Axis & Allies
(AA) Canto 54: Flagellants
**************************************
Germany would have become so beautiful, strength through joy, spare time & recreation, new dwellings, the most beautiful cities & villages have been planned, service & just wages, a great, unique health program, social security for the aged & incapacitated. Roads construction & traffic lanes, ports & settlements – how beautiful Germany could have been, if, if, if, & always again, if
Robert Ley
Drop Zones
I’ve stopp’d under a bridge
I haven’t been able to continue
The rain is falling
Miguel James
Superdaring, salted porridge Paras,
From landing parks have disembark’d in troops,
Dark apaches, flashing bows & arrers,
Dash off to catch the scoopiest of scoops;
‘Good morning’s curt,
Their ’saviors’ Dutch embrace,
As with a speedy spurt off to the bridge they race.
A misty day, resistance light,
As bullets pitter-patter
The enemy began to fight,
The streets burn’d black with splatter,
The bridge intact, as in its sight,
Mad as maddest ‘Hatter’
“Woah Mahomet!” on English tongues erupts,
The bridge hard storm’d, secur’d, its sentry huts
Become bold battle bastions,
Now all to do is wait
With loaded guns, ‘til hordes of Huns
Along the bridge shall spate,
A colony of sexton beetles dug in at the gate.
Arnhem
September 17th
1944
Gott Mit Uns
Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour & the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth
Arthur Hugh Clough
Model assess’d the day & gladly found
Schutzstaffel legions seasoning nearby,
Harden’d by battle on the Norman pound
& all resolv’d, for Germany, to die;
Convey’d by gusts
Of war, in interims
Kampfwillen readjusts, with lock’d & loaded limbs,
They straf’d & block’d the roads that led
To Arnhem, where, embolded,
They met the foe & shot them dead
As gory fight unfolded,
Some snake-plan sever’d at the head,
Monty’s ‘baby’ scalded,
By boiling pitch, endowsing flame’s flaught flames
Like gladiators in dictators’ games.
They fought as if Bhishma-possess’d
On Kurukshetra’s field,
Breathing their best, needing no rest,
The Irminsul unseal’d,
Defending ancyent tribal tracts with battle-axe & shield.
Holland
September 17th
1944
Best of British
The god of war is drunk with blood
The earth doth faint & fail;
The stench of blood makes sick the heav’ns
William Blake
Hope bash’d her head against the realis’d,
Arnhem, it seems, was just a bridge too far,
A slice of dramaturgy ill devis’d,
The ragged hoo-har of a too high bar;
Facing defeat
For certain, still men fought
In garden, shed & street, spreading their deadly sport.
Since Tewekesbury & Naseby field
The English quite united,
Since Charlie dropp’d the Highland shield
The Scots have too alighted,
A Union, one two thirds seal’d
When the French affrighted
By longbows lethal-streak’d at Agincourt,
What wonders when a Welshman goes to war!
So climb ye Cymric, English, Scot
Three nations, side-by-side,
Form sinew-knotted polyglot,
By glory unified
But not this deed’s alarum, Isandlwanaring the pride.
Arnhem
September 22nd
1944
A Bitter Pill
Before him ran a miserable confusion
Ruin & battle & a grievous end
On struggle, blood & struggle, on terror, dire terror
Gwalchmai Ap Meilyr
Carries on the Para’s constant swinking,
The situation slipping to austere,
The Osterbeek perimeter shrinking
From hope to apprehension, then to fear;
From waxen face
Dumb sockets sit & stare,
Defeat’ll mean disgrace forever, everywhere.
Nine days of Hell, & now they’ve fled
Across the river spuming,
Behind them fifteen hundred dead
& seven thousand fuming
At being caught, among them said
Soldiers, unassuming,
& missing legs, as imprison beckon’d,
“We lost, but at least we finish’’d second!”
They made them at the face of coal,
They made them in the mills;
The long, the tall, the short, the soul
Of Alba’s goat-fill’d hills,
Who fought like caustic demon hounds who’ll slaughter Baskervilles.
Arnhem
September 25th
1944
Death of Rommel
I shall go back
to the formless clouds
& melt myself into rain
Jared Angira
Two automons knock’d on a legend’s door,
Charging their target with highest treason,
But.. for his services throughout the war
Der Fuhrer has permitted him poison;
Serenity
Succumbs his famous wits,
“Speak with your family, but for fifteen minutes!”
He told his wife of his life’s debt,
Embraced his beloved son,
Donn’d old Afrika Korps jacket,
Attach’d Field Marshall’s baton,
She was nobility, & yet
She wept when he was gone,
Away into the forest & his fate,
Car halts, his captors leave the car & wait…
By seat-slump’d star these pale drones stand,
Now Rommel ‘gan to cry,
“Death by the hand of one’s own land
So hard,” stripp’d of all pride,
He wheez’d his last, closed gemmy lids, thought of his wife & died.
Swabia
October 14th
1944
Last Days of the Reich
And this is the crisis-point
The twilight moment between
sleep & waking
Chirstopher Okigbo
Some vale East of the Lakes Masurian
Bleak Prussian homesteads clad in sober grey
Refuse to flee in face of the Russian
Though murder is the order of their day;
Huddl’d in song,
Shells smash through cottage wood
Slaying a peasant throng, soil drinking native blood.
Throughout the Nazi satellites
Roam doubters for eversion,
Bulgaria no longer fights,
The Baltics scream aversion,
Finland leaves Hitler to his plights
As the Romanian
All land & liberty to Stalin yields –
Seizing those vital Ploesti oil-fields.
How darkly disgusting is war
When war’s ways rumble home,
The drumbeats are frightful afar,
The Volk of Berlin’s Rome
Prepare a Way of Spartacus towards the Reichstag dome.
Germany
August
1944
A Change of Tone
This is what you get for begging to be
chosen: every god in the universe eyeing
you through the clouds like a hot wound
Vandana Khanna
As Churchill stood the Commons silent fell,
Sweat, blood & tears in all of them instill’d,
Whose promise of, “One day all will be well…”
Had made them fight despite whom might be kill’d;
With glasses push’d
Up noseridge, he begins
“This war will not be rush’d, but Britain always wins.”
While fighting tyrants & their crimes,
With the Germans fled from Greece,
Let victory attend these times,
People prosper best in peace,
With Hitler slipping in his slimes
Our phantom shall soon cease
To haunt our living days & wailing nights…”
Cheers raced around his face, still shining bright
No longer lonely beaconflame
Of hope in awful night,
But lit the same as all, became
The one burning most bright
Among the luminescence of a land in vital fight.
London
October
1944
The Contract of the Spies
bones in cold spaces
a heap of souls’
robbed glances
Karina Fiorini
Incarceration clouds the count of days,
Mouse morsels of repugnant, filthy food
Like islands that above the swamp do raise
A patch of respite from the marshy mood;
Som unkempt wreck,
Ladder’d stockings tatter’d
Pre-modern Mrs Shrek, Amy’s looks were shatter’d,
As quarter-humans mill’d about
This miserable abyss
The shriek, the scrike, the scream, the shout
Grumbl’d with halitosis
She’d had her toenails rough-torn out
Coughing tuberculosis,
Felt Amy desp’rate denizen of Hell…
Then came the change, one sunday night appell,
“Among thee whom have agents proved…
Yes, you… you… come with me
To be removed, to be re-roov’d
By Hitler’s own decree,
All of your spies shall learn your fates some place in Germany
Fresnes
October
1944
Hungarian Questions
Shut tight your eyes! See nothing at all!
Turn yet paler! And, resigned,
Throw your arms around a greater cross!
Florbela Espanca
Hoffa tries to broker a sep’rate peace,
His rats shall leave the sinking Axis ship,
Hitler’s furies fresh treacheries release,
Sending reserves to reaffirm his grip,
Motor’d across
Pannonia’s wide Plain,
Racing t’avert the loss of all that blood & grain.
At Captain Skorzeny’s command
The auld citadel attack’d,
Thro’ weaking guards his elite band,
Passage pecking schmeissers hack’d,
He strode upright, took Hoffa’s hand,
“Your statement you’ll retract…”
Then gave a speech when all the shooting ends,
“We are not enemies but loyal friends.”
“Hungary fights to the finish!”
Faith restored Zapolyan,
“We have one wish, your Jew rubbish…”
Hoffa leant at Eichmann…
“You must return them all to me for their expurgation!”
Budapest
October
1944
(AA) Gl’Immortali VI
The great, the jewel & the mother of all battles
Saddam Hussein
Superhero
The world presents a strange sight:
The vision’s mantle is torn apart—
May valour struggle with the waves if it must
Allama Muhammad Iqbal
A hero born in freedom stalks the Earth –
From the Harbour of Americana,
Sails Captain Amazing to prove true worth,
For action prim’d, full flush with youth-vigour,
Across the waves
To isles of rotting wood
Which Bishamon enslaves, which Kraken drains of blood.
Upon a beach me made skyfall,
The trees made midnight rustle,
He took a cautious starlight stroll,
Til camst he on thick muscle,
So large it seem’d a mighty wall –
Twas throbbing tentacle
Bulging upon the profits of the theft
A sabre swing that slimy limb-length cleft!
One part grows limp the other creams
The face of Amazing
Thick scarlet streams, while distant screams,
& the flailing shaking
Of shorn & bloody sinew-spurt at tyranny’s breaking!
Pacifica
Pendulum Point
I have followed narrow twisting ridges,
Sharp-topped & jagged as a broken crosscut saw
Across the roof of all the Elk-world
Gary Snyder
Blue Polevik pursued by Valkyries
Into a titan forest over ground
Amidst the trees they’ll hear the sobbing cries
Of something strange, what makes that doleful sound;
Lesky! Lesky!
With bulging eyes outspann’d
Astonished Valkyries sink into its quicksand.
Thus Polevik comes safely to
The country of the Ice King,
Naught but a wide, white waste in view,
Where his calls went echoing,
But now a swan of turquoise huie
Swoops down to snatch the ring
Out of his hand, flown to the citadel
Where stirs his icy highness, just as well
For daemons swarm around Pyerun
To deal the killer blow
Standing upon a lake frozen
Beneath the covrant snow
The Ice King yells, the lake’s pane cracks, drags daemon hordes below…
Edge of Asia
Under Aetna
I thought that I could not be hurt
I thought that I must surely be
impervious to suffering
Sylvia Plath
Retreating to the Cyclopean isle
Mars commands Vacuna & Bellona
To fortify the shores; where, from the Nile
Enemies, toxic as belladonna
Bang like iron
Against the sea-sands, slam
King Arthur, his Lion, Hino & Uncle Sam!
Spreads combat yon the coastal wall
With all of its bangs & knocks
For Mars it did not help at all
When the Cyclopes pick’d up rocks
& at him flung them, bowling ball,
Whose skittlescattershocks
This God of War did fluster, blusterly,
Rocks wrecking trench & ramparts lustily!
Mars forc’d to flee this mean assault
“Scylla & Charybdis
Shall surely halt them… with a vault
Leapt, Lion, the abyss;
Where souls of anguish’d sailors languis’d listless with a hiss!
Ausonia
Two Lords
Young as yet the world must be
All our long, long history
Still is but its cradle song
Henrik Wegeland
Well, as far as sublimity’s concern’d,
When brute & sullen war is deified
Lord Bishamon, of all sword-honours earn’d
Commands a claim that cant’ be overturn’d
With backs whip-crack
Three Wyvrn take to air
Jabberwocky hunch-back’d, to take attacks elsewhere.
At once he heard the howl that hiss’d
Turn’d to the sound with a scowl
From out the swaying stalks & mist
Perch’d on a pounding peafowl
Lord Katrikeya flung a fist
& spear to disembow’ll,
A lucky weave & death’s eye flah’d right past
Now Bishamon & Vishnu’s business clash’d.
Among that spearstick scorpistorm
Pagoda blocks the blows,
In fight & form, both mighty Rome
Keeping each other’s toes,
Til’, with all force exhausted, Lord Bishamon’s fail-hood grows.
India
Under Alba
With sacrosanct cajoleries
And starry treachery of your eyes,
Tempt us back to Paradise
Francis Thompson
As Agnorona, bound, her whispers seal’d
To utter Rome’s eternal name forbade
Gaz’d on the Palatine, her instinct steel’d,
There stood a ‘last stand’ bastion, Mars made;
Janus, twin-fac’d,
Closes the temple door,
To which the Aesir rac’d & open-yank’d by Thor.
As every opinion
Dost have its counter, valid,
Mars, & his purple minion,
Turns scaly, pale & pallid,
As when the heights of Guinnion,
By Gala’s valley hid
No more, to war went Arthur, like the dat
He bore St Mary’s icon to the fray.
On seeing she, Jesus-serene,
Mars, at last, hath wilted,
With acid spleen Thor flees the scene,
Like a lover jilted,
As with a creak the scales of right & wrong for Justice tilted!
Ausonia
Stone to Dust
There was a corpse outside
It was a fine and cruel noose
coming out the corpse’s mouth
Ramón Palomares
Mars mumbles homewards to Olympus Mount,
Wounds attended by prancing succubi,
From magic flute the notes of loving fount,
From luscious Venus with a rush of sigh;
Softly seduced
She guides him from the war,
With one kiss were reduced Bellona & Ishtar.
Odin withdrew to Valhalla,
Multitudinous the throng,
Brought the Aesir all together,
Speaking truths with wounded tongue,
“From both East & West comes terror,
Our time will not be long,
Step before me captains of each legion
That march’d not east to subjugate Pyerun!”
He turn’d unto that troop of horse,
The pale, white, black & red,
“Take thee swift course to fetch a force
That stands in the good stead
Of our friend Lord Satanus…” hard hooves to their Master sped.
Asgard
Gargantua
Marble walls of palaces,
Iron bars of dungeons,
You break through them all
Alter Esselin
Dragonsflight bares the brunt of the Gryphon,
Below their fight, embattl’d in the surf,
Celtic braves war for noble Gwyddion,
All glory-worthy roaring to the turf;
Sam’s martial star
Emblazon’d on his tank,
Puffing a fat cigar for how Hell’s legions stank.
Gunshafts shell-after-shell did throw
To invert & invalid,
Sam drove his tanks into a foe
Of flesh-hood foul & acrid,
Be-elzebub survey’d the show
All worried & well hid,
A message from his master brings relief,
“Return to Hell…” joyous, in disbelief,
Sam smiled as his enemy flees,
View sweetening the veins,
Archangel breeze Saint Denys frees
From her barbaric chains,
“Pyerun awaits our armies, come we march to Asgard’s plains.”
Gaul
For Liberty
No subject for immortal verse –
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse
Cecil Day Lewis
Between the mists that cloak immortal spheres
& realms of aether soak’d illuminous,
The twinkling of a candelabrum nears,
Behold, the city, ever glorious!
O’erall sate Jove
In regal diety,
While singing angels wove gimcrack’d marqueterie.
The highest hordes of Heaven glow,
Pure & perfect was the path
To the foot-hills of Vesuvo,
To Babababagorath;
Seven heads leave off Averno,
Seven tongues spit serpent-wrath,
At Seraphim, whose bows of golden fires
Loose arrows – thro’ Hells gates the Beast retires.
Towards the long, horn’d, thick-scal’d tale
Gabriel took keen aim,
A whoosh, a wail, a gushing flail,
The Dragon maim’d & lame…
Angels smear’d in its dragonsblood, then stepp’d into the flame.
Hell
Defeating Valhalla
Rally around to the glory of our time!
The blood surges in our veins,
We die for the sake of our land
Aboul-Qacem Echebbi
The young Aesir in battlegear assemble,
Take to the air on flying manticores,
Soaring rainbow streaks that so resemble
Swarming storms of orbital meteors;
Wave after wave
Of old Asgard’s heroes
Rush to a second grave where Pyerun’s sylph-suit glows.
From Heaven, Saint Volodomyr
Flew down with angelic guard,
FEAR floated thro’ the rude Aesir;
Men’s panicking minds fresh marr’d
By Barbarossa’s disappear,
Down the road to Asgard –
Protected by Satanic riders four,
The battle left to all who fought with Thor.
The twisting saint sweeps down & spurns
Thor’s sky-twisting weapon –
Mjolnir returns, but handle burns,
Dropp’d like relay baton,
Arms-naked Thor’s heart pierced by blades deepest plunged by Pyerun.
Asia
(AA) Canto 55: Year Six
**************************************
Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories
Sun Tzu
Brutal Reunions
I have nae will to sing or danse
For fear of England & of France
God send them sorrow & mischance
Sir Richard Maitland
Effective sermons of never-say-die
Fuel Yeo’s soul flame, whose prison dirts
Penetrate skin; a gape of open sky,
Outside at last ! with seventeen, alerts
Appear’d like puffs,
Of smoke about his brain
Conjoin’d by ankle cuffs, them bundl’d in a train.
As down the carriage, cumbersome,
Rough nudg’d, him & seventeen,
Yeo observes the face of some
Woman – back in Golders Green
They’d discuss’d with optimism,
Leaving the old routine,
Adventures rending the rest of the war…
Now Aimee Gardner’s chain’d, like him, who swore
She never would be caught… thro’ France
Pass, they, friendly faces,
Still, start, advance, until the dance
At the change of races,
Yon Maginot’s & Siegfried’s stringing beads of hostile bases.
Saarbrucken
October
1944
Saint Aimee
A white stone half-dug into the soil,
Said to me as I was passing by:
– God bless you, pray, I’m a tombstone
Azim Souyun
For thirty-six hours their train has sat
On some side track, just waiting for its turn,
Inside all prisoners can do is chat,
But silence clamm’d by thirsty words which burn;
Angels appear
Like Saint Philip’s daughter,
Eutychis, “Keep alive…” sliding pales of water,
They haul’d them from a cistern pot
Crawling beneath the windows,
Elsewise all of them might be shot,
As each droplet rebestows
The vim of life, from sunk to trot
As acqua vitae flows,
What words of reassurance left the lips
Of those fair spirits – once again there grips
Determination strength to raise
Yeo’s is returning
Squeez’d firm his fist out from the mist
Of madness, saw burning
The torch of hope that tops the slippy slopes of grope & churning.
Bad Kreuznach
October
1944
Death of Aimee Gardner
Dear, beauteous Death, the jewel of the just,
Shining nowhere but in the dark,
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust
Henry Vaughan
Another halt, this time a diff’rent stir,
& Aimee was unshackl’d from the rest,
Usher’d outside, lined up, awaiting there
A dozen rifles pointed at her chest;
Fate’s sudden wrench,
This could not be mistook,
Thought thoughts, she, just in French, enough to fill a book!
Strength-whisper-words softly exchang’d,
Were winds on which the finches
Flew one last time; the rifles rang’d
Against them; knuckle clenches
The trigger – finger friction chang’d,
Out of diamond dentures,
A solid order roar’d for men to “SHOOT!”
the dozen bullets flew, slew absolute.
Drops Aimee in her final thoughts…
Family was smiling,
A memory of sand & sea
Upon brainwaves piling,
Lurches towards oblivion’s desolate beguiling.
Wachtersbach
October
1944
Autumnal Blood
Should the worst come to the worst
Should we be overpowered by our foes.
Our bodies shall lie on the field of battle
Mangaia
Eisenhower clutches his purple hearts,
With Axis soldiers murder’d as they stood,
Rapid progress reduced to fits & starts,
Bogg’d down by Autumn’s dirge of rain & mud;
Most precious oil
Trickles from port to front,
As onto German soil the first assault troops shunt.
Thou art Hell, once verdant Hurtgen,
Thy primeval forestry,
Watches lion dedication,
Men embattl’d dev’lishly,
The German spirit’s bolster’d iron,
Flaking young-gun Yankee;
Harsh-fated rules amidst thine ancyent bark,
The going brutal & the killing dark.
Each liquid roads, each pile of snow,
Each booby-trap ambush,
Has stemm’d the flow, strange vertigo
Dizzies the Allied push;
His front safe-clos’d Hitler withdraws the Panzers in a hush.
Ardennes
November
1944
Redistributions
The dissipation of feature,
The manifestation of skull,
The lengthening of cheek
George Bruce
Just yesterday was Yeo’s fate interr’d
In hell’s own guts, but feels an age ago,
Sepulchral rows of spectral faces gurn’d,
the antiphon of loneliness bestow;
Firm lock’d within,
No questions to be ask’d
Obeying, with a grin, whatever he’s been task’d.
Rot yellow comes in sticky streams,
Sores purulently oozing,
Dung carted off by ‘being’ teams
Of whom some used as amusing
Torture clowns, appalling screams
On all eardrums bruising
& only one way, one day, all will leave
That’s up the chimney – I do not believe
This is my fate, claims Yeo, still,
Remembering his vow
To grind the mill, unwind his will
Survive no matter how,
To reach the finish line & with a flourish take a bow.
Buchenwald
November
1944
A New Mission
The sun sips the sky until it is drowning.
I am circling my prey.
If I am strong, the world will finally let us be.
Kamikaze Death Poem (anon.)
The Japanese air officer appears
Afore young pilots fresh-faced & alive,
“We’re looking for some special volunteers
To fly a mission no-one could survive:
One possible
Answer of three impart,
‘No,’ ‘Yes,’ & ‘Yes, I volunteer with all my heart.’”
Taken aback them were, of course,
Who’d wanna be a gonner?
But when night fell, floods forth in force,
Thought-phantoms of dishonour;
His mother’s tears, his father hoarse,
“Why bestow this on her?
A coward for a son!” in fitful dreams
Apocalyptic visions stuff’d with screams.
Out of the forty who awoke
“Yes…” answer’d thirty-nine,
The other bloke they push & poke,
While forming in a line,
Zeletic alcestissians for Yosukini’s shrine.
Tokyo
December
1944
The Last Wolf
Ez for war, I call it murder,-
There you hev it plain an’ flat;
I don’t want to go no durder
James Russel Lowell
A fleet of thirty Lancasters takes flight,
Cocksuring with latest technology,
When wee computers, supporting bombsight,
Keen-measuring wind-speed velocity;
The sixth hour nears,
Below – in Tromsoe fiord –
The matchstick ship appears, each pilot pulls the cord,
Dropping bombs ever precisely
On the long-sought for Tirpitz,
Who shudders with Hellish fury
Neath an unrelenting blitz,
This fairest princess of the sea
Struck by convulsive fits,
Slipping into the icy, bubbling foam –
Above, applauding Britons turn for home.
This last pride of the High Seas Fleet
Lies, rust-meat, under waves –
Awful, complete, total defeat,
Dead in their ocean graves,
This challenge to Brittania ends like Trojan architraves.
Norway
Dec 12th
1944
The End of the Affair
When I was a young shoot & curious
my heart was set on this world;
my evil deeds will make me die soon
Palau
Twyx keen lambitus & deft fellatrice
Two lovers groan in gushes, while outside
Shuffle shadow beings until decease,
Monotonous, inescapable ride!
With coital flame
Slowing with fierce fondling
They go to play the game of sonderbehandling.
Anna Grunfeld stood a statue
As dawdle her inspectors
Along the lines, where two-by-two,
Arbitary, capricious,
The weakest lookers pay their due
In this evil, viscious
Infestation of every human sin,
When ‘special treatment’ just a rubbish bin!
The two new vernals caught her eye,
She had her wicked way,
A startl’d cry, a heartfelt, “why
Touch Juden filth, & gay!
This trysting is kaput!” hiss’d the disgusted Mengele.
Auschwitz
December 16th
1944
Battle of the Bulge
Let the shell fragments
howl past more often,
random death roam free
Sergey Narovchatov
The Allies stand at Germany’s threshfold,
Hitler denudes defences in the East,
Inspires his troops with the gusto of old,
Once more the grand gods of battle may feast!
Thro’ the Ardennes
Trail miles of martial queues,
Fresh aircraft, tanks & men, “To Antwerp & the Meuse!”
Fog drowns the leaves, the ice breeze chills,
Vee-Twos trail fiery blazes,
Thro’ twisted vales, ‘neath snow-capt hills,
Trundle hundreds of panzers,
No vernal cluster’d Daffodils
Comforting the soldiers
Attacking tanks cunctatorially –
How different from triumphal ‘forty.
The petrol dumps are blown sky high,
Fury’s depleted use,
Their fumes suck’d dry the Panzers sigh
Beside the milky Meuse,
Yearning for famous victory, alas the Fates refuse.
Dinant
December 22nd
1944
(AA) Canto 56: The Rage of War
**************************************
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy
Mahatma Gandhi
Poker Game
How did you pass thro’ cobalt wood
Thro’ shrouds of white, to reach the sneer
Where fat hyenas feast on blood
Amjad Nasser
Yuletide passes by & yet no victor;
Saint Nicholas delivers golden gift
To the Allies, the skies gleam clear weather,
Reflected by the bright, white snowsome drift;
Farenheit’s fall,
The GI grows colder,
Shouts, “Fire in the hole!” Angels on his shoulder
Go about their deadly business,
Wreaking murder far below,
Piles of presents sent for Christmas
Lie unopened in the snow,
For nearby these frozen corpses
These gifts will never know
As all about the Fuhrer’s grand design
But a spent promise broken on the line.
All-in for the Fascist menace,
Three aces… world grows hush,
Hitler’s grimace, the other ace
Flipp’d for a royal flush,
The Allies claim the bulging pot, upon three sides now push.
France
December 27th
1944
For Japan!
We didn’t see our dead,
Who rarely bothered coming home to die
But simply stayed away out there
Howard Nemerov
How light the hearts of men summon’d to die,
The time to please the Emperor soon come,
Pride forms blue spinning crystals in the eye,
Serene as the floating chrysanthemum;
From Kyushu
To Soya-Misaki,
Tojo’s warmongers drew their lethal infantry;
Then pour’d them thro’ the harbour quays
Filling the honeycomb caves,
The Kimigayo on the breeze
Superpatriotic braves
Heard strange whisperings in the trees
As mad kannushi raves,
Ambitious lilies adventing the storm,
Not long to go before the war comes home.
Basho climb’d gorgeous Mount Shuri,
Open’d his heart & pray’d
For victory, his great army
Snoozed in the evening shade,
Waiting to be awoken & to draw the Empire’s blade.
Okinawa
January 1st
1945
Death of Frau Stemmler
Within our life these sorrows we contain
Uncertain days, yet full of certain grief;
In number few, yet infinite in pain
Christopher Lever
Karolina gazed on beautiful spires,
Medieval majesty up-streaming,
Untouch’d by this damn’d war’s destructive fires,
The World of old all dazzling & dreaming;
Her cousin Klaus
Meets her at the station,
Soon in a coffehaus flows good conversation.
Bligh flew over Franconia
Where the targets drew in sight,
Dyak temple of Der Fuhrer
One moment before midnight,
From the belly of his bomber
Drops the poor people’s plight…
A grey deluge of terror from the skies,
Frau Stemmler cursed Herr Hitler as she dies.
As ghastly Magdeburg suffer’d
This city too knows hell,
Bligh glides his bird & at the word
Load added to the swell,
A far cry from gallant ‘forty this slaughter ariel.
Nuremburg
Jan 2nd
1945
The Anonymous Soldier
I find no peace, & all my war is done,
I fear & hope, I burn, & freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise
Sir Thomas Wyatt
In a storm, in a blizzardsong of snow,
A soldier huddles from a distant land,
Where purple sands of desert heave & blow,
& nomads drink the vines of Samarkand;
This frozen waste,
This landscape alien,
Encas’d the great displac’d races of gravesent men.
They knew him thro’ the regiment,
Tho’ none his name remember’d,
A shell, of elevation spent,
Beside his neck descended,
& blew up like a lava vent,
Cruelly dismember’d
His torso stood upon two bleeding knees,
Legs in the bushes, arms up in the trees.
Once he was his mother’s darling,
But now he’s blown to bits
Cursing the King of Everything,
The Devil’s glamourglitz,
Lock’d in wars of Good & Evil, when Destiny permits.
Russia
January
1945
Coffee & Cigars
In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die
Lewis Carroll
As France was swept with sunshine breaking forth
From Winter’s night with all the joy of dawn,
Redoubtable Pendragon of the North –
To some archangel, other’s demonspawn -,
By armour’d train
Crept to the rendezvous
With Monty, ever vain, but still his best, he knew.
They met for coffee & cigars
Churchill insisted puffing,
“It seems the mighty roar of Mars
Reduced to hoarsey huffing,
The Battle of the Bulge’s scars,
& his army’s roughing,
Has chasten’d Eisenhower…” Monty smil’d,
“He gets our strength is unity concil’d,
We’ve come a long way haven’t we?”
The both of them agreed,
By air & sea & land did free
The banded British breed
Spun on a moral sixpence from packhorse to plated steel.
Brussels
January 5th
1944
Karmic Echoes
O mother!
Weep for thy noble dead;
They fought like heroes till they fell
James Nicol
Zhukov emits the order of the day –
Pamphlets, loudspeakers, all along the line
Remember those who fell along the way -,
‘On those who did us torture let divine
Retribution
Seek them with no pity…’
Mouths full of ablutions, prickspur lethality
In fatal blows did close, embroil
The Wehrmacht with disaster;
HER sandal-foot steps onto soil,
The scales of fate HER master,
Watching a single soldier toil
As the Russians pass’d her –
Surrounding some German in their net,
Surrendering at point of bayonet.
In Shlisselburg he’d shar’d stare-eyes,
“Just shoot him!” “No, stop, no!,”
A Russian cries, “tho’ you despise
Him I must let him go!”
“But why?” “I cannot quite explain…” smiles KARMA in the snow.
January 6th
Szolnok
1945
Defeating the Wehrmacht
‘Tis true, ’tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because ’tis light?
John Donne
Men shuffled thro’ the snow with frozen feet,
Beshawl’d as hags, thick whiskers wire & grey,
The gamble fail’d, an army in retreat,
Avoiding another bloody Cannae;
As in the East,
To the cruel Katyusha,
Hordes of Russkis releas’d across the Vistula.
It was less offensive action,
More the milt’ry parade,
As Berlinwards marches Russian
With the Saragozan maid,
Narr’eyed avengers talion
Primal instinct obey’d,
Zhukov commands the Mazovian plain,
The Wolf’s Lair now diminish’d of Wolfsbane.
With freedom of the world at stake,
With Wolves of war abroad,
Riding the Snake the Russians take
The Moscow-Berlin road,
Racing on hated enemies to put them to the sword.
Warsaw
Jan 12th
1945
New Normal
What is’t to toil amidst the din of war,
To talk of honour, or a dreadful fear,
To live on hope, the shadow’d best we have
Joseph Badworth
A rumbling drone, reminiscent of Hell
Grows louder when the front lines sag & crack,
Posnaniensis desolately dwell
Where roads of Reich & progress cul-de-sac;
Shop windows all
Display fray’d cardboard goods
While on the farmer’s stall just sickly looking spuds.
The solitary cafe sold
Ersatz unpalatable
The only cinema did hold
Heimatfilms sentimental
This last one now some three months old
But life had grown so dull
That still to these unheated seats they drift
To watch again with friends when ends the shift.
As one departs the populace –
By handcart, horse & hand
Pans, mattresses, sacks, suitcases
Plod in a gypsy band,
Sie gaben ihr leben for Fuhrer, Volk & Vaterland
Posen
17th January
1945
Bastards
We are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
India’s prehistoric clay
Rudyard Kipling
This War’s final dramas know no pity,
Satanical eupraxia all sides,
Effluviums of mass’d virility
Swarms from the east to sieze its nightly brides;
Libidos thrust
On peach-ripe alabasters
Eyes like spring skies ’til lust claws girls to their ‘masters.’
Thro’ cellars, barns, the came in queues,
Deflower’d ev’ry petal,
Stenching of cigarettes & booze –
Under each boiling kettle
This harrowing from hell renews,
When the harsh pains settle
Some bled to death, some hang themselves from trees,
Some sang a heimatlider on raw knees.
& some shall bear a bastard child,
Eyes so slightly slanted,
One mother styl’d her night defil’d
That her boy implanted –
Her little miracle of that lifetime’s wish Godgranted.
Wartheland
January
1944
(AA) Canto 57: Deliberations
**************************************
All through history, from the days of the great phalanx of the Roman Legion, the master law of tactics remains unchanged; this Law is that to achieve success you must be superior at the point where you intend to strike the decisive blow
Bernard Montgomery
Desperations
Despair is texture; without it
We should not know how to face
The thing with such certainty
John Silkin
Tho’ shehila stay’d, these breathing corpses,
Dancing attendant to the Kapo’s stick,
Are oft’ selected to please the doctors…
Young Ludwig gains six inches with a brick;
They pass him by,
Clutching a surgeon’s knife,
A joyous, silent sigh… another day of life!
“If you’re content with a little
Enough’s as good as a feast,”
But poor Joseph drops his kettle
& could not digest the yeast,
Gracile bones huckstering brittle,
As flesh bore he the least,
Today the guards would bundle him away…
Ludwig sits down to pray where last he lay.
The rumble of the Russian hosts
Murmurous daily near,
Like phantom ghosts the gibbet posts
& ovens disappear…
When rainbow stars are driven off to march the snowy fear.
Auschwitz
Jan 20th
1945
State of War
Here now the locust leaps, the serpent crawls,
And bindweed Ruin writes, as on the walls
The hand of doom once traced Belshazzar’s fate
Adam Mickiewicz
A man lies maim’d down Downtown, Singapore,
Unable to stand, an opium pipe
His only friend, dulling this endless war,
Dreaming of times before his corp’ral’s stripe;
Meanwhile, elsewhere,
This War affects us all,
Demanding times full share, with problems large & small.
Like the hunger in Alaska
Now the rations have downsiz’d,
While the mind of ‘Manny’ Lasker
Lives no longer, analyz’d,
Only Karma knows, “I’ll ask her
Cry rascals wide despis’d,
If all along this war was meant for lost….
Last bullet spent, last hand grenade now toss’d,
He glances round for something sharp,
Chanc’d on a butcher’s knife;
He duck’d for carp, he pluck’d the harp,
He fuck’d his lovely wife,
& now he rucks with enemies until they took his life.
Frisches Haff
January 25th
1945
A Futile Plea
Look at me, & I look back;
you have eyes, but I have none;
you may speak, but I am speechless
Socrates
Clock running out, work left, the secret police
Boost every effort, hypermotile burst,
Wedging dirt within each petrean crease,
From secret hiding bases unimmers’d
Men crawl into
Custody protective,
Helmuth Von Moltke too, pensively reflective.
Drap’d in her finest furs, Freya
Visited Heinrich Mueller,
Himmler’s heir; they talk’d together,
“I’m afraid we can no longer
His most famous name consider,
But there will be no torture –
& Frauline!” “Yes?” “When all this is over
Do come back to us…” her smile hid terror,
Thro’ sheer heart’s love, the whole world crash’d
About her in a spin,
The Justice dash’d off inky flash’d
Sentences of death, in
That paper pile stew’d noble name, cook’d in a loony bin.
Tegel Prison
January 23rd
1944
Operation Matador
I stumbl’d through no man’s land,
living miracle after miracle,
that I could still hurt, that I still lived
Polly Clark
Thro’ Heaven, Hell & cosmic mystery
One thing’s for certain there are many ways
A man can die – hon’rable dysentry
But one, another drifts like dinner tray
Thro’ mangrove murk
Towards the Japanese,
One button from bezerk, stiff still among the trees
As into Min Chaung’s creek of tides
Innocent infantry files,
Abandon’d by their Burmese guides
Like snipjack tuna – the smiles
Of widening jaws slowly slides,
As loads of crocodiles
Unleash a beastly spinning mince machine –
Hardly a soul surviv’d that sorry scene.
The British took this island mass
But for its reptile realm,
The latest class of pilots pass
Exams, popp’d at the helm,
Of some fresh place the next train of defence to overwhelm
Ramree
January
1945
Landsturm
Woe, woe, unto the fallen city !
Where are thy streets,
Thy towers
Johann Sigurjonsson
Max Stemmler requisition’d by Goebells,
Reich-remnant summon’d to the Prussien,
Oathsworn to resist in bloody battles
The brainwash of the Bolshevik Russian;
His sons were dead,
Them martyrs in his eyes,
Blessing the blood they bled he dons the Jager’s guise.
No rhyme nor reason could explain
The thrall of the Nazi hymns,
Tho’ zest of Hitler’s early reign
Now death’s gory paroxyms,
When loyalty could still ordain
Stepping into chasms…
The GI’s pierce the gloomy atmosphere
With an unanswer’d, “What we doing here?”
Survival’s trivium, of war,
An old man grown full sick,
Thro’ shatter’d door he’d seen before
Torn poster clung to brick,
‘All this we owe to der Fuhrer!’ he laughs all lunatic.
Berlin
February 3rd
1945
Cold War
The stones in Jordan’s stream
Perceived the dove descend
In its lily of light
William Jeffrey
The Big Three meet in reconquer’d Crimea,
Churchill, ailing Roos’veldt & the Georgian,
An august body stately & austere
Discussing this thorny Polish question;
As the Allies,
Grand sharers of the cost,
Inquire thro’ narrow’d eyes, forged friendships freeze & frost.
“Surrender unconditional;
Come fin’ adest revum…”
“Born of order’s calm revival;
Status quo ante bellum…”
Tho’ the bloodlust soon to settle
Still Stalin beat the drum,
“Shoot fifty thousand gen’rals out of hand
To cleanse the devil from the dark Deutschland!”
Churchill gestured with the fury,
Iniquitously rack’d,
“You would kill me ‘fore I’m parley
To such a savage act!”
Such idealistic diff’rences do seldom merge in pact.
Yalta
Feb 13th
1945
Peacemongers
Thus one acquires a taste for disaster
& looks for the daily paper’s headline.
Seeing misfortune’s influential astral
Raymond Queneau
As the head of Air Section, Bletchley Park –
A Jew call’d Jim Rose – phon’d the ministry,
He realised how much kept in the dark
Was his role in murd’rous copartnerie;
Enigma’s gains
Now used to justify
Beeswarms of deadly planes, fraught Furfurs of the sky.
“But Dresden’s baroque & beautiful,
Not a threat to anyone,
Please don’t bomb rococo rubble
As with poor Beethoven’s Bonn!”
Bomber Harris burst his bubble,
“Man, nothing can be done –
We’ll do the city as a transport hub…”
Rose slamm’d down the handset, slink’d thro’ the pub,
Flopp’d in his seat, sipp’d his thick stout,
Then stood up at the bar,
Lungs spurting out unearthly shout,
“How lucky we all are!”
Now slamming doors he runs outside & roars off in his car.
Fenny Stratford
February 12th
1945
Dresden
What wrath of Gods, or wicked influence
Of Starres conspiring wretched men t’afflict
Hath powr’d on earth this noxious pestilence
Edmund Spenser
Squadron Leader Bligh completes his home run,
Now Archie Day so he may fray again,
For if he were once more fell’d from the sun,
The network might he yield at torture’s pain;
Taking control
Of brand new Wellington,
Perform’d he pinpoint roll & join’d the formation.
Skimming the cloudrealm wing-to-wing,
Fokker flights well push’d aside,
The ack-ack air a-shuddering
Brutal bombs fell far & wide,
The noble art of murdering
Efficiently applied…
Streets & churches with bleets of terror fill,
A rare few reach the safety of the hill.
As ghastly Magdeburg suffer’d
Each city shares its hell,
Guiding steel bird, at callous word
Bligh’s load adds to the swell;
Far cry from gallant ’40 these cold slaughters ariel.
Germany
February 13th
1945
Death March
Through these pale cold days
What dark faces burn
Out of three thousand years
Isaac Rosenburg
The stripes are march’d across the killing ground
Men call Eingost, strong shoulder’d Pharisees,
Tough Etta Grunfeld in despairs is drown’d,
Infelicific, fracking on nick knees;
Her Anna gasps
& tries to help, in vain,
“Keep moving!” grey guard rasps & blows out Etta’s brain.
Ragged, skeletal, stagg’ring, train
Lurches yon Yankee bomber,
Hungry as wolves, in constant pain,
As minutes last forever,
Wraiths in the wicked snow & rain
Tragedize together,
As defalcations rake the ill-condemn’d,
Snaking to what could only be their end.
From town-to-town two worlds collide,
Houses of ginger-bread
All warm inside, a mother cried
She’d witness’d children dead:
The Volk, at last, forced to account, truth cacodyllic spread.
Germany
February
1945
(AA) Canto 58: Iwo Jima
**********************************
Where have our air forces and battleships gone? Are we to lose? Why don’t they start operations? We are positively fighting to win, but we have no weapons. We stand with rifles and bayonets to meet the enemy’s aircraft, battleships, and medium artillery
Toshihiro Oura
Assault Force
I took his dripping corpse upon
my dolphin back & reached the strand;
the beast played saviour to the man
Antiphilus of Byzantium
Across the Irrawaddy Britain shunts,
The USA reclaims the Philippines,
The Emperor retreating on all fronts,
Outbuilt in tanks, planes, ships & submarines;
Despite such might
Japan still unsurpass’d
When gunjin bravely fight, fight to their very last.
Across this vast Pacific flows
The Taskforce 51,
Who, sight assembl’d, only shows
This war will always be won
In the wake of great crescendos
Each battleship gun
Deals dose of morning’s shellfire for the cause…
Converging on Mount Suribachi’s shores
H-Hour hath come, the barges crowd
The Ocean gushes calm,
Unbrave, unproud, his helmet bow’d,
His rifle round his arm
A clerk from Albuquerque works thro’ the twenty-third psalm.
Off Iwo Jima
February 19th
1944
Deadly Enemies
A naked picture of surrealist
Beauty in eerie stumps,
& ancient banyans
Mmoe Malietoa Von Reiche
At any moment now a foot shall stand
on the soil – uninvited – of Japan,
Or sand, rather, two miles of it, as land
The first brave wave, who, happy to a man
Sense all is still,
As if in empty kirk,
Nobody left to kill, the guns had done their work.
The crystal beach volcanic, black,
Felt like a wheat bin’s dipping,
No traction offer’d the attack,
As backwards men kept slipping,
Then… with a jolting thunderwhack,
All Hell went let-ripping –
As bullets flew & streaming mortars scream’d,
Some firework Mount Suribachi seem’d.
The beach explodes in fits of ‘fuck’,
An army caught mid hop,
As jeep & truck & troops get stuck,
‘Twas more the butcher’s shop,
As when fog cleared from off the rocky tops of Spion Kop
Red Beach One
February 19th
1944
Death of John Basilone
on the ramparts,
he never said death is to be preferred,
that life is negotiable
Abba Kovner
In face of fear, one’s training is our fuel,
But Basilone oozed pure talent, flaunted
Gifts beyond that beach; a personal duel,
A one-man rampage machine, undaunted,
While mortar shells
& hell-hail did death’s work,
As when the Dardanelles defended by the Turk.
As John, quite single handedly,
Destroyed blockhouses freely
Upon a sudden suddenly
His gun-grip slipp’d genteely,
Then body fell down woodenly,
Mumbling some swahili
John last rites whispers, spurting from his veins…
But whose brave deeds an opening obtains.
Probing towards the landing strip
Men penetrate the lines
Whose comradeship, with chipper skip,
These deadliest confines,
Proclaims a vital victory as on them Luna shines.
Airfield #1
February 19th
1945
Peak Storming
I saw the rampart of my native land,
One time so strong, now dropping in decay,
Their strength destroy’d by this new age’s way
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas
Commanders acting whack’d out, stoned & drunk,
Tenacity unprecedented halts
The drive to take the beach, bogg’d down with junk,
A wreckage wall reduced to fits & jolts
Flame Throwing tanks
Confer decisive aid
Ascending wooden planks in Schenectady made.
Under the starry Pleiades
Battle brokers at the breach
With efforts rais’d by Herakles
The Marines move off the beach
&, with an isolating squeeze,
The peak’s first rise up reach
But bare a second they could spare to stare,
For hidden gun-holes blaz’d them everywhere.
As, slow & bloody from the base,
Boulder after boulder,
What demons chase this awkward race
To the mountain’s shoulder,
When every single jack of ‘em has aged a decade older.
Mount Suribachi
February 20th
1945
A New Flag
And lands are saved and conquests won,
And the race of high and hard truths run,
And chains snapped off and sins undone
FW Faber
‘Hot Rocks’ surmounted! Stars & Stripes uprose,
Mount Suribachi Yankee now, huge cheers
Erupt, while celebratory salvoes
Let loose by naval captains clinking beers;
As Hellespont
Found Byron in her foam,
Says Forrester, “I want to hang that flag at home.”
“LST 779
Holds a larger flag inside
Sir” – “Well, son, that’ll do just fine
Go & raise that thing with pride
Just make damn sure that first flag’s mine,
So many boys have died…”
Faded his voice into the void of war
“…Well, get to it son, watcha waiting for!?”
Joe Rosenthall was watching on,
Associated Press,
His instinct shone, the Sergeant gone
Him follows on a guess,
Sensing something developing, his camera’s caress.
Yellow Beach
February 23rd
1945
The Best Shot
No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from
A.A. Milne
As one good picture wins & loses wars,
Up they strode to seal this sacred moment
Young image makers defining their cause
In shining sun that by the Gods was sent;
As hill tops shake
With breezes from the sea,
Nobody could mistake, this flag means victory!
As Harold Keller, Schultz & Strank,
With Black & Ira Hayes
& Sousley, men with hefty crank
America’s badge did raise;
Joe snapp’d some shots, the seconds shrank
The Stars & Stripes display
Themselves for all this island, & beyond…
Where, like somebody’d waved a magic wand
Across conviction, as they saw
That image clog the news,
Regal & raw, their eagle’s jaw
Unbroken, saw the queues
For G.I. joining swell immensely, melds esprit de corps!
The Unites States of America
September 24th
1945
Broken Bonds
Dead, they examined him, finding
in his body a greater body
for the soul of the world
Cesar Vallejo
With ‘piece of shit island!’ & ‘geez louise!’
Curses blend with the murders under slopes
Of Suribachi, men from overseas
Shall conquer here, as when the Age of Popes
From Genoa
To Caffa sent out fleets,
Far off to Crimea’s rich Trapezuntine seats.
These were the hardest of the yards
American boys must play,
To stay alive by turn of cards
& survive another day,
Where, thinking free from living guards,
Into a bunker stray,
Two friends, who, since elementary school
Have shar’d each other’s basic molecule.
One foe still lives, toss’s last grenade
Into that friendship’s heart;
Decision made, the elder grade
Leapt on it, blown apart,
His stunn’d pal full of, “cogito, ergo sum’ of Descates.
Minami
February 24th
1944
Labyrinthines
Then twice six followers from the board
Rushed forth with fierce delight;
They whirled the club, they waved the sword
Esaias Tegnér
All in these crevices, tunnels, crags, caves,
Only one time flash from eternity,
Go men & boys, from nervous to too brave,
Whom, gentle once, at their maternity,
Now lives to kill,
Without a second thought,
Pursued, with all the thrill of an Olympic sport!
As napalm, scented sickly-sweet,
Outflying from flaming torches,
To some twas just like grinding meat,
To others crunching roaches,
Oer sundry ridges in the heat
Tarr’d by scarring scorches,
Progress, meter-by-meter, day-by-day,
Drove on this madly dangerous melee.
The airfield gave a mighty cheer,
The bomber ‘Dinah Might’
Did drop & veer, her smoking rear
Was damag’d in the flight
That yesterday had help’d to flatten’d Tokyo all night.
Airfield #1
March 4th
1945
Victory Comes
Where even defeat has pride.
And nothing can vanquish this ancient nation,
That knows how to dance with such ardour and will
Gevorg Emin
From glorious stand in Kitana gorge
Men overwhelm’d by overwhelming force,
With swords of steel that with true zeal would forge
No mercy, no compassion, no remorse
& no banzai,
By Kuribashi led
Four hundred set to die, all thro’ the darkness spread.
As bullets splutter’d thro’ the zone,
In hacking battle heated,
Loudspeakers squeal beseeching, drone
“Soldiers you are defeated
Surrender & survive…” just stone
Silence – incompleted
That task your emperor had given you,
Now, only death by enemy will do.
The sun rose up & left the sea,
The island calm & still,
The agony, the killing spree,
Has no-one left to kill,
But will live on in nightmares even Dante could not quill.
Okita
March 20th
1944
(AA) Canto 59: Imperial Scrambles
:
**********************************
The soldiers fight & the kings are heroes
Talmud
Downfall!
Having reached life’s hilly stages,
Hemmed about with sleet & snow,
On a drift the swain now seated
Magnus Stefansson
The poet’s task to glorify the page
With stories richer than the Golden Fleece;
Come stand upon the threshfold of an Age
Peace-loving doves flock chirping for release;
Yet men bewitch’d
By warfare yet to come,
When antique pibrochs pitch’d to thund’rous battledrum.
Napoleon feels life’s fierce strain
Steel chains round sad soul wreathing,
Him stood upon the Trojan plain
When demi-gods were breathing,
Hot blood pulsed thro’ his temple’s vein,
Angry, proud & seething –
If Ishtar brings us empire, she’ll bring fall,
Across each tyrant’s dreams Fate hauls her wall.
Held by mercy & his victor,
Like some Sinean King,
Thro’ Mombaza, Montezuma,
To Charlie’s highland fling –
Forced to flutter – an Emperor made putty schmetterling.
Saint Helena
1815
Risorgimento
But thy sounds were sweeter
Than the dome of Peter
Flings oer the Tiber
Father Prout
No longer the montage of petty states,
Spiritus uprisen thro Italy,
Austrians driven from the city gates
By the stoic will of Garibaldi;
Bravely fighting
Where e’er his thousand ride,
Beneath a native king the North now unified.
The Kingdom of Two Sicilies
Rejects unification,
Soon subject to hostilities,
With grim determination
Palermo lost her liberties
& Naples her station,
As with one fierce, jingoist show of force
He enter’d Rome upon a flame-red horse.
From Brindisi to Lake Como
A country re-appears,
The foreign flow of soldato
Lasted a thousand years,
Now cast forever to the past by dashing cavaliers.
Rome
1864
Japanese Renaissance
Like a long, long journey
on a flax-pale steed
is man’s life
Steinn Steinarr
They watch’d them steam into the Edo Bay,
Grey smoking dragons, whose guns numerous
Serv’d the querelous Shogunate’s dismay,
Saying, “This matter does not concern us!”
White faces made
Fair sail across the sea,
Bringing the global trade of Commodore Perry.
Sensing the world had pass’d them by
Japan opens up her quays,
World influxes revivify
Evolution by degrees,
Nippon’s old masters this defy
To be dragg’d to their knees,
As bold Mutsuhito replaces school
With palaces & his ‘Enlighten’d Rule.’
Directly from Yokohama
The nation’s first train flew,
What calibre of Emporer
Into the station drew,
Inspiring such devotion as the lilies drink the dew.
Tokyo
1872
Steadying the Ship
settled on
the temple bell
a sleeping butterfly
Buson
Conscious of a manifest destiny,
Tho’ barely yet a pawn of the great game,
The fledgling wings of eagle of Liberty
Spread oer the world, fanning the flames of fame;
Yet, southern states
Fat on their their slavish fee,
Form bands of vicious mates led by courageous Lee.
Theirs was a very bitter war
Where nobody was thinkin,’
But for the great conquistadour,
A Yankee call’d Abe Lincoln,
Who won slave freedom from the gore;
As his toasts were drinkin,’
Assassins took his life & left a ghoul
Singing the national anthem every school.
A continent is set to go,
Its vast resources spend,
As Alamo quell’d Mexico,
With Canada her friend,
America shall prove the key as did the Gods intend.
USA
1865
Otto Von Bismark
Each different spike you joined into a broom,
You had the same vision
As that of Bismarck
Dhani Ram Chatrik
The German nations reach a higher gear,
With industry manpowering supreme,
Enter Von Bismarck & his vision clear,
Mind xiphoid proffering empiric dream;
Thro’ noble veins
The Junker spirit flows,
Where lust for great campaigns & martial glory grows.
Joining forces with Vienna
Denmark driven from Sleswick,
But bickering with Austria
Leads to battle ballistic,
A trial of strength at Sadova
Shows Hapsburg has grown sick –
World-status lost with Berlin’s victory,
& even Venetia to Italy!
Proclaim the hero of the hour,
First of this epoch’s men,
With deep glower what keen power
Glows rushing thro his pen,
Signing the scroll of peace, pronounce bloodshed not if, but when?
Prague
1866
European Struggle
Wild as the tomb, wild as the mountainside
A storm of hours has shaken the fine spun world
Tearing away our palaces, our faces, & our days
Kathleen Raine
The nephew of the first Napoleon
Light-hearted bent on conflict, as it nears,
What enmity ruffles thro the Prussian,
Catalyst for a century of tears;
An excuse found,
Madrid’s invalid throne,
The buglers calls resound & brutal war is born.
Abandon’d by her enemies,
Once vast manpower dwindling,
France faced the conjoin’d Germanies
Like a bee without a sting,
United were her enemies
Beneath a single king;
Baden, Württemberg & Bavaria
Merge with the North & its Prussian kaiser.
What mighty military rolls
To Paris at a pace?
Grand fortress falls, “Surrender!” calls
The emperor’s red face,
Far from Jena a great power put firmly in her place.
Sedan
1870
Defeating France
After the tumult & the blood
Had died, had dried,
Silence unmade its history
Fyodor Tyutchev
“Vive la France!” gen’ral Gambetta’s cry,
New armies rais’d to save the capital,
On ev’ry side great hordes of grey-coats lie,
Willing moments when men would do battle;
Now Paris meets
Visions of Baudelair,
Shapes grotesque grip the streets, folk starving everywhere.
While waiting for the diplomats
They gorged on their resources,
Then, after eating all the cats,
Felt forced to eat the horses,
& when the city free of rats
In march’d Bismark’s forces,
Forcing humiliation on the French,
Thro Gallic hearts avengeant thoughts entrench.
The gate went up at Brandenburg
Praising Victoria,
Crowns from Hamburg to Nuremburg
Absorb’d by the Kaiser,
A mighty friendship forged to face an unforeseen future.
Berlin
1871
Victoria
The Leaning Tower.
The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.
I made a little watercolour of them all
Carol Ann Duffy
Most rugous, longevous, famous of forms,
Roll’d slowly midst her Golden Jubilee,
Upon all sides the doting empire swarms
Piloted by her growing family;
Sitting alone
Her banquet shall begin,
The whole world bares the throne of Britain’s sovereign.
Europa’s aging grandmother
Attends her garden party,
With crown heads of Romania,
Nippon, Siam, Hawaii,
Plus dashing princes of Persia;
Many-a-majesty
Pays homage to the splendour of their Queen –
Her three grandsons play polo on the green.
A British crown prince lames the horse
Of a future Kaiser,
His curses coarse, a show of force
From the prince of Russia –
Petty is the bickering continuing thro’ supper…
London
1889
War’s Progress
With a fiend-like yelling & cheering,
They charge up the heights at a run ;
Grim men are they all & unfearing
Rev. Andrew McNab
With Gordon’s blood encrusted at Khartoum,
Bit-chomping Churchill blushing vernal haste –
Advancing to an oblivious doom
Brave Dervishes drift cross the desert waste;
Fifty thousand,
Led by bearded Emirs,
Cross tiger-lily sand, raising courageous cheers.
Hail Maxim, military king,
As the s’cockacoka glows,
Death’s mechanical chattering
Scatters Dervishes in rows,
Forms tangl’d heaps of suffering,
But few foe come to blows,
As tho’ they wore tartan at Culloden –
Dows’d in blood the desert sands grew sodden.
“Well, war has chang’d,” young Winston said,
Watching with Kitchener,
Sunset flows red, above the dead
Rose a haunting clamour,
“La llaha illa llah Muhammed Rasul Allah!”
Omdurman
1896
(AA) Canto 60: Endgame
**********************************
War does not determine who is right – only who is left
Bertrand Russell
Irreversibles
The great Soviet people
In a headlong rush of fiery lava
Will wipe out the Fascist gang!
Nikolai Tikhonov
As doom descends on the impending loss
& guillotines glint oer the Nazi neck,
Von Ribbentrop was shocked to see the boss
Turn’d uncoordinated shamble-wreck;
“Might I but try
To make some sort of peace
With Moscow, I could fly there, meet Stalin…” “Please, cease
Such talk – if I made peace today,
I’d just fight them tomorrow!”
Der Fuhrer’s pall all ashen grey,
A face surfeit with sorrow,
Pacing the banks, thro’ caustic spray,
Where Charon’s raft did row
Life’s fallen souls across the Acheron –
But Hitler, yet, to his Hell had not gone.
There was a knock upon the door,
The young Miss Braun stepp’d in,
Whose love leapt raw, “This septic war
I’m destin’d, still, to win…
Now leave us – wider than the Rhine grew Eva’s pining grin.
The Führerbunker
Mar 19th
1945
Setting Sun
These are dead faces.
Wasps’ nests are not more wanly waxen
wood embers not so greyly ashen
Herbert Read
Eph’meral empire nears obsolescence,
The Towers of Tenshu straddle the sky,
As Tojo arrived for his audience
The pale moon sang a sunset lullaby;
Hurrying thro’
An iron-studded gate,
The evening hours, he knew, drew heavy with their fate.
Out of the southern, darkling sky
Silver Superfortresses,
Like eagles hunting from up high,
Rain’d doom upon the masses,
How many children have to die
‘Til their fury passes;
Tokyo like a paper lantern burns.
Of war’s true horrors the emperor learns.
As they watch’d the flames & flashes
To raging maelstrom fann’d,
Into ashes, stonework crashes
Tojo rais’d fisted hand,
“When sacred nations combat on they’ll heed honour’s demand!”
Mount Karvizawa
March 21st
1945
Crime & Punishment
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter’s day,
Is all the proud & mighty have
John Dyer
Oer Nuremberg’s desolation total
Lone Fokker soar’d, inside Gestapo men
Separated truths from anecdotal,
Death-sentencing with tiny ticks of pen;
Plane touches down
By Salzburg, then by car,
Men driven to the town where those, those… chancers are!
Out of the Post Office they’d been
Dragg’d with imperfect purpose,
For all of them… well, some… were seen
Opening Wehrmacht packages;
Pocketing soap to keep kids clean
Then rewrapping wrappers…
Some seventeen were sentenc’d there to die…
When chaos reigns the maddest reasons why
Will fate derange, will stroke down mute
Our love of life & law
A whistle toot, as soldier’s shoot,
Good folk fell to the floor
In agonies of dying in these dreg-days of the war.
Eugendorf
Mar 24th
1945
Frightened Cows
A tight and chiming string
that resounds to anything—
a single stroke or evil blow
Ivan Vazov
Faerievolktown twinkles by Toder’s stream,
Some medieval El Dorado
Of handsome gates & cobbl’d streets, a dream
Of happy greetings each alborado;
Who’d ever thought
They’d bomb such an idyll –
Blare sirens! Cellars sought! Rilke grabs his fiddle
For to play a gentle ditty,
Children shuddering each thud
Of Ninth Air Force barbarity,
Murdering, they thought, for good,
Plundering with impunity
& sapping streets of blood,
Then back to base… emerging children ‘wow!’
As thro’ the Marketplatz storms frantic cow
With horrified, unhappy eyes
& burning at the tail,
Where cindersizing dragonflies
Flew thro’ the smoky trail,
When one-by-one, dewonder’d, kindergartens start to wail!
Rothenburg
March 31th
1945
Crossing the Rhine
he left that smell behind
it would barely linger by the time
he reached his destination
Emelihter Kihleng
As roofless, star-mark’d jeep screeches to halt,
Georgie spits out globule of cigar phlegm,
“Boys!” he address’d his American salt,
“Find ’em, fix ’em, fight ’em & finish ’em!
An ounce of sweat
Worth a gallon of blood,
Always audacious, get to grips, give it ’em good!”
As generals love glory true,
The Third Army’s matador,
Instils LUCKY, his plucky crew,
With rampant passion for war,
The Third Army’s matador,
“Advance over, under or through!”
Reaching Remagen’s shore
A rail-bridge claim’d worth more than weight in gold,
Battle’s won by the brave, but Wars the bold.
Patton pauses upon the Rhine,
Perches on pontoon plate,
Arches his spine, piss flows like wine,
Hissing with pent-up hate…
Zips up his fly, claims th’eastern bank to slay the Kaiser-state.
Emmerich
April 2nd
1945
Empirical Regrets
But these paperbacks are crumbling in my hands
seachanged bouquets, each brown page
scribbled on, underlined & memorized
Michael Donaghy
‘Twas always weltmacht oder niedergang,’
Mus’d eminent attorney on the rocks
Above his bombshell mansion, where once sang
His sister princesses, him the princox;
Epiphany!
Dark mirror of mankind
Destroy’d poor Germany that decade he’d spent blind.
As we make our vows of substance
In the moments of defeat,
Let us never let the patterns
Of such diabol repeat,
Heed the laws of ancyent Athens,
Drag tyrants from the street,
Then string these up before them killers turn
Of little kids, burnt futures for the urn.
Tho’ wealthy, jewel-school’d, well-bred,
Just now he’d realiz’d,
& shook his head for all the dead,
Der Fuhrer recogniz’d
Not as his lord & saviour but a toad to be despis’d.
Leipzig
April
1945
White House
In America
The highway runs too fast
For men to feel the ground underneath
Femi Fatoba
The blood of good men stains Okinawa,
The President prepares to share their fate,
Into the air that soothes the state of Georgia
His life’s last breaths wheeze out with gremlin grate;
He coughs, complains
Of headaches terrible,
As mighty spirit drains… & bows & leaves battle.
Being flesh & mind a human
But in stature an oak tree,
Lampadephorian Truman
Homelands his Presidency,
The ultimate American
To rule thee sensibly –
& what a time to take that foremost seat;
The Axis Powers verging on defeat.
A heads-up held behind closed door,
“There’ll be a new weapon
Ready in four months,” sat in awe
(How else would one listen),
“If it saves lives… shortens the war… then say I… yes… go on.”
Washington
April 12th
1945
Death Camp
They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine
J.S. Baca
If this is life then life should welcome death,
Thousands of abject shapes dull wraithdom tread,
Despair & typhus pungent on the breath,
Grey, ghastly heaps & gutters full of dead;
Bestarv’d of meat,
To stay his certain end,
A priest prepares to eat the dead flesh of his friend.
As one the rough guards up & leave
Just before GI’s arrive,
Whose haunted eyes could ne’er believe
Stick-like rakes are still alive,
All that these green lads could achieve
Was feed those who survive,
Strangurious skeletons; skin stretching
Thin; what moans… what specters… & what retching.
As Anna show’d her slump’d nephew
To Carlton Dillinger,
All blotch’d & blue, “What can you do?”
“Mam, I ain’t no doctor…”
Ludwig spasm’d… died… cried she for all of them together.
Belsen
April 15th
1945
Roaring Bears
Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs,
And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels,
And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs
Thomas Hardy
With razors grazing in a laser shave,
Thus presentable conquerors making
The Russian army, bolder more than brave,
Roads by roads up to the border snaking
Stunned by those sounds
Flung from the Reitwein spur,
That blows & blasts & pounds the Wehrmacht as they stir
To life, facing the most intense
Bombardment ever meted,
Trench-smashing without shame or sense
Those already defeated
Dog stooges to the recompense,
Precipicic teter’d,
Protectors of a capital, foresworn,
But full of dread, undeadly & forlorn.
But… krieg is krieg & schnapps is schnapps,
& to the end flows free
Those molten saps from golden taps
Plung’d in the Hitler tree,
That dripping with bloodletting drains the best of Germany
Brandenburg
April 16th
1944
(AA) Canto 61: Buchenwald
**********************************
People had become dehumanised. They were like animals, urinating & defecating wherever they were. I somehow didn’t react to the bodies, I had seen carnage galore during the war. But to see human beings walking around without any sense of dignity, that was utterly appalling. And that smell has lived with me to this day
Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown
Glimpsing Hell
I am a waterfall in the desert.
A rain from a cloudless sky.
A well known but unborn child
Dimitris Varos
A journalist from New York passes thro’
Weimar, shrine of culture – Goethe, Schiller -,
A driver from the 80th, slow drew
Them closer to the camp where the killer
Nazis deduct
-ed innocence from breath,
Life-verve by slavework suck’d, ‘til all t’were left was death.
“So, what’s this place?” says Ted Murrow,
“Well, sir, it’s pure damnation,
A camp of horrible sorrow
Bent on extermination,
Flesh beaten until pulp’d hollow,
Tortures, slow starvation,
& every single day a twelve-hour shift…”
Lifting in sight, off to the right, roofs drift.
“Is this it?” “Yes, sir!” “Oh my word…”
Thoughts difficult to hold
Spurr’d undeterr’d, gripp’d tight & stirr’d
Excitements manifold,
Well, this was it, this whirl of sins, this legend Buchenwald.
Ettersberg Hill
15th April
1945
Meeting of Worlds
A white stone half-dug into the soil,
Said to me as I was passing by:
– God bless you, pray, I’m a tombstone
Azim Souyun
The long siege broken, justice runs amok,
Wick-with-fleeing-SS fields… corner’d… shot!
About the gates a rave of pale ghouls flock
Dearanging Teddy’s brain, who clear forgot
All that he’s learn’d;
As open’d, drab gates, wide
A rush of shabsteps churn’d, gurning undignified.
They crush’d him with a short, swift surge,
Evil-smelling was this crowd,
Which courted death all on the verge
Of oblivion; brows bow’d,
Shave-headed skeletals converge,
Like corpses from a shroud,
Or scalded lepers limping falterwise –
Then one drops dead, but smiling in his eyes.
In the midst of this commotion,
Voice rose distinct & clear,
At attention an Englishman
Stands, “Delighted, old dear,
& be a darling, tell me, please, when will our chaps get here?”
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Blockhouse Triumph
I close my eyes:
ten thousand wasted people
Still piled in the flesh-pits
Phillip Whitfield
As, Virgil, Dante led, the ziggurat
Of Hell unfolding serpentine, into
A barracks with twelve hundred stuff’d, who sat
Or stood in dark, dark despair – into view
Slow strode Murrow,
Like lambkins to a teat
They crowd around & crow, kissing his hands & feet
On shoulder blades they tried to raise
Ted up, too weak to do it,
They star’d, instead, with zombie gaze,
On his passage thro’ it,
That mass who’d make us reappraise
Humanity – who knew it,
What Hitler did, this barb’d-wire fence behind,
Astonishing, admonishing the mind!
On passing by those happy rows,
People started clapping
In tame applause,like puppy paws
Of wee babies flapping,
Those of an age most int’rested in their Christmas wrapping.
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Death’s Empire
And then he died –
And though inside we may have bled
We merely shrugged & sighed
Kennethy Lang
Imprison’d by racists & a slogan,
Humanity sups vomit from latrines,
A woman defecates in the open,
Another tilts her head, to one side leans,
Then drops down dead;
By her steps another,
Clutching some lifeless lead like she was its mother.
With swaddling balanc’d on a hip,
Its face all shrivel’d & grey,
“My babe needs milk, sir, just one sip…”
Not knowing what else to say,
A G.I. drops drips on its lip,
As she walks away
The woman thanks him, crooning with brief joy,
Then fell down dead, dead as her baby boy.
Ted stares a while, this awful scene
Some tawdry vaudeville,
Only yestreen his best canteen
With whiskey did he fill,
Sensing he’d see such sights… a lengthy glug to strength instill.
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Pedocide
She has been abandoned
She has been betrayed
God has betrayed her
Mary Borden
As when Hell’s iron portal with a creak
& clang will open, so this barb’d wire gate
Scratching its bottom with a rotten shriek,
Will reveal’d, ‘these enemies of the state,’
Threatless each one,
Thirteen the eldest age,
Whose childhoods have all gone for the therapist wage.
A six-year child rolls up her sleeve;
Six, zero, three & zero –
Enough to give the heart a heave,
Even the toughest hero,
Will strive their hardest to believe
Such scenes, as from below,
Vile demons broke the surface, life defil’d –
Who’d think we’d ever ink a little child?
With tattoos on their tender skin,
To wear until they die,
“Are you coming?” Ted’s head aspin
To see some tall G.I.,
“Where too?” “The hospital…” “Don’t go!” the kids begin to cry
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
A Love of Leather
A dreadful solitude each mind insane,
Each its own place, its prison all alone,
And finds no sympathy to soften pain
J.A.Heraud
Ted stepp’d into this filthy hospital,
Whose doctor, noble, yet embarrass’d, shook
His hands, said, “every day’s a battle,
I try my best, but now I think just luck
Decides who stays
Alive, most lack desire
To live on anyway…” a man shouts out, “You liar!
I want to live, but look at me,
A-cling to my last tether,
Wait – what is that, please let me see…”
“What, this?” – “Yes, your leather,
I made those expertly, you see,
When, back in Vienna
I made the finest bags, please, may I feel
Its texture – just to test it, if it’s real?”
Ted took his wallet out & shares
His money all around
“That’s for your fares back home…” their stares
Were silent as no sound,
“Please, doctor, keep this wallet, American leather bound.”
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
The Surgeon
Need to belong has made me come
to help rebuild Jerusalem,
where everyone is family
Karen Gershon
As SS guard, from his ankles hanging,
Was beaten to a pulp, grew dead-still soon,
Teddy enters unto kitchen’s clanging,
Chefs whistling an intellectual tune
Stir stew that ‘tries’;
Brown bread a thumbs-width thick,
& butter sliced the size of a chewing-gum stick.
“Please let me introduce myself
I’m professor Charles Sarbonne,”
Who took a scalpel from a shelf
For a patient too far gone,
“All we possess here is our health,
But hardly anyone
Survives a year, so hard we’re forced to work…”
His patient spasms with a leg-kick jerk
Sends pungent puss asquirt thro’ air,
Teddys coat did splatter
The doctors stare, “You alright, there?”
“Yes, it doesn’t matter –
Have you a cloth?” out came a rag’s bloody, crudded tatter.
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Broken Ovens
Truth is the voice of Nature & of Time –
Truth is the startling monitor within us –
Nought is without it, it comes from the stars
William Thomas Bacon
“Come see the crematoriums,” said Charles,
“Three days ago the camp ran out of coke,
In piles they heap’d up limbs like knotted gnarls
That rot away where once all flames & smoke
Twas deathly still
& cold & dark & stank,
To stay they took vast will with faces white & blank.
Life is the sum of what we know,
Meaningful experience
& bookish studies blend & flow –
Thro’ this Universe, immense,
We reap not what we do not sow,
& in our youths we sense
That youth, one day, will be forever gone,
To wise old age, as sets our mortal sun.
Ted stagger’d out, struck vertigo,
Upon the precipice
Of Inferno, where down below
The fallen, foul’d souls hiss
& spit at him, “you fucking cunt!”… oh! what a thing is this!
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Moral Vertigo
In the great, empty square
The head of a cow bawled, after the slaughterer
& shapes sought the rounds of the serpent
Federico García Lorca
Teddy got back to town a diff’rent man
Records, that night, a radio broadcast,
“Dead men are plentiful in war,” began,
“But living dead are legion, faces pass’d
Me by, like home,
America’s fabric –
Vienna, Paris, Rome – mute, featherless & wick
With fleas & typhus, slow as snails
Rabbits gnawing at a hutch,
Did praise our Roosevelt in hails,
As a man they owe so much,
Who’d bent the weight of freedom’s scales
With such a common touch –
If there a better epitaph could be
None have I heard this whole of history,
If you would Buchenwald witness
Forever you’d be chang’d,
The stripy dress, the life regress,
From liberty estranged
& forced to work oneself to death by murderers deranged
Weimar
15th April
1945
(AA) Canto 62: Victory in Europe
**********************************
How wonderful was the experience, when I went into town; work-girls, shop-girls, men assistants whom I knew,- as we clasped each other by the hand, each said to the other, I to them & they to me : “Thank God you are safe!”
Edith Sitwell
Ultimate Brass
The air is cool and night is coming.
The calm Rhine courses its way.
The peak of the mountain dazzles
Heinrich Heine
In torrents since the Normandy beaches,
The Allied flood in deluge swamps the foe
Rivers of iron pouring breaches,
With bare a halt-less battle-rush to go;
“Let’s Bremen seize
As soon as possible
Ike pondering agrees, “that won’t be much trouble,
But then Berlin in hell-bent drive
You think must be our standard?”
“I do,” said Monty, “to arrive
Before Stalin has landed,
Immoveable, for years to thrive
Proud, encamp’d & pander’d –
If they reach Berlin first they’ll only be
A wall across whole of Germany
A start! they heard, from left to right,
The first great salvo fire,
In massive might, “But listen, Dwight,
However things transpire
To beat these Nazi bastards, Britain has lost her empire.
Diepholz Airfirld
April 20th
1945
Hitler’s Birthday
The forests burn from Dresden as far as Berlin itself.
The earth is cracked as if in an inferno,
As if in an inferno the clay smoulders
Semen Gudzenko
Entomb’d in the sad swansong of his time,
Arcanum Fuhrerbunker, quetzal claws,
As geocentric wolkenkuck-kuck-sheim,
Projects the acute virtues of his cause;
While strangers wage
The Wars he brought to Earth
In this Aegyptian cage they’ll celebrate his birth.
Tho’ across him hangs a shadow
He invokes the ‘Good old days,’
“For he’s a jolly good fellow!”
The sober jamboree raise,
Soon complexion yields to sallow,
By him but one soul stays…
His little siren, the lovely Miss Braun…
He orders scorched Earth policy by phone.
He exhales with the exstasi
Of fearsome syphilis,
“For without me this Germany
Must certainly perish…”
Outside the comfort of those rooms stretch’d bleak necropolis.
Berlin
April 20th
1945
The Betrayal of Goering
Bitter winter, you crackle your fire
Winter, you consume the woods, the roofs
Winter, you slash and burn
Franco Fortini
Beneath the colour films of glory days,
Clad in woman’s garb, flicking thro’ a rail
Of old masters, Goering churn’d in a daze,
What future now? The vision, once so fair
Plunges despond,
‘Sic transit gloria
Mundi,’ his robes now donn’d, summons old Sofia
Who listens writ down, pen in hand
A telegram, by fraction;
“My Fuhrer, with your final stand
You’ll lose freedom of action,
Therefore, I shall assume command
Hearing no reaction
From you by 10 PM, as settl’d on
The 29th of June in forty-one.”
Said Sofia, “Are you sure, sir?
This might not go down well…”
“Whatever curses I’ll incur,
I’m already in Hell…”
Then gazed he on the valley troughs where evening shadows fell.
Obersalzburg
April 23rd
1945
The Betrayal of Himmler
He’d come to Earth with a hole in his heart,
Then found a way to make that hole expand
With alchemy had set himself apart,
Unwilling now to share the final stand
He reaches out,
To Folke Bernadotte,
Alternate paths to tout, they meet to hear the plot.
“Hitler is finish’d,” he began,
Drain’d of all vital power
Will die, now, any day – better plan
Europa’s future this dark hour
Without him, I can sway Japan…
So, with Eisenhower
Could meet, & bring peace to the Western World?”
Then manic-eye’d abuse Herr Himmler hurl’d,
“Then with one heart we’ll face the beast
The Bolsheviks have form’d,
Whose seed increas’d, whose breed releas’d,
Who from the east have swarm’d!”
“Of this,” says Bernadotte, “I promise Dwight wall be inform’d.”
Lubeck
April 24th
1945
Making Traitors
We are sons of the same mother
The same origin and kind
Like two joined pines
Vasile Alecsandri
With the imminence of oblivion
Heaving on his soul like a shadow,
With babblechat still spitting attrition,
This ‘man,’ whose very blood the broth of snow,
Sits down to read
A batch of telegrams,
Amongst them one did feed his egowolf the lambs.
At first he unresponsive drew,
Droop’d, then, earlobes, whispering’
Bormann insisting its a coup,
Traitors waiting to play king,
Into a fiery cage then flew
Der Fuhere, furies ring
All thro the Bunker on a daemons roar,
Then silence, then a whisper, “then the war
Is lost, but here I shall remain
& die in Berlin’s guts,
With open vein the Reich soon slain,
Death by a thousand cuts…”
The great trapdoors of history upon his chapter shuts.
Fuhrerbunker
April 25th
1945
Wounded Hearts
Verify every fear. But there is warmth
In this sudden desire to sleep,
To surrender to our common condition
Phillis Levin
Time, the devourer of every nation,
Some might say millennia, some a year
Having crept upon incastelation,
Has Hitler caught in sunless dungeon drear;
Twas Goering first
Now Himmler, too, betrays
The cause – both names he curs’d, where once was love & praise.
“As traitors must be death condemn’d
This Reichmarshal’s archest crime,
Was to assume I’d met my end
Before fate’s allotted time,
Now party membership suspend
For all who share the slime,
Of their vile station – Felelein is here…”
“Yes, Fuhrer…” “bring him to me…” – with a tear
Interrogations brusque fist halts
With sentence of death’s swift
Scythe – gun unbolts, its bullet jolts
The head as heels uplift,
Of Himnmler’s grinning adjutant, whose death was like a gift.
Fuhrerbunker
April 27th
1945
Veteran
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride & joy,
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder
Piantadosi & Bryan
Teethsinking hoarfrost left Siberia,
Coating the country of the whining shout,
Floating from volksempfanger receiver
Whom secret sniggerings call Goebell’s snout;
A call to arms;
“For Fuhrer, land & God,
Leave factories & farms, embrace vaterlandstod.”
Emerg’d Wolfgang with decision,
He should defend his city,
The sacrifice of World War One –
Incalculable pity –
Must something mean, a gun’s a gun,
Trenchtrain’d ability
Against the French & English felt ingrain’d,
Yes, he shall fight while breath in him remain’d.
Eating kohlsuppe from a mess tin,
Wolfgang clean’d spectacles,
Thro’ flames & din the foe rush’d in
Remembering the drills
He points & fires his panzerfaust – tank kills, blood spills, old thrills!
Berlin
April 25th
1945
Death of Il Duce
Gone is all that former glory
Relics of it ever glow
In the colors of the rainbow
Akaki Tsereteli
As paths of glory lead but to the grave,
On haunted men past deeds a heavy load,
Beside the beauty of the Como wave
Rough partisans blockade the convoy road;
Suspicions storm’d!
Amid the gen’ralry,
Luftwaffe uniform’d, dirty Mussolini!
After a brief & angry trial
Weeping Ceasar swiftly shot,
Then driven from that Alpine pile
To be strung up at a spot
Where hungry subjects could revile
His corpse as it did rot…
Piss’d on & spat at & hurl’d with abuse,
Full twenty years of torments letting loose.
She steps into Loreto square
Next to a cursing nun,
Her angry stare turn’d to a glare,
She aims a stranger’s gun
& shoots that bastard man five times, once for each murder’d son.
Milan
April 29th
1945
Death of Der Fuhrer
Then thy dead engine & thy broken wings
Drooped through the arc & passed in fire,
A wreath of smoke – a breathless exaltation
DC Scott
Determin’d not Il Duce’s fate to share,
He sets to his own life unrepentant
From power’s height unto a dream despair,
A dictator dictates his testament;
Herr Hitler hiss’d
(His customary mode),
“Global Jewry resist! Uphold the racial code!”
After simple ceremony
Two true lovers proved as one,
But one hour of matrimony
‘Til her husband clutch’d his gun
& stepp’d into eternity…
She, swallowing poison,
Plants tender kisses on his fingertips,
“My darling!” last words slip from dying lips.
Men paus’d awhile before the sight,
Dowsing them in petrol,
Coupl’d alight, firedrakes in flight,
O Viking funeral,
A captain of a sinking ship, a king lost in battle.
Berlin
Mayday
1945
Mumble Words 