling unallay’d,
For every meal so meagre,
The smell of sawdust breadsticks made
Them salivate, all eager
For spoiling cheese or marmalade;
While the cooks from Riga
Stirr’d the soup, those who knew the strategy
Of where to wait would win more energy;
Those at the front will only taste
The flavour, not the veg
As down it raced, with ladle haste,
The soup made lump & wedge –
But wait too long there’ll be none left, such were the bets they’d hedge.
Auschwitz
February
1944
Monte Cassino
the last wish of heroes fallen at day-break
with a wingless stone in hand
& a thread of anger snaking from their eyes
Jofre Rocha
From white morning mists rose the Ausini,
Weaving his magick Lord Sol clear’d the scene,
Spreading thro the streets of Saint Germani,
The Allies pressed in khaki, beige & green;
Such handsome men
Met that crack mountain troop,
Again! Again! Again! Returning with a stoop.
Altho’ the abbey pleach’d sublime
Above the battle’s terrors,
Centuries shatter’d in short time
By waves of Allied bombers,
This heinous, most heathen crime,
Repeated thrice before…
Those tons of dust thrown up settl’d to show
Monks batter’d, weeping for Gregorio.
They left this bastion of faith
Like rippers leave a whore,
Some ruin’d wraith, stone sunk in Lethe,
Til she will rise once more,
A mass of grey stone sleeping in the trail of Total War.
Italy
Feb 16th
1944
Increasing Resistance
Woe to the one who decries music & war-march,
to mighty heroism inciting hosts;
great pipe that inspires all courage
Gilleasbaig na Ceapaich
Unto his hutch returns the rabbit white,
Churchill, he’s told, has minutes five to spare,
A puff of smok’d cigar, “how was your flight?”
“Shot at til England!” “Please, do take a chair…
Tell me, young man,,
How things could be improv’d…”
“Well, sir, I have a plan… reserve must be remov’d,
For those who risk lives night-on-night
For supplies that never drop,
One saboteur provided right
Complete companies can stop
I promise, sir, my friends will fight,
We’ll keep them on the hop…”
The PM notes those passions as he pleads,
“We will be amiable to your needs;
Halifax, Liberators,
I’ll order forty now,
Some might hate us, but our fate is
To fight them anyhow!”
“Oh, thank-you sir, now tell me, is it Ye-oh or Ye-ow?”
Whitehall
February
1944
(AA) Canto 48: Warfaring
**********************************
There existed in the minds of the people a very powerful general conviction of Hitler’s greatness & mission. One must therefore bear in mind the feelings of reverence for his historical magnitude with which most visitors approached him, & the significance which they therefore attached to each word of his
Albert Speer
A Desperate Escape
O Eternal Light, shine in our hearts,
O Eternal Light, deliver us from evil,
O Eternal Light, be our support
Alevin
Burned day & night the crematoria,
By body barrows feebly heav’d them fed,
By Alfred Wetzler wheel’d, Rudolf Vrba
Scrawling a secret tally of the dead;
When all must sleuth
The meaning of this sum,
For, if they’d known the truth who would have freely come?
To warn the global synagogues
Of this titan travesty,
They pris’d apart the plants & logs
Of a toilet cavity
Where, to waylay the keen-nos’d dogs
& the depravity
Of being caught & tortur’d, they did spread
Tobacco soak’d in petrol, toes & head.
Squat deep in shit, yet undeterr’d
As they heard the searches,
They never stirr’d, no whisper’d word,
Silent as clos’d churches,
‘Til third night falls, out they’ll both crawl, Holocaust besmirches!
Auschwitz
April 13th
1944
Budding Love
Now don’t go thinking I must be drunk
if I love my good lady;
for without her I cannot live
Guilhem of Aquitaine
Time rushes as the brush of history
Paints frassic varnish oer th’embattled Earth,
Sennets resounding loud for Liberty,
A generation’s sacrifice her worth;
Hebe’s darlings
From valley, peak & shore,
Lull’d by true valour’s wings & poetry in war.
Maggie ‘I’ll-do-my-bit‘ Sumner
Sign’d up to the Land’s Army,
Threshing ‘Down South’ in hot weather,
Slim, scruffy, sweaty, sultry,
“My name is Carlton Dillinger…”
“Oh aye! Mi name’s Maggie!”
“Nice to meet ya ma’m!” “This one’s got manners!”
“When d’ya finish?” “Soon… will yer wait fer us?”
By wee heliochryse they walk,
Soon skipping hand-in-hand,
They stop to smoke, soon drop the talk,
As sudden lust’s demand
Consummates the bond between America & England.
Devon
April
1944
The Great Escape
We dared to hope against the spoken word
And even when their names were there to see
We couldn’t quite believe what we had heard
Denis Mackarness
Many months of muddy perspiration
Has built unto this tense, dramatic night,
From cramp’d passages subterranean
Seventy three men crwal into moonlight;
One muffl’d cough,
A sentry makes the find!
Deliverance is off, one hundred left behind.
Scattering in all directions
Bold as brass & sly they snook,
Til shoddy documentations
Watchful volk & sheer bad luck
Has denied their demonstrations –
Fifty thrown in a truck,
Twenty serv’d a severe smack on the hand,
Only three reach all-elusive England.
The truck halts at a remote spot,
Fifty file out to piss,
A mauser shot, their stoumachs knot,
“What the bleedin ‘ell’s this?”
Hitler’s machine gun vengeance, smoking muzzles spit & hiss.
Silesia
April
1944
Truthbreak-Heartbreak
children of forest & mountain,
with their eyes they could behold themselves,
their voices named the animals
Homero Aridjis
Acute perceptions keep two freaks alive,
These brave young pups, from the Pit absconding,
But one last tense ordeal left to survive,
This risky woman – would there be bonding
Or drumming yells
Summoning a Nazi,
To drag them back to Hell’s infernal palazzi.
She was a true Slovakian,
No love for country keener,
& welcoming them back again
Led them off to Zolina,
Where converse quite unsaccharine
Silenc’d the convener
Of a meeting of this Jewish Council;
“Twelve thousand every day, you say…” a chill
Blew thro’ the room for all could see
These men were not deceiving,
“Your family, your friends, they’ll be
Dead by now – start grieving…”
& tho’ they knew this was the truth, still sat they disbelieving.
Slovakia
April 25th
1944
Burmese Box
I shall murder if I can,
Spill the jellies of a man.
Or be luckless & be spilled
John Ciardi
Chess pieces playing on a global board,
Opposing pawns clash on the Imphal plain,
Where Gen’ral Slim has drawn the polish’d sword
That whupp’d the French & whipp’d the ships of Spain
Where Vera Lynn
Inspires the men with song –
As oer barge-chok’d Khyendwen Japan’s fanatics prong.
Life sinks to insignificance
Just a tennis court apart,
Death looting with indifference
The hot vein-strings of the heart
From savage arts to diligence
Those warring soldiers dart
& back again, if only to survive
Another day of dying, but alive!
As officers charge tanks with swords
The Japanese, it seems
Trudging discords, spent cases hoards,
From Britain’s budgeless teams
All beaten back to Burma, from Kohima, with their schemes.
Nagaland
May 18th
1944
Homecoming
For it’s the same old story,
There’ll be no jokes when you come back
And little bloody glory
Timothy Corsellis
The soldier may be taken from the War,
But that War will never leave the soldier,
Into Rosegrove the train roll’d… as a door
Flung ope, there stood worm-eyed Tommy Sumner;
His only leg
Tip-tapp’d onto platform,
He paus’d, roll’d up a fag & hobbl’d his way home.
He was a simple, honest man
From streets pluck’d ordinary,
Out-serving the ferocious span
That was his ‘Tour of Duty,’
But home was where the hate began,
Twas alien country –
The fate of Western civilisation
Depends on jam, suet, spam & bacon.
Tommy carried little Lucy
To bed & said, “Goodnight…”
“Goodnight,” said she, innocently,
“Why did yer ‘ave to fight?”
“To save the world from one bad man, go sleep or he might bite!”
Burnley
May
1944
Jungle Liberty
Looking out towards the horizon
I dream of my escape
Freedom beckons me
Ernestine Northover
Shane Slater sat cracking his teeming lice
Emaciated, weaken’d with fatigue,
Sustain’d by friendship & handfuls of rice,
Laying this damn’d railway league after league;
“You are cowards!”
Brave men told ev’ry day,
Ramm’d home with fists & swords slicing ensanguin’d spray.
Poor Alfred, half dead with disease
(most thought he’d nearly had it),
Shown piles of rocks, “Coward! move these!”
He tried but could not do it,
So tied between two supple trees,
A sweep… the rope is split –
Terribly tearing his torso in two
Back upright went those bent trunks of bamboo.
Shane snaps, ghost looking on aghast,
Soul sharing his friend’s pain,
He broke & dash’d, the bullets pass’d
A bee’s dick from his brain,
Three miles of jungle flash’d before he saw his thigh’s bloodstain…
Thailand
May
1944
Traitors
It may be said that we tackled wherever we could,
That battle-fit we lived, & though defeated,
Not without glory fought
Henry Reed
With certain gen’ralry new thought took hold,
With growing doubt comes disillusionment,
Der Fuhrer naught but bemustach’d cuckold
Upon der Fatherland’s destruction bent;
“…Stalin soon here…”
“…We must agree a plan…”
“…our sacred country steer from that deadly madman!”
Having lost both an arm & eye,
Tho’ mind in prime condition,
Von Stauffenburg, willing to die,
Gneis’nau’s dashing great-grandson,
Responded to the sacred cry
Of this secret mission,
“I’ll do it if you guarantee the coup!”
“Assured, but first there’s one thing we must do…”
Von Falkenburg & Steulpagnel
Pour’d Rommel a fresh Schnapps,
“Just your name will avoid civil
War & Deutschland’s collapse!”
He thought awhile then gave it, “He’ll be martyr’d” “Yes, perhaps…”
Herlingen
May 27th
1944
Love’s Bond
Who will stir up whirlwinds of furious fire
If we do not, & those whom we call brothers?
Join us, Romantic friends! Forget all others!
Arthur Rimbaud
The moon was full & the night rippl’d fair
For the coming home of Monsieur Merlot,
Drifting gently on cushionings of air,
Dogs barking in the farmyard dark below;
Piercing the night
Shone secretive beacon,
Bright-flickering flashlight of the destination.
With wonderful euphoria
Black boots thump bon native ground,
Poetical adventurer,
Unborn children to astound;
Welcoming this paratrooper
The Maquis gather’d round –
To their lovely leader, Miss Innocent,
A concupiscent angel had been sent.
“Pierre!” “Veronique!” cheeks embrace,
Love shares its desp’rate cling,
While passions race the jaundiced face
Of Constance simpering
Distorts to monstrous maelstrom… blister’d with twisted feeling.
France
May 29th
1944
(AA) Canto 49: Rabbitcatchers
**********************************
I look forward to tea in the garden, & the flavour of bread & butter… to all teh other things that make up home
Edward Chapman
Apprehended!
I fete you dear
commanding
officer, for your stealth
Ralph Cherbo Geeplay
As Yeo walk’d he thought ‘poor Brisculette
Must rescued be, that gray streak in his hair,
Dyed black, must sooneth fade – where IS Anette!?
Not at the kiosk, no, not anywhere;’
Tho’ scream’d all nerves,
‘Man, keep your cool, keep sane,’
He, from the rendezvous, curv’d thro the streets again,
& slid back to that meeting place,
Still agent unattended,
Where springs on him a fearsome face,
Who forearms apprehended,
With neck secur’d by headlock brace,
Liberties there ended,
“Wir haben Shelley!” hiss’d the gristle-voice
“Please come this way…” as if he had a choice!
As soon as he was in the car
They smash’d him in the face
The fat one snarl’d, “Just who you are
We’ve tried & test to trace,
Then Thomas plung’d in darkness underneath a pillowcase.
Paris
May 30th
1944
A Broken Nose
Once, in the burning age
of flowing stone
the Devil’s old dark toffee overflow’d
Robin Munro
With imprecations litanizing fears,
Into a street he could not recognize,
Steps Yeo, “Schweinehund!” “Terrorist!” rakes ears,
While raw red bruis’d & broken were his eyes;
All hope abates,
Interrogation wends,
Creak open iron gates, Tom thanks his new best friends.
Counting the floors so could ken
How far he would have to leap,
Once in a room upleap’d three men,
Whom blows upon Yeo heap,
Whom manacl’d, spat at, & when
All wanted he was sleep,
In slowly walks Gestapo ghoul, who stands
Gloves slipping on, with backs of slapping hands
Beats out ‘Inglisher Hund!” on cheeks
Then punch’d & broke a nose,
Of booze he reeks, “Der Fuhrer seeks
The truth, so I’ll propose
You’ll tell us all we need to know, else, well, the Devil knows…
Paris
May 30th
1944
Resolve & Resolution
It’s gotten so dark
I feel fear within me.
The life of small noises
Rocco Scotellaro
‘This was it, my name is Kenneth Dodkin,
Whatever they might do, then things far worse;
Beatings, drownings, pierc’d by a bodkin,
Whatever meted greet with kiss or curse;
Each minute gone
A letterbox shall close
Or meeting place deem done…’ blood streaming from his nose
Soak’d red his clothes, eyes swoll’n to shade,
Neck this way, that-a way toss’d,
“Your duty’s done, don’t be afraid,
You’ve had your flutter & lost,
We know the Allies will invade
But where, but when?” – as frost
Obscures Yeo’s thoughts, hair tugg’d out in clumps,
“So tell us, yes, where are the ammo dumps?”
As tightening the handcuff sprain’d
Tom’s will-determin’d wrist,
More seconds gain’d, more time obtain’d
For lives too long to list,
& gazes mute, but fearless, mister ‘best shots I’ll resist!’
Paris
May 30th
1944
A Good Ducking
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England
Rupert Brooke
As slipping into consciousness regain’d,
Yeo’s arms blaze pain, straining each socket,
A swirl of hurl’d insults, “We have obtain’d
This ten-franc note out of your own pockets,
On which is scrawl’d
A number… whose it it?”
“I do not know…” appall’d by the sheer cheek of it
They naked stripp’d him, dragg’d him to
A tank with water filling,
“Whose is this number, tell us who?”
Plung’d under, gushes spilling
Flush’d lungs, then was dragg’d out to spew
His liquid guts, thrilling
That deep, Teutonic need for sacrifice –
Yeo clears his throat, chirps “boys, that was nice!”
They duck’d him down & out again,
Against the tiles he slumps,
Then broke his jaw, echoes the roar
“WHERE ARE THE AMMO DUMPS!”
But still defiance thrusted from nightwatchman at the stumps.
Paris
May 30th
1944
Tortureboarded
The wind suffers of blowing,
The sea suffers of water,
The fire suffers of burning
Laura Riding
The Devil stands on his high mountain peak,
Count of crude turmoil-, oxgut crashes chest
Oer stomach aquaful… enforc’d a creak,
Disgorgement…& Yeo’s pass’d his next test;
Hustl’d along
Passages, dripping wet,
He sings, inside, a song, he knows he’ll get there yet!
By well-groom’d women lining walls,
Who mock’d him as he pass’d ‘em,
With spittle-whistles & cat-calls,
He flicks his head & splash’d ‘em
With droplet blood, stumbl’d, then falls…
Hands sprawl’d, jackboots smash’d ‘em…
Dragg’d to his feet they haul’d him thro’ a door
“Those ammo dumps, or do you want some more?”
As rubber coshes rush to work
On body, legs & arms;
Like Knight or Turk right gone beserk,
For Hadith, or for Psalms,
What blows of righteous fury thrash from angry, blist’ring palms.
Paris
May 30th
1944
The Violinist
Dearly ye pay for your primal Fall –
Some flowerets of Eden ye still inherit,
But the trail of the serpent is over them
Thomas Moore
Two burly Sicherheitsdienst burst inside,
“We have him here!” “Who?” “Your telephone friend!”
Roll’d in was some wretch, limply terrified,
“Perhaps he’ll tell us where are the dumps – send
You to Auswich,
Instead, of your best fate –
The pleasant treatment which befits friends of the state.”
As stranger, young & very slim,
Claim’d, “I am a musician!”
The thugees went to work, a grim
Bestial demolition,
“Stop that at once! I don’t know him!”
Nobody would listen,
As, after blow to his ribs bonebreaking,
Yeo taken down corridors snaking
To plung’d be in some pitch black cell,
Where echo did the moans;
Twyx shout & yell he could not tell,
When silenc’d were the groans,
If that poor violinist deaf forever to the tones.
Paris
May 31st
1944
Indomitability
I have nae will to sing or danse
For fear of England & of France
God send them sorrow & mischance
Sir Richard Maitland
Dark swamps again, led all alone with thirst,
Grand aches, dull pains, his long, blood-matted face,
Drooping all pumpkin-shap’d, hoping the worst
Was over, lumphead buzzing, but with space
To calculate
This situation’s core,
Escape, for now, must wait – he’d have to suffer more.
With mouth blood-saltily impure,
Cold handcuffs biting at wrists,
He weigh’d up what left to endure,
How much torture to resist,
& if some fresh supersedure
Sadistic hedonist
Studying Dante for inspiration,
Might charge take of his interrogation.
The padlock rattl’d; priggish, rude,
Men came with bread & meat –
Flavors imbued the well-cook’d food,
“You’ll watch us while we eat!”
Tom froth’d & salivated like a babe denied the teat.
Paris
May 31st
1944
Fresh Air
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny
You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
James Thomson
Hours blend, t’were two or twenty, who could tell,
& Yeo still entomb’d, he heard the clang,
Of iron on steel, high-pitch voices swell,
“Raus!” “Raus!” “Raus!” again, cell door open sprang;
A submachine
Gun train’d at him with rage,
Unchain’d from the latrine, the rabbit leaves the cage.
They led him to a spacious hall,
Where thirty other faces
Like his appear’d, cut were them all,
As if strawberry laces,
From dirty hair did crawling sprawl,
Ticking off name spaces,
Into a prison van each man was toss’d
“Where now?” “Who knows?” “Escape!” counting the cost
Of being caught he trac’d the way,
Thro’ well-known streets they went,
& glimps’d the gay Champs d’Elysees
Beyond thumb-narrow vent,
Parisianic fondness tear-ducts triggers liquescent.
Paris
June 2nd
1944
Fresnes
Into a famous prison Yeo’s turn’d,
At least, for now, the tortures are halted,
& to alive the famishment that burn’d,
Allow’d a little oatmeal, & salted’
Two sheets each morn
Of toilet roll – small-siz’d,
Square cut & crudely torn -, wield war’s news fragmentiz’d
& so he join’d an awful stint
Of life in a caustic loop,
Where ersatz coffee made men squint
& as for mangel-wurzel soup,
Twas like rainfall in a hoof print –
Yeo refus’d to stoop
His spirit… sang his anthems, pac’d cell.
To shine a hint of Heaven on his Hell.
Upon the wall concupiscence
Screams communications;
Omnipotence, deliverance,
Crude manifestations
Of men condemn’d to carrying crosses round the stations.
Paris
June 4th
1944
(AA) Canto 50: Napoleon
**************************************
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man’s history is the beating of war drums
Arthur Koestler
Invasion’s Verge
I have lived in the ecstasy of battle.
The throbbing of guns, growing yearly,
Had been drum music to my ears
Herbert Read
A conqueror chokes up the Channel coast
His Grand Armee’s grand camp, & grander still,
The ambition to sail this eager host
Across the tide to execute the kill;
Two thousand boats,
Two hundred thousand sons,
& thirty thousand goats, with countless swords & guns.
Ambition turns to thwarted dreams
For fishes out of water,
Who’d thought naught could avert their schemes,
Britannia saves from slaughter,
Whose Nelson steers hervicious beams
Soon, afraid to fight her,
Villeneuve diverted from the myrtle seas
Back to Cadiz, via the Antilles.
As dispatch reach’d the Emperor,
“This is gross betrayal!”
With, “Sacre Bleu!” with “Merde! Mon dieu!”
He curs’d his admiral,
“Then let us march to Austria, I must have my battle.”
Boulogne
1805
Trafalgar
Sailors, drag your anchors out
from their harbour hideaways
& coil the dripping hawsers in
Antipater of Sidon
A fleet departs Portsmouth in stately flow,
Nelson’s sword-heart-beat pulsing for the game,
Transglobal oars his name all slowly know,
Setting so many foreign flags aflame;
Up in the van
Signals the Victory,
“England expects each man enact his own duty!”
Athwart all current theory
Devlish line has cross’d the ‘T,’
Divvying up the enemy,
Private conflicts in the sea
Conducted with cool energy,
One-sided killing spree,
“Nous surrendons!” as French, half drench’d in gore,
Kneel ‘neath the Spartan Sea-Lion of war!
“Kiss me Hardy!” Lord Nelson croaks,
“Kiss me my dear old friend!”
Amid the smokeswept, creaking oaks
England’s angels descend,
For death & heroism are companions to the end.
Atlantic Ocean
21st October
1805
Glorious Winter
A deadly silence step by step increas’d,
Until it seem’d a horrid presence there,
And not a man but felt the terror in his hair
John Keats
How many miles had Stefan Stiltski march’d,
Step-after-step, harsh-blister’d, ankle-sore,
Flea-bitten, sunbaked, freezing, flogg’d & parch’d,
Then rises random slaughters of real war;
Frozen musket,
Caked head to toe in snow,
Fixing his bayonet, his unit next to go.
He left the crucial Pratzen heights
With lads long time befriended,
The French look weaker on their right,
By them this was intended
Behind him marching Gallic might
Claims heights undefended,
Whose cannon murder thunderous wide spread,
The Russians soon outnumber’d by their dead.
As rounds are pounding thro’ the ranks,
Gouging a trench of pain,
France crowding flanks, old comrade yanks
Stefan’s arm in disdain,
“The battle’s lost, come brother, let us fly back to Ukraine!”
Austerlitz
December 12th
1805
Tilsit
We dream of being a ship,
Anyone didn’t think what wood we’d raise,
We intended to build it with vine branch
Dritëro Agolli
Like some black hole in Europe’s heart aswirl
The love of conquest draws the best men in,
Two years of battle prattle with a whirl,
Tsar Alexander knows he cannot win;
Facing defeat
Since Eylau & Friesland,
Two patriarchs shall meet across the Niemen strand.
Upon a little river raft
All Europa torn in two,
Where godlike signatories craft
Warsaw’s freedom, won anew!
They, after, dined & drank & laugh’d
Til evening’s twilight drew,
& parted they the firmest of firm friends –
Of course this is not how their story ends;
But that is for another time
For now let us suffice
With this sublimely fashion’d crime,
Daring to roll the dice –
The World was stolen by one man, a tiger midst the mice!
Poland
1807
House of Bonaparte
As up he mounts, and each with wonder sees
His speed and godlike grace. He seems to them
No more an Angel but a flying fire
Joost van den Vonde
As Josephine the Childless weeps for life,
Tempestuous storm-slash Vallombrosan
Erupts, her husband took another wife,
Some chubby, buck-faced, princess Austrian;
For seven years
Her table reign’d supreme;
Drying her noble tears she toasts the dying dream.
From Holland to Etruria
Via stately Germany,
The zenith of an emperor,
March’d in brazen majesty,
Valencia, Westphalia,
Frankfurt & Tuscany
Pray for his new-born heir, the King of Rome,
But… looking at these hairs upon his comb,
He knew that he might conquer kings
But never conquer time,
The flutterings of eagles’ wings
Drown out the churchy chime –
Bells welcoming the evening like a Languedoccan rhyme.
Paris
1811
A New Frontier
After them came the soldiers
With rifle & bomb & gun,
Looking for the enemies of the state
Charles Causley
Scarlet redcoats rampage thro’ Portugal,
Safeguarding Lusitania’s treasures,
Alas, events unfolded typical,
The sorry state of Britain’s half-measures;
‘Send Wellington,’
Rising reputation
Blows into old Lisbon… without hesitation
He wedges French forces between
The hammer & an anvil,
The first, fighting for King & Queen
Galway, Glasgow, Leeds & Rhyl,
The second patter forth unseen
Darting from kill to kill;
Blend Portugal’s intrepid militias.
With daring, dashing, Spanish guerrillas
From storming Badojozan walls
To wild Vimeiro,
The Duke controls the hapless Gauls,
Iberia’s hero
Secures the Salamancan ridge, then bridg’d the wide Ebro.
Spain
1811
A New War
When I remember with what buoyant heart,
Midst war’s alarms and woes of civil strife,
In youthful eagerness, thou didst depart
Amos Bronson Alcott
Napoleon’s embargo at full strain,
Belittled by those Peninsular ports,
While England gains good victories in Spain,
The Bourgeoisie crave tea & petticoats;
Alexander
Opens the door to trade,
His fellow emperor launches a hot tirade.
“How dare this peasant Muscovite
Deny my sacred orders,
The time has come for France to fight,
Men move up to the borders!
We must avenge this selfish sleight,
Satisfaction owed us!”
Two purple brothers, friendly once, with wine,
Hurtle to war like Guelf & Ghibelline.
“To arms!” six hundred thousand sons
March up thro’ the Empire,
The vista stuns, so many guns,
Some vasty field of fire,
Arrives an aide-de-camp, “Thy Grand Armee awaits thee, sire.”
Poland
June
1812
Turning Tide
But her children are in a marsh
Bogged, they have gone wild.
Yet, no one should worry
Susan Griffin
The path to Russia’s heart hack’d Cossack clear,
It’s conqueror trots thro’ the old city,
No Roman triumph shall await him here
Just ghostly streets salute his ‘victory;’
“What is that smell?”
Flames flicker candlesque,
Soon burning, fright’ning Hell surrounds his writing desk.
A score of letters reach the Tsar,
None in reply forthcoming,
His wily foeman’s rising star
Is from the ring retreating,
“This is no way to conduct war!
What will this madness bring?”
On every side his ‘far-from-grand’ Army
Live days like dying men – desperately!
Rapine & riot ransack wild,
Short autumn swiftly spann’d,
One meek & mild abandon’d child
Holds out her little hand;
A pretty snowflake melted there (as Alexander plann’d).
Moscow
October
1812
Retreat from Moscow
Their shoulders held the sky suspended ;
They stood & earth’s foundations stay ;
What God abandoned, these defended
AE Housman
At rumours of gross treachery at home,
By dog-drawn sledge the Emperor winds west,
His soldiers wilting in the wintry gloam,
New Bonnie Ruthven Prince; “Men, do your best!”
Namore the French
Dictate, shall, Europe’s show –
Thro’ thick unburied stench back, by Borodino,
The remnants of the legions track
The ruts of that royal sleigh,
Assaulted by vengant Cossack,
When only brave Marshall Ney
With one thousand fends off attacks,
Full fighting night & day,
Winning the Grand Armee a single chance –
To save themselves before the fall of France.
Ordeals only ten thousand last,
As silent in the street,
Crowds look aghast on phantoms pass’d,
Frost-bitten black the feet,
Those kings that conquer’d Moscow humbl’d cripples in defeat.
Paris
December
1812
(AA) Canto 51: D-Day
**************************************
The beautiful soul has no other merit than that it is. It carries out the most painful duties to humanity with an ease, as if it were acting purely from instinct
Frederick Schiller
Agony of Command
The sinking enacted
only in the flux,
the layers of the soul
Evangelia Papachristou-Panou
Two empires allied since the Peace of Ghent
Combine to strike a rival from the Earth,
Into low landing crafts their soldiers went,
With rifle, helm & ammo-belted girth;
Reading, smoking,
Enjoying life’s sweet breaths,
Of their loved ones thinking or conjuring their deaths.
Eisenhower bore cognizanze,
‘Supreme Allied commander,’
His charges set to march on France
Depending on the weather,
“Jan Mayen charts the likely chance
Of skies sweeping clearer
Upon the sixth… to risk it don’t know…
What do you think Monty?” “ I would say… go!”
The sirens of the Norman shore
Broke his indecision,
“But war is war, I won’t say more,
My thanks to everyone,”
& looking at his wrist-watch in an instant he was gone.
Southwick House
June 4th
1944
Denial & Destiny
The darkness whirled but silent shone the animals.
Just before dawn the dove flew out of the dark
Flying with green in her beak; the dove also had come
Josephine Jacobsen
Across Ribbentrop’s desk scorches ‘the sixth,’
He has the spy sack’d as a dissident,
“Heavy seas must deny that narrow width,
Send out “INVASION IS NOT IMMINENT…”
Generals peel
Their presence from the shore,
Went playing at Kreigspiel, lost in an unreal war.
From the auld Roche Guyon castle,
Duke Rochefoucourt’s stately seat,
Bound a happy, buoyant Rommel
Like the cat who got the treat,
With the promise of no trouble
Drives smiling down the street,
His wife shall get a gift on her birthday,
Those front-line tensions half-a-world away!
Upon the fringes of the Reich,
Fair coast of Normandy,
The Naiad psyche draws Friedrich
To sunset-colour’d sea,
“I am ready,” heart thumping free, “to die for Germany!”
Lion-Sur-Mer
June 5th
1944
The French Resistance
Ye sons of France, awake to glory,
Hark, hark! what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives and white-haired grandsires
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle
“Blessent mon Coeur d’une langeur monotone!”
The second half of a Verlaine malaise,
The Herresgruppe proclaims oer the phone,
“Expect the invasion within two days!”
“If they must come
Then Calais it will be,
No need to beat the drum that startles Normandy!”
Maquis, Veronique & Pierre,
Gather’d in lip-hush stable,
English newsreaders grace the air,
“The dice are on the table!”
This moment’s majesty they share
Mote profound than fable…
Six patriots switch off the radio,
Then slip into the night to start the show.
Hastening to the sabotage,
Rail-bridge soon river rocks,
Across the stage a pent-up rage
Administers rude shocks;
Resisting, restless regions of down’d pylons, damag’d docks.
France
June 6th
1944
Piercing the Atlantic Wall
From so much opening of my arms
dreaming of the moment in which I will embrace you
they have become stuck in a cross
Pilar De Valderrama
Now entering the end-days of our War,
Grand finale of the Age of Empires,
Long story drench’d in misery & gore,
Now liberty attends to Hades’ fires;
Aft, “Three-two-one,”
Leaps first paratrooper,
Vangaurding invasion of Festung Europa.
Tis night, & the bright moon outglows,
Laird of a silvering scene,
Blossoming from droning shadows,
Drifting earthly-wise serene,
Rows of silken, cloud-burst heroes,
Yclad in Kendal Green –
While ordinary men storm’d the beaches;
Plumbers, miners, doctors, cops & teachers.
Some were fair game to rifle fire,
Others break limbs & backs,
Electric wire, beflooded mire
Extracts war’s brutal tax,
But many men survived the fall to form cohesive packs…
Saint Mere-Eglise
June 6th 1944
01:30
D-Day Dawn
The grand Redemption of degenerate man
Is not a single, independent act,
But one great system
Samuel Hayes
As midnight mists melted into morning
Dull cumulus obscur’d the summer sun,
A soldier greeted dawn with a yawning,
Gaze skipping waves… he tighter gripp’d his gun…
At last it comes,
This is the day of days,
A forest of phantoms prowls spectral thro’ the haze.
Beside him paus’d a French cyclist
Into smoke them both did peer,
Shapes turn to ships, they learn the gist
In a moment’s awful fear
A fateful , the hated fist
Of Britain’s bombadeer
Slamming close by, that frighten’d cyclist flees
As Freidrich Stemmler, now, in horror sees
Lancasters flashing oer the fleet
Some twenty sky-miles wide,
Flocking to mete death & defeat
On Hitler & his pride,
Shouts leaping from a bunker; “Every soldier, get inside!”
Lion-Sur-Mer
June 6th 1944
06:15
Bloody Omaha
Hear the wind moaning –
Oh, hear it blow,
hear the sea’s mocking cry
Murdo Macfarlane
Long lines of landing craft surge twards violence,
Rapping at the ramps like a woodpecker,
Bombastic bullets burnish the silence,
Sarge bellows, “Boys, this sure aint Nebraska!”
Sick trickles free,
Churn’d by the heavy swell,
Men splash into the sea, death welcomes them to Hell.
Each US Rangers LCA
Berths under Pointe du Hoc,
Tho saturated with sea-spray
With ladder & grappling hook,
They clambour up the slipp’ry clay
To deal a new Quebec,
Those ord’nary folk, inching up beaches –
Plumbers, Doctors, Miners, Cops & Teachers.
Lancasters race oer lethal beach
Blasted waste by mortar,
Where yet to reach the bluff, to breach
Holes thro’ awful slaughter,
Men bray by bobbing bodies bloating in bloody water.
Omaha Beach
June 6th 1944
07:30
Death of Freidrich Stemmler
Forget your father;
Forget your mother;
Forget your brothers, kins, and friends
So Chong-ju
Sense stirr’d by the bagpipe’s thrilling muster,
Willing to storm stone bunkers midst the slain,
A rare moment puffs-up Patrick Sumner,
As tho’ perch’d on the Pharsalian plain;
Veterans cast
A vision of Dunkerque,
France meets their feet at last… at last they go to work.
Dusty Friedrich drops down his gun
Hoping quarter, hands held high,
Steps out by a dying Frenchman
& his spike-entangl’d thigh,
Surrenders to an Englishman,
They stood there eye-to-eye…
Tho’ good of soul Pat’s anger fail’d the test,
His rifle raises… piercing panting chest…
Satisfied, the Goddess Karma
Departs the Norman shore,
Where a Sumner slew a Stemmler,
“What did you do that for?”
“One of ’em kill’d mi brother… had to even up the score.”
Lion-Sur-Mer
June 6th 1944
08:00
The Longest Day
Take what they have left
And what they have taught
With their dying
Major Michael Davis O’Donnell
The breath of morning burst between the drape,
Atomies dancing in a budding beam,
Frau Rommel felt a nuzzle at the nape,
Then made love to her darling as a dream;
Coitus fashions
Vestments wrapping soul’s core…
Banging-canker’d passions… Manfred yells thro’ the door…
All the world gains confirmation
That the Invasion was on,
“Great & timely operation!”
Pipe the newsmen down London,
“Sev’ral miles of penetration,”
Thought Charlie of his son,
“Longissimus dies cito conditur!”
He told his mother, wife, dog & daughter.
From starry cirque, arcane séance,
Freda’s fair spirit flew
To distant France, her mystic trance
Merges with milky view
Of Patrick resting by roadside, “He’s reyt, ‘ee will pull thro’.’“
Burnley
June 6th 1944
17:00
Beachhead
Remembering now that I have left love
tenderness, kind touch of flesh far
in another land far in another time
LW Griffith
Commanders relax upon Augusta,
Sooth’d by the narthex of the evening star,
The bridgehead secured in hard-fought order,
The British beaches linking with Utah;
Confidence high
Replaced the day’s fray’d nerves,
The Allies shall supply the war at those thin curves.
From the beach at La Madelaine
Shall venture Liberty Road,
The mulberries are floated in
With many a bulging load,
Amid the gruff, curse-pepper’d din
These vital piles are stor’d,
Food for the armies of the Alliance,
To fuel their progress thro’ the fields of France.
As Welshmen march’d to Agincourt
& Scotsmen, Fontenoy,
Within this awesome seat of war
Canadians deploy,
To live or die in Europe in imperial employ.
La Deliverande
June 6th
1944
(AA) Canto 52: Crush of War
**************************************
I long for you from the front
& I will find you when these days of fighting are over
Deep in the homeland
If only I survive
& if the worst happens
If the days of my life are counted
Remember me sometimes
Remember me with a kind word
Konstantin Siminov
Revenge!
Misfortune, I am misfortune,
& my shadow has betrayed me;
Suffering, I am suffering
JM Bognini
To each Departmente spread a secret smile,
Himmler determines one must soon be wiped,
But done, of course, with certain sense of style,
When every detail of those deaths neat-typed;
Choking cordon
Chain’d by Black Shutstaffels –
Village-dwellers summon’d by sick-chime steeple-bells.
Menfolk maliciously murder’d
Beneath a barn’s beam’d arches,
Whose women & offspring herded
Inside the lamb of churches,
Tram trundles twards the massacred
From Limoges slow lurches;
It’s occupants harried ‘cross the convex,
Exits seal’d off, some firebrand burns the hex.
Wylde shrieks leap from a holy place,
As rose the devil’s flame,
What witch-wound trace etch’d in the face
Of those who know no shame,
To them bestial savagery is but a bullish game.
Oradour-sur-Glane
June 10th
1944
The Truth Will Out
Let the hen be clawed; let the lion roar;
Let the foolish be pugnacious;
Let the heart be broken with grief
Llywarch Hen
Hungarian deportings are started,
The estimates well met – like herrings pack’d
& pickl’d in a tin -, all departed
For some camp or other, the whole thing smack’d
Of sheer unease;
With incredible speed
Cleans’d was the “flesh disease” that “never more shall spread;”
Spoiling Semitic minds to doubt
Europa’s soil, the plan is,
“But, better, Palestine, without
The false-sworn Kazakhstanis,”
Sniff secret Zionists about,
Whose visionary plan is
A Greater Israel from Euphrates flow
To Gaza, Antioch & Megiddo.
The BBC & New York Times
On Vrba’s words report
Thro’ conscience climbs undreamt of crimes,
Stretching our psyches taut,
Enpierc’d by fearsome frightfulness, of all life’s comforts fraught!
The Free World
June 12th
1944
Battle of France
Generations after you,
‘Neath the red, the white, the blue,
They shall reap what you have sown
JH Wilson
Life illumes all scenes the Nazis were
The Allies press on to the Sequana;
Stars & Stripes, Union Jack, the Tricolor,
Fluttering for Liberation’s honour;
With shaven pate,
Collaboratrices,
Watch enmity & hatred goug’d in angry faces.
Grand offensive bogs down & gropes
Thro’ the Bocage chequerboard,
Round Kalvarienburg’s red slopes
Deadlock blunts the Saxon sword,
Tho’ outmann’d, outgunn’d, ‘gin the ropes,
From airways slash’d & claw’d,
The Wehrmacht fight with heart so bold & big
As with the master after pass’d Leipzig.
A token force of six Tigers
Met fifty times their size,
What warriors forged in Russia’s
Rough fields of snow & flies,
No matter, tis certaincy they’ll be snuff’d out from the skies.
Villiers Bocage
June 13th
1944
Death in the Jungle
Devoid of desire or music or joy
but lying forever morose
till death takes me unawares
Donnchadh MaRaoiridh
Having swapp’d one prison for another
Slater conducts a bloody one-man war,
Slaughtering patrols, breaking for cover,
As septic sores from weak, white blood cells pour;
His makeshift camp
Sees revenge deliver’d,
Where fixing an old lamp his whole body shiver’d.
He knew that his life was slipping
So thought about his father,
Sweaty rivulets e’er dripping
Til slain by Malaria,
Thro his bloated, blue corpse ripping
Cometh Calliphora…
Attracted by a quiet, scratching sound
Some giant Sloth, three days aft, sniffs around.
She sinks her teeth, the body warm,
Its brittle, black flesh splits,
O see them worm, O feel them squirm,
Awful trove of maggots,
The Sloth coughs up her rotten meat, nose-snorting as she flits.
Thailand
June
1944
Doodlebug
The old strifes are done, the fight is fought.
And with a clang and roll, the new creation
Bursts forth ‘mid tears and blood and tribulation
Sir Lewis Morris
The Nazi grand plan seems less grand than deem’d;
From sites diminish’d by the Allied bomb,
Pilotless ballistics strataward stream’d
To shatter London & her saintly Dom;
The Blitz returns,
Death-tipp’d eagles flying,
Again a city burns, & its fair folk dying.
From heaven-scented Calverly
Caroch’d Air Marshall Dowding,
Gaea’s golden serenity
Burst by th’ear-splitting roaring
Of some Vee-One’s hostility,
Bent on mindless scoring,
It seem’d to laugh & flash above his head,
Towing a spitfire with determin’d tread.
Poised neck & neck, tipp’d wing-to-wing,
Perform’d a graceful tilt,
Curt unhinging… missile spinning
To corn fields at full hilt,
A ruthless killer thwarted, it’s quest’s nemesis well built.
Kent
June 16th
1944
Soviet Advances
Over the garden the moon’s tide tumbles;
Shrubs are shaken by gusts and tremblings;
Pathways ribbon with sudden dissemblings
Marie Under
Hitler has led his Greater Germany
To caddling nightmares of a three-front war,
What strength defends his eastern ‘victory,’
While barest handfuls watch the Norman shore;
From post-to-post
A rigid, nail’d defence;
The Allied bigwigs toast such frigid martial sense.
What courage crumbles for the fight
In the Feste Platze fortresses,
Without water, hope, or daylight,
Led by brainless officers,
Roll’d over by the Russian might,
Leaving pale sepulchres
Of dead & dying, hear their sorry pleas –
A young Thuringen begs on bleeding knees…
…Alas his pity-pleas ignor’d –
Prefers, Konstantin, force;
Who draws his sword, angers outpour’d
Treading the darker course,
From ear-to-ear he calmly ripp’d that throat without remorse.
Byellorussia
June 22nd
1944
Apprehended
So desperately
The leaves cling
To the departing fall
Shiki
Rebel rabbles in the rubble of France
To Berlin’s vengeant passions fall due prey,
Amy Gardner’s unhappy happenstance,
One random turn & road-block blocks the way;
Searching her car
Incriminates were found
Hearing the words , “you are under arrest!” they drown’d
Her in a bath & then revived
Her on the cusp of dying,
All thro’ a week of food depriv’d
They whipp’d her – “you are lying!
Like cormorants constantly dived
Tortures reapplying,
But some transcendent shield defends her core
Toss’d in a fusty cell, blank but the floor
In solitude & darknesses
Design’d her little girls
Pretty dresses, pattern’d tresses
Gave them bobs & curls
With matching fabric ribbons helter-skeltering in curls.
Fresnes
Bombing Budapest
I saw the follies of my former flame,
I turn’d indignant from the hateful sight,
Struck with remorse, and mortified with shame
HJ Pye
As bombs fell on Buda, paper on Pest,
The Admiral sat in his bunker, still
Reflecting on this message from the West –
No longer victim to herr Hitler’s will;
When leaflet read,
How grew, he, full afraid
‘Punish’d they’ll be,’ it said, ‘that deportations aid!’
Three hundred thousand Jews renamed,
But now the trains are halted,
Let Vrba be some saint ordain’d,
Or Sannhedrin exalted,
Thro’ his success in us ingrain’d
Is truth, bitter salted
Tastes it, but we humankind has need to reap
The depths of us, however sick & deep.
As this news to Hitler given,
His need to hold the line,
Relying on rebellion
Repress’d – he mutter’s ‘fine,
Come war what may, we’ll stop those Jews e’er reaching Palestine.”
Berlin
July 9th
1944
Angel of Death
The difficult tolerance of all that is
Mere rigid brute routine; the odd
Sardonic scorn of desolate self-pity
Alun Lewis
Cut by the bleeding edge of academe,
The Hitler-oath outvalueing his health,
Around vile work wild mussitators scream
Warnings unheard; by seizure or by stealth
He pricks & plots
Thro’ pseudosciences,
Hanging raw bibelots from claw’d appliances.
Repugnancies eugenical,
Dissections of chilling zeal,
Fresh eyeballs by the barrowful
Thro’ a cast of thousands wheel,
Experiments nonsensical,
Inhumanoid ordeal,
Labagonies commuted with a tick,
“Off to the chambers with her! Quick! Quick! Quick!”
He starves a newborn baby girl
‘Til a loving mother
Looks on her pearl, brushes soft curl,
Kisses with a smother –
Sufferings unburdening, a murder like no other.
Auschwitz
July
1944
(AA) Canto 53: Destructions
**************************************
Many people, soldiers & civilians alike, witnessed spectacles comparable with Renaissance painters’ conception of the inferno to which the damn;d were consign;: human beings torn to fragments of flesh & bone; cities blasted into rubble; order’d communities sunder’d into dispers’d human particles
Max Hastings
Bomb Plot
In the walls their windows staring blindly back,
And even the thatch itself was rotted black.
All was ruins, grown old; here death had come crawling
Maksim Bahdanovič
Noblesse oblige, when duty outranks praise,
Stauffenburg slips his oath’s constrictive grip,
Mindful of Mankind’s most valorous days,
He dares to strike at his dictatorship –
Not at the tail,
Aft’ which ye face the bite,
But thro’ the hissing veil the head conjures in fright.
He stepp’d into the conf’rence room,
Hitler glances curt, “Hello!”
The situation maps cry doom…
He placed his briefcase calm & low
Near Hitler’s feet, as sly as fume
This Colonel, quick yet slow,
Takes his leave, when driving thro’ the compound,
He made no flinch as bomb-blast wrenches sound.
Midst the Fuhrerhauptquartier’s
Dull rubble’s wracken rush,
Shredded trousers, shirt in tatters,
Hair tangl’d toilet brush,
“Fate has saved me, I now decree such treachery we crush!”
Wolf’s Lair
July 20th
1944
Betrayals
Anger lay by me all night long,
His breath was hot upon my brow,
He told me of my burning wrong
Elizabeth Daryush
What emotion transforms man to Judas?
Of all heartaches it must be Jealousie;
Constance leads the Gestapo with a hiss
To the old farm own’d by his family;
Watching th’embrace
At an upstairs window,
Taut pulls the jeune-tinged face as lonely torments grow.
The sound of jackboots on the stair
& rough Teutonic clamour
Drove Veronique to clutch Pierre
With full zest of her amour…
The door burst ope, this noble pair
Shied captivity’s floor,
Shooting those shapes daring to enter room,
Pierre leapt on the sly stick grenades …
She groan’d & rose, saw her soul’s mate
Sprawl’d lifeless where he died,
Dusts dissipate, before too late
She tried her suicide…An empty… CLICK… down by her hair ‘Der Bitch!’ is dragg’d outside.
France
July 29th
1944
Revolt
war raged and found profit in colonial lands!
war raged and killed babies in their cradles!
war raged, and destroyed cultural values
Usman Awang
Stalin urges all Polish pride to rise;
Its capital in ruins since its fall –
Emblem of sad defeat, but not demise
For what could break the white-tail’d eagle’s soul;
Fresh hope talk balms,
As Russian tanks draw near,
The citizens take arms, abandoning all fear.
This War’s grey incunabula
Erupted to no avail,
For ruthless, fuel-full Luftwaffe
Dowse belief with lethal hail,
While watching on biovular
Those sister-Slavs derail
The plan; yon the suburbs tanks sat idle;
Stalin, uncompassion’d, at the bridle.
The Nazis reaffirm their grip,
Unleash a savage hate,
This sinking ship, this rubbish tip,
The Poles evacuate,
& shuffle, ragfoot, to the west, cursing their country’s fate.
Warsaw
August
1944
Vengeance!
Impaled on the moon,
a boy’s head is banging for justice.
A mother’s harvest blights at noon
Toyin Adewale-Gabriel
They said in the night all the cats are grey,
Suspicion falls on all but his closest,
The ‘coup’ fizzles to naught by close of day,
Its circle of usurping soul-depress’d;
“Ich bin OK!”
Grateful Volk hear his voice,
“Providence dost display my destiny her choice…”
Financiers of treachery,
Self-made victims of the plot,
Von Stauffenburg dealt with quickly
For defying the despot,
“Long live our sacred Germany!”
Proud-statured as he’s shot,
I wish you could have seen his dying face,
So free of doubt, weightless & full of grace.
Such a sense of shock’d resentment
Spreads thro’ the German world,
Their Fuhrer sent to them unbent
By traitors’ fury hurl’d,
While fires of the Ragnarok a little higher curl’d.
Berlin
August
1944
Libertie
Is it not better to bear Beauty’s weight,
Hold up your arches, solid as rock,
Than to feed the hearths of the world’s hot hate
Laza Kostić
Aux Barricades! With patriotic surge
Frenchmen are bursting from a new Bastille,
Deep gusts of fresh freedom from lungs emerge,
Each swastika torn down in frantic zeal;
A grim return
Hounds collaborators,
Naked, a la lanterne, spat at by beraters.
One gorgeous day in late summer,
Spiedel, Praetor of France,
Shall defy his master’s order
With an innate elegance
Saves the treasures of the Louvre,
As thro’ the streets advance
Those gutsy guns, those GI miracles,
Kiss’d on all sides by smiling mademoiselles.
Two nations born of human light
Illume the great parade,
A supreme sight, a dream delight,
La Marseillaise is played
No time to rest in revely, off to the front they made
Paris
August 26th
1944
Quaesitors
In this crooked dead end of a bitter cold
They keep their fire alive
By burning our songs and poems
Ahmad Shamlou
Into the solemn Prinz-Albrechtstrasse,
Foul heart of an empire within empire,
Crapulent on the banquets of power,
Men to a curv’d brutality aspire;
In dark & daze,
Behold the secret police,
Their diabolic ways rule an imperfect peace.
Thro’ all the doors of Germany
Slime tentacles penetrate,
Each plotter & his family
Shall face a queasitor’s fate,
Footsteps clunking full heavily,
Blood trickles down a grate,
Men broken by a callousness sublime
Reveal the names implicit in the crime.
Tied to a blood-stained wooden rack,
Sorrowful Stulpnafel,
Screams out as crack cuts cross his back,
“No more!” the bull-whip fell,
“Give me a name you filthy hund,” a whisper, “Herr Rommel…”
Berlin
August 29th
1944
Strategy & Tactics
The eagle is king of the birds; among fishes
Leviathan holds the first place,
Cleaving the far, crimson cloud
Sung Yü
Round bed-swapping corridors of power
Hop top-shop gen’rals, Monty’s dropp’d one down,
“But as a sop,” whisper’d Eisenhower
“Adorn his stars with some Fieldmarshall crown”;
“Blame Roanoke”
Fumes Bernard, as he seeks
Audacious masterstroke to end the war in weeks.
“Colonials contemptuous,
Being too pedestrian,
Let us the Siegfried Line bypass,
Paras capture Njimagen
Then Arnhem, there’ll be little fuss
Old men, just, & children,
In that whole sector now protect the Rhine…”
Churchill emits thick smoke, then admits “fine…
Better than each yard a battle…”
“Ike’s unfit to command!”
Unbeatable, unbearable,
They shook each other’s hand,
By contact steel’d, by contract seal’d, by compact concert grand.
Brussels
August 30th
1944
Rousing the Reich
Sampling the possibility of doom
See us searching the papers
Nursing the radio
Shake Keane
“Is Paris burning?” huff’d wistful Hitler,
Fat face so pale & puffy, taut & tense,
A grunt as enters General Molder,
“It can’t go on, this War is lost…” “NONSENSE!”
Chasing rainbows,
A vision is devised,
For deity still flows & soldier mesmerised.
“Tis time to mobilise fully
All of the land’s resources,
From the workers of Germany
Draw Volksgrenadier forces,
Show iron vein til victory
Rides on Asgard’s horses,
Back to the Reich as the Ultramarxist
Breaks ranks with the Ultracapitalist!
Yes, we shall fight upon the Rhine
As did Fred’rick the Great,
No Nineteen Nineteen shall define
The future German state…”
Sighs Molder, “I shall try again…” for that man was his fate.
Wolf’s Lair
August 31st
1944
Operation Market Garden
In church the bell is tolled,
In barracks at the last bugle note
Soldiers like ants file
Stephen Lubega
Night falls on nose-to-tail planes park’d pack’d up
While men they’ll soon convey to blossom sky
Watch ‘Hellzapoppin’, roving pub-to-pub
Singing, “three cheers for the next man to die!”
Then restless sleep
When dawns that day of days
Long sewn, them all shall reap, up leap the Red Berets.
So many Harrys, Dicks & Toms,
Like webbing-spurting spiders
Swell aircraft bellies stripp’d of bombs
Fill shells of smelly gliders
By Horsas haul’d, as intercoms
Rippl’d thro’ the riders;
Hamilcars, Dakotas – so glorious!
Have Heaven fill’d… pass Paras down the bus
Singing songs of ‘Liberation!’
The flocking people trekk’d,
First Eindhoven, then Njimagen,
By orange flags bedeck’d,
But… further north the plan slow’d down by vital bridge’s wreck’d.
Holland
September 17th
1944
Mumble Words 