(AA) Canto 64: Cold War
**********************************
You in the West have a problem. You are unsure when you are being lied to, when you are being tricked. We do not suffer from this; and unlike you, we have acquired the skill of reading between the lines
Zdeněk Urbánek
Victory in Japan
See, Pahana
how we nest
in your ruins
Wendy Rose
As Nagasaki’s viscous one-two crow’d,
Subsides the violent fevers of world,
Across Missouri’s deck MacArthur strides,
For him the battle banners sadly furl’d;
His brood had brought
The safety of the Earth,
Full fiercely had they fought for lasting Freedom’s birth.
War brands a mark upon the slave
& hurls him to the slaughter,
Death pins a badge upon the brave,
Whose names are writ in water,
Fate carves respects into each grave,
Memorized forever…
Forever, ah! forever but to be
Forgotten like the Spanish Tragedie.
From Darwen to Acapulco,
From Budapest to Lourdes,
From Palermo to Tokyo,
From Ankhorage to Rhodes,
A whisper of sweet silence as the priesthood the scabbard swords.
Earth
August
1945
War is Over
a crowd at the gammon,
fair-bosomed women
& crowns being wagered all round
Seamus MacGriogair
The Alps felt the first frost-fall of the year,
A soft, white sheet to blanket all with snow,
Jean Francois look’d down from a higher tier
Upon the rooves of Briancon below;
With scarfless throat,
No spike, no pick, no rope,
Like some rough mountain goat he scamper’d down the slope.
By underwater mountain stream,
Crystal waters crisp & clear,
Jean descended as if adream,
Startl’d herds of roving deer
Sent scattering by friendly beam,
Then as the inn grew near,
He thank’d his god, his land, his libertie,
Cursing the name infernal of Nazi.
He steps into ‘Les Montemar,’
Life lazes at a pace,
Walks to the bar, “Stella Artois…”
“Huit francs…” straight waitor-face,
“Huit francs! Huit francs pour un Artois, monsieur c’est un disgrace!”
France
September
1945
Meeting the Parents
The world has nothing to bestow;
From our own selves our joys must flow,
And that dear hut, our home
Nathaniel Cotton
To the vale twixt Pendle & Hameldon,
Carlton Dillinger rail’d his Christmas leave,
Stept into an alien environ
Where terraces thro’ chimney forests weave;
Ah! there she stood,
Like some broad from the farms,
Countenance calm & good, their cherub in her arms.
She led him thro’ those slummish rows,
Humming with community,
Where cloth cap, cobbles & torn clothes
Hardest work’d for Victory,
Upon the front door-step stood Rose,
&, behind her, Charlie,
Glowing in his grand-paternal summer,
“Yer may be a Yank but yer a Sumner!”
Despite six years of hardship pass’d,
Christmas found the Winners,
War’s awful blast finsh’d at last
&, to top their dinners,
“I’ve bin ter Flossy Bennets fer a pound o’ bananas!”
Burnley
Christmas Day
1945
Two Mothers
My mum makes us the world
as wide as the world
and as small as the circle of her arms
Ana Sampson
“We’re shackin’ up mam!” sez Maggie Sumner,
Rose gave a joyous blessing with her tears,
How handsome was this Sergeant Dillinger
If only she could turn back thirty years…
…& then… bombshell,
Love-bubble dissipates
“Butt Mam, prepare y’sell… we’re livin’ in the States!”
They pledge their troth at Saint Mary’s,
Honeymoon by Morecambe sea,
Then a tayle for childhood fairies
Very far from family,
Maggie drives past countless dairies,
Carlton points at a tree…
“I used to climb that as a boy!” he said,
His white farm-house cresting the mount ahead.
Rita’s life-reason, ripest pearl,
Returns to her by car,
Her senses swirl, who is this girl?”
“Maggie, come meet mah ma!”
“Well aint ya girl just beautiful!” Maggie replies a “Ta!“
Jerkwater
1946
Jewish Homeland
At your bedside, I feel like someone
who has escaped too lightly
from the great hell of the camps
Elaine Feinstein
As when an absent husband’s footfalls near
The restless, sleepless bed & echo loud
All thro’ an iron house, when wives appear
As naked fields of pleasure to be plough’d;
The promised land,
With its people conjoins,
Hebrew at the news-stands bought by these brand new coins.
The pages of the Exodus
Mirrors to the modern Jews,
Those victims of witch-hunt purges,
Reviled for sacred values,
Having since the march of Titus
Wander’d Europa’s views,
Millennial persecutions endured,
Until the cause of all those woes here cured.
Anna Grunfeld got off the train
End of the torrid line,
To start again, despite the pain,
Beneath a pure sunshine –
Where after two Millenia Moses views Palestine.
Jerusalem
1948
Family & Friends
When press begins the battle-cry
That nation needs to unify
And for your country you must die
Julian Tuwim
Across the dusty bush the long ways wind,
Inside a bus young Danny thought of ‘things,’
His best mate, Slater, mainly on his mind,
The driver drawls, “Welcome to Alice Springs!”
White men mingling
With Aborigine,
Pass’d thro’ him spine-tingling homecoming energy.
He bumm’d a lift in Richie’s Ute,
Went hurtling thro’ the Outback,
Neath powd’ry wheels pink lizards shoot
As the tarmac turn’d to track,
‘Tween rusted shears & gnarly boot
They park’d by Slater’s shack,
“G’day,” says Bruce outstepping from the truck,
Dan shook not human hand, but shook a hook.
They spent the evening downing beer
& reminiscing Shane,
The stars appear, they toast a cheer,
“In sunshine, wind or rain
He ran those bastards ragged!” “That’s my boy!” pride hides his pain.
Australia
1949
Blood-Ties
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
Shone round him o’er the dead.
Yet beautiful and bright he stood
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
By sleeper train the war-haunted Constance
Traverses southern plains of Germany,
A mind confused left miles behind in France,
His family but half a family;
One letter read
So much the folds were torn,
The man he thought was dead alive & all alone.
He steps in from the busy street
To see a portly butcher,
What moment when the boy shall greet
The man that is his father,
Max turns around, puts down his meat,
Sees another Stemmler;
“Guten Tag!” utter’d in broken German,
“Guten tag,” a pause, “Herr, I am your son…”
They close the shop & take a walk,
Four decades of suspense
Allay’d in talk, at this fair fork,
Two rivers confluence…
Aimee’s fair smile, Der Fuhrer & the death of innocence.
Donauwurth
1953
A Game of Ten-Pin
Turning my face to the north, I worked a wonder,
I made the countries of furthest Asia come
Bearing all their tribute on their back
Hymn of Amun
The Warsaw Pact has drawn the battle- lines,
America looks ‘underneath the bed,’
Searching for proof of KGB designs,
From now on anyone could be a Red!
Pledging belief,
Witchfinders bind the air,
Negroedom breathes relief, the hate channel’d elsewhere.
“Have fun!” call’d Maggie Dillinger
To her husband & his pal,
Coolest Choctaw from Croatia,
Porter down the hospital,
Boys high-five the happy driver –
The chubby-cheek’d Big Al –
Together them went roaring off to bowl,
The nickels toss’d, their team sheet pins the wall…
All was ultra-jingoism,
They shouted Ivan’s name,
Communism, lib’ralism,
Perhaps they’re just the same,
They bann’d him from the bowling club before he’d play’d a game.
Jerkwater
1958
Cuban Crisis
I know, of course, that straight counsel brings calamity,
But persevere, & cannot give it up.
I appoint the Nine Heavens as my witnesses
Ch’u Yuan
“Fidel Castro,” exclaim’d the CIA,
“Must be dethron’d, let’s train his exiled forces
& land them fully arm’d upon a bay
To bring this awkward chapter to a close;
Silos… palm trees…
Concealant camouflage…
“Good god, sir, what are these?” “Man, this ain’t no mirage!”
Fidel Castro inspects the strip
Glibly waiting warheadrie,
An act of supreme brinksmanship
John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
On launch buttons asserts his grip
Averting World War Three,
For Mutually Assured Destructions
Temporalizes Man’s politicians!
Faced with the last day of its days,
Mankind solves its crisis,
Some harper plays melodic lays
My friends remember this…
Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis!
The Brink
1962
(AA) Canto 65: Lingerings
***************************
Sapper Bullen has been a reliable & hard-working soldier during his time with this unit. He can be given work to do without supervision. His whole bearing is good & if it were not for his decision to leave the army he could well have gained promotion
Robert Sandy
Maggie Dillinger
Know life is not what it seems
We strip the fat from the lean
And find the facts in between
Lebogang Mashile
Flying oer English fields… via Heathrow,
& Euston… same fields up to Manchester,
Moors around Rawtenstall skiffing with snow,
A strange sensation, home to Lancashire;
Drizzle-soak’d air,
Winds roaming all achill,
She aims a poignant stare, “Kids, that there’s Pendle Hill!”
Up Manny Road bi Shanks’ Pony,
Sees Trafalgar flats amaze,
Instead of tender history
Faded pockets of past days,
But jesting with her family
Invokes old jokes & ways,
The bungalow housing her mam & dad
Soon full of booze, soon riotous, soon mad!
Mam rocks her latest grand-child, Bern,
“Most folk don’t give a toss,
What people earn’s their main concern!”
“Aye, & the bleedin cost,”
“These days,” pipes Dad, “the neighbours would prefer us to get lost!”
Burnley
1965
Last Soldier
I have been studying the difference
between solitude & loneliness,
telling the story of my life
Richard Jones
The one-man War of Hiroo Onada
Comes to an end one honour-bursting day,
Wielding his war-flag at the surrender,
His sword still sharp, his hair now gushing grey;
With high-held head
He leaves a life behind,
Scores of unsoldier’d dead, the last lad of his kind.
Stepping into another age
He could hardly recognize
Fierce teenagers, crime waves a-rage
& women painting their eyes…
The sacred land wears new image,
Severing ancyent ties…
“Where is Japan? What devils walk the street?
Did we give up our pride with our defeat?”
He stood at the hurricane’s eye,
Twas alien indeed,
Noise drown’d a cry, the world flasht by,
At such terrific speed,
The lonely sole survivor of the empire’s fallen breed.
Tokyo
March
1974
Vietnam
Still I close my eyes and see the girl
Running from her village, napalm
Stuck to her dress like jelly
Bruce Weigl
Contumelious, beastly, bull-brain’d war!
Plague of all nations, nigh on thirty years
A swamp churn’d up on the South China shore,
But now it seems the gory climax nears;
The stars & stripes
Pull’d down from every bole,
As into traps & snipes the GI’s constant fall.
A four-star gen’ral shook his head,
His reputation tatters,
How could jungle & paddy bed
Bless prestige as she shatters?
The power of his fair kindred
Less than that which matters,
For men instill’d with vigour & belief
Will always share the spoils of their relief.
The ghosts My Lai haunt men’s minds
The net is closing in,
An army finds it fights & grinds
Thro’ war it cannot win,
“Tell Washington its over,” scoff’d a captain quaffing gin.
Saigon
April
1974
World Cup
’Twas a present from the Dad.
I kicked it yet I worshipped it,
How strange a priest it had!
J. Milton Hayes
It seems mankind has found a safer War,
Better for conducting trials of nations,
Congeal’d, tarsticky pools of blood no more,
Just a ball & its country’s champions;
Gladiators,
With trident-studded boot,
Thousands of spectators stood breathless as they shoot.
Four years have pass’d since that great day
When Muller stunn’d the English,
Each Dutchman seem’d a new Pele,
A penalty to finish!
But puff’d-up by patriot bray
The Germans accomplish
A goal, & then another, turns the tide,
The final whistle hails a nation’s pride.
Max Stemmler bellows with the crowd,
Tho’ now an ageing man,
Proud to be loud, proud to be proud,
Beckenbaur in the van,
A golden globe is held aloft, the game had gone to plan.
Munich
July
1974
Imperial Soldier
I pass through trials all the way,
With sin and ills contending;
In patience I must bear each day
Hans Adolf Brorson
The very walls of Royal Priam’s town
Could not defy mi father in his prime,
Ennobl’d by a duty to the Crown,
He went to police the war-zones of his time;
Wild libido,
Good-looks unstoppable,
While mano e mano his ruck undroppable.
Pops travel’d out to Portadown
& on to bandit country,
Thro’ Crossmaglen & Beleek Town –
Where the latter’s pottery
Has won itself global renown –
Then on to Silvertree –
“Take down that tricolor!” his sergeant’s shout,
“No sir!” dad sens’d a sniper roundabout.
“Are you refusing an order?”
“Yes, sir!” Mi Dad replied…
Whose officer, an hour later,
Was dropp’d dead by his side,
“His common sense saved Bullen’s life, court
martial is denied.”
Northern Ireland
February
1975
Casualties
Let the storm that raves about us,
By our faith be kept without us;
Let us from our troubles cease
Joseph Gostick
A tip off & a farmhouse factory
The co-op mix – almonds, fertilizer,
Diesel & sugar – the British Army
Are forced to act, growing ever wiser,
Three hours they threw
Bricks thro every window
No trigger traps there blew, the order came to go…
Mi dad’s best mate stepp’d oer the sill,
Stood upon five hundred pounds,
That in an instant him did kill,
Mi dad to his best mate bounds,
Whose body bits lay strange & still,
In pieces thro’ the grounds;
& weeping terribly picked up a hand –
The coffin fill’d with naught but bags of sand.
Beyond blood, but bath’d in that blood,
The funeral becalms,
Mi father stood, a salty flood
Of tears did drench his arms,
Sad moment when the soldier’s life begins to lose its charms.
Huddersfield
July
1975
Hometime
But the key to the city
Is in the sun that pins
the branches to the sky
David Bowie
Dad’s final Christmas sporting soldier’s boot
Spent back in Belfast, dreaming of Burnley,
Far from these towns him paid to troubleshoot,
Impatient miscreanted vileynie;
With Santa’s hat,
Beef-butty & mince pies,
Aloof, alone, he sat, sad on the steepl’d rise.
While Pops watch’d streets for terrorists,
They sat & scoff’d their stuffing,
Sang Cath’lic carols nice & piss’d
While father supp’d on nothing,
Thinking, ‘I should be an artist
On a marlb’ro puffing,
Instead of handling steely killer’s gun…’
Right there & then he knew his tours were
done.
Well, they offer’d him promotion,
But he’d made up his mind,
No more “BULLEN!” bloodshed sullen,
Outlook redefined,
He caught the boat to Liverpool & left the lads
behind.
The Irish Sea
May
1976
The Last Reichsfuhrer
O God our Maker, give songs in the night
through the long watches of hope,
Till the shadows flee away
Eric Milner-White
Pearl searchlights comb the auld walls of Spandau,
Mann’d by Russia, th’Anglo-Saxons & France,
A point in time that is forever now,
Last firmament of a grand alliance;
Hospitable,
To strangest hermitage,
Solitary eagle squats in an iron cage.
Withdrawing from the living hell
Of a nightmare wax’d absurd,
Hess chooses shewing silent shell,
Weeks pass by without a word,
Holding his captors in a spell,
Like a lilting songbird;
For thro’ his soul melts runisch mysterie,
He was der Fuhrer’s friend & deputie!
The door slams shut, sweet midnight nears,
The Twentieth is come,
Counting the years, a rain of tears,
Saluting to the drum,
Tho’ slipping to senility, fidelis ad urnam!
Berlin
1981
When Mavis met Tommy
Catch, then, oh catch the transient hour ;
Improve each moment as it flies !
Life’s a short summer, man a flower
Samuel Johnson
Tommy Sumner shuffl’d with the old dears
Into the mini-bus outside their home,
The driver sets off to three rousing cheers,
All off to idle by the Irish foam;
An old penny
Was won within the hour,
Claimd by bingo Betty, first to spot the tower.
They book’d into a B&B,
Tour’d the same old streets & sights,
By-the-sea was far too windy
So they tram’d along the lights,
Then all the ladies left Tommy
For chips & early nights,
So he took a walk ter’ Winter Gardens,
& sat on the seat of Mavis Johnston’s…
“That’s my stool!” “Sorry, love, dint know!”
They hit it off at once,
Warm talk’s fair flow to long ago,
Rich in reminiscence,
When nights ran Earendillian, vermilion suspense!
Blackpool
1997
(AA) Canto 66: Millennium
**********************************
Grim was it in that dawn to be alive
Except to those who like their mornings bloody
Sagittarius
Epiphanies
How happy is he born or taught,
That serveth not another’s will ;
Whose armour is his honest thought
Sir Henry Wotton
There is a wonder in a scented muse,
Once tasted nothing earthly may compare,
Where else may such diverse sciences fuse
In such wondrous exultations of air;
Accepting how
This music moves to me,
“A poet am I now, a poet shall I be”
I bloom’d as springtime gladsome grows
In effervescent beauty,
Kissing yellow-centr’d yarrows,
Bringing orchids harmony,
The skylark sings as high swallows
Swoop gay & merrily
Oer meadows pepper’d with chrysanthemum,
Michaelmas daisy & wild marjoram.
There grew a garden in the heart,
Where sweet a songbird sings,
Oerwhelm’d by art, where would I start
Midst all these wondrous things?
So off I went to libraries where poets sit with kings.
Portsmouth
1998
Tradition
Of all the streets that blur into the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Jorge Luis Borges
I set foot forth upon the the day of fools
With aging suitcase, page-wet library,
Retiring from the system & its schools,
Determined on a path of poetry;
O secret course
Toward an unknown goal,
Sensing an unseen force was stealing thro my soul.
As our lives are like river
Carving causeways to the sea,
From the trickling streamlet sliver
To ocean’s immensity,
Off I stepp’d, with heart a-quiver,
Fill’d with antiquity,
Not knowing for two decades & a half
T’would take for me to carve a Golden Calf.
Phrenzies pursued, oft fuell’d by wines,
Waltzing with poetry,
This mind designs ten thousand lines
Offer’d in fealty,
To Clio, Lord Apollo & sacred Calliope.
Bognor Regis
2000
Troubadour
What racks can bind, or what research unveil
The soul, with flesh encompassed as a mail
Of proof, impervious, save to God alone
Nicholas Thorning Moile
I flew to Salzburg & a land unique,
Breath’d in the Berchtesgaden fairytale,
The Residenzmuseum at Munich,
& Dachau, where I heard the phantoms’ wail;
From wyrd Landsberg
The ghost of Herr Hitler
Leads me to Nuremburg, heart of Bavaria!
At Jena, amid wooded heights,
Admir’d I Napoleon,
Left Leipzig under dull street lights
For Colditz schloss – & on
To Berlin with her stirring sights
Of grandeur not long gone;
The imperial park of Sans Soucci,
The Maifeld… & that villa by Wansee!
I felt a young conquistador,
Calm Clio was my guide,
Her haute couture was mine, de jure,
Oer poet’s they preside,
Those minxing muses whom with synching scenes our dreams provide!
Germany
Summer
2001
Al Qu’aida
You will be treasurer of my heart,
Although my body must depart
Learning and science to attain
Adam De La Halle
There is a new threat to the Allied world
Outwith Europe, from the Afghan passes,
After the mats of morning prayer furl’d,
Soldiers of Jihad tend to their classes;
What power reign’d
Thro’ their spirit’s guide,
“Paradise can be gain’d thro holy suicide!”
By cruxdom number’d they nineteen,
Full frenzied & factitious,
Stalking the airways as unseen
Servants of the ambitious
Al Qu’aida, what does this mean?
What outcome their wishes,
To penetrate the land of Liberty
& channel hate into a strange fury?
Turning off the television,
They chatted man-to-man,
Holy mission! The decision
To instigate the plan
Was theirs & theirs by birthright like the death-flights of Japan.
Florida
September 9th
2001
Airjackers
Your son has come,
To answer your call.
In my mouth and in my blood
Ali Squalli Houssaini
As the cabin crew filter’d the coffee,
Five Arabs full of fervour’s brave intent
Rose from their seats, rather nonchalantly
Stepp’d up the incline of the plane’s ascent;
“Can we help you?”
The stewardesses sought,
How deftly sharp-blades drew red lines across the throat.
Blood gush’d from each jugular gash,
Happy mood alters abrupt,
A flash of angry shouts abash,
“Do nothing else we blow up!”
Against the lock’t cockpit men crash,
More threats of death erupt,
The panicking pilot opens the door,
Two air hostesses dying on the floor.
Stern-faced, head-banded Arabs cry
Above the engine whine,
“No-one shall die!” their dreamy eye
Seem’d bless’d with the divine,
As distant thro’ the windows rose the Manhattan skyline.
Flight 11
September 11th 2001
08:40
The North Tower
I asked God to spare me pain.
God said, No.
Suffering draws you apart from worldly cares
Joanne Gobure
How vastly the capital of the Earth
Outrolls her concrete sprawl without abate,
World-famous monuments peep from its girth –
Liberty’s torchlight & the Empire State,
Dwarf’d by the twins,
Unrivall’d gemini…
The tragedy begins… a child points to the sky….
Peering upon the ants below,
From the hundred & first floor,
She froze dolicapaxan slow
As the wings of death did roar,
Life flashing by before the blow,
Then she was there namore,
Caught in Dantean incineration
As on all sides surges devastation.
Struck edifice stood like a rock,
Then… shook with a shudder,
Its aftershock spreads block-by-block
“There’s been a disaster!”
“Man, a goddam jet has flown into the World Trade Centre!”
New York City
September 11th 2001
08:47
In the Field
That’s not how I suddenly become a poet,
By wetting my lips in the Hippocrene,
Or dreaming on the twin peaks of Parnassus
Persius
From musing-grounds around old Rusthall Wood
I dallied home, poesis almost spent,
A spot of morning strolling to the good
My house-mate serves up pleasant refreshment;
A spotted tart,
A pot of sweet Earl Grey,
“A film’s about to start!” “Which one?” “The Longest Day!”
Niave young lads switch’d on the box,
Wise men crank’d up the volume,
Twin Towers crumbling into rocks,
Twas a new & brutal doom –
Casting such global aftershocks
From a dusty mushroom,
Wide-surging thro’ a world of steel & brick,
Straight from some seventies disaster flick!
What image splash’d across TV
From Sky to Channel Four,
We sip our tea, hesitantly,
Rebaptized evermore,
Are Men condemned to ever live their lives in fear of War?
Royal Tunbridge Wells
September 11th 2001
21:21
Pentagon
I heard my throat deep from the well,
The wolf my brothers’ summon spell
Invok’d, did hear & fled to Hell
Abbas Beydoun
The roaring Boeing honed in for the kill,
Al Quai’da’s chosen warring weapon,
Ignoring White House & Capitol Hill,
Preferring this five-sided bastion
Symbol of might
Beside the Potomac
A simple morning flight becomes a bold attack.
It crash’d into a helipad
& slid into a building,
The fuel rich tanks of the Jihad
In violent ‘WHOOM’ exploding,
From Moscow to Islamabad
On the spot reporting –
A universal moment on TV,
Not one attack, not two attacks, but three!
This firestorm fell fury daubs
The scene in smoke-swabb’d paint,
Thro blue, white strobes, assail’d earlobes,
Sev’ral survivors faint,
Behind, a crawling officer, arm cast up as a saint!
Washington
September 11th 2001
09:46
George Bush
Why are you staring at me
as if I were America itself
the new Empire
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
An aide whisper’d in the president’s ear
“Sir, there has been an incident…” struck dumb,
‘Ministrations defining moment here,
Time to honour his nation’s faith now come
Stands Cowpoke George,
Subject of so much scorn,
A chance for friends to forge & image be reborn.
For like Thatcher, Mussolini
& his father before him,
Votes can be won thro’ victory
& healthy jingoism,
He spoke with calm assurity,
“It is our country’s aim
To bring all these terrorists to justice
& blow them sky high off the Earth’s surface.”
His ear whisper’d into again,
“They’ve hit the Pentagon…”
By private plane, fighters in train,
He dash’d to Washington
By crazy zig-zag course, “Sir, there might be another one.”
Somewhere over America
September 11th 2001
09:57
(AA) Canto 67: Stormclouds
********************************
High on the hilltop lets raise our ramparts
Carry out faces over the shield rims
Raise up our spears, men, over our heads
Taleisin
Imperial Return
My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such present joys therein I find,
That it excels all other bliss
Edward Dyer
Three sailing ships swept thro’ a sunsunk sea
Then drift amid a mountain-armour’d bay,
Flying flags studded with the honeybee –
From anchors splash how calmly there they lay;
Unsheath’d the sword!
This thousand men of war
Rejoice as they are row’d toward the stony shore.
Stoic, upon the scything stern,
Stood the mortal soul of France,
Whose soldiers sing for his return
With an awesome reverence –
Whose choric voice & eyes that burn
Commands them to advance,
Each rough cheek pinching as they pass him by,
Adoring adulation makes them fly.
They march’d, a musical parade
Cheer’d by the underclass,
While north they made a white cockade
Silently watch’d them pass,
Then raced away to warn the Royalists who slept in Grasse.
Cannes
March 2nd
1815
Grave News
It was so old a ship – who knows, who knows? –
And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain
To see the mast burst open with a rose
James Elroy Flecker
Beneath the ancyent moon of Austria,
Generals, emperors, statesmen, royals,
Gather’d ’round the grand map of Europa,
Are wolves who wait the diseas’d eagle’s spoils;
Squabbling rabble
Discuss incessantly
The murmuring babble of high diplomacy.
All talk cut short as from outside
There peel’d a thundering boom,
The doors dramatic’ly flung wide
By the soul sunken in gloom;
Twas Metternich, whose slick, slow glide
Now claim’d the centre-room.
“Gentlemen, Genova sounds warning grave,
The Corsican Ogre has rode the wave!”
As the atmosphere grew colder
The hand of Russia’s Tsar
Grasp’d the shoulder of his soldier,
Britannia’s battlestar,
“Tis up to you to save the world – once more, m’lord, to war.”
Vienna
March 7th
1815
British Reaction
I am already on the way,
& follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed
Henry King
The morning sun scatter’d cross the Solent,
A tranquil & yet deadly waterway,
Where slept the ever watchful instrument
That kept the Gallic conquerors at bay;
Ye mighty fleet,
Queen of the oceans vast,
Thy duty ne’er complete while France still decks a mast.
In the barracks mess at breakfast
Sat the half-dress’d soldiery,
Freddie Johnstone yells joyous blast
Tosses broadsheets flying free,
“Old Boney has broke free at last,
Fink he’ll face our ‘ookey!”
As the room rose the whole company roar’d
With thoughts of gaining glory by the sword.
The word spread round like raging fire,
“Great & glorious news!”
Time to retire thoughts of empire,
Pack up those marching shoes,
For once again brave Englishmen must battle with the blues.
Portsmouth
March 10th
1815
Portent of War
Not far or near
Can mounts or rebel waves
E’er make me full of fear
Paramahansa Yogananda
The winds of change have dwindl’d to a breeze,
The first Napoleon resumes his reign,
Renounces the lawless Bourbon decrees,
A man more powerful than Charlemagne;
Surrounded by
A court of men he made,
Who with a weary sigh prepare for war’s parade.
“All Europe declares war on you!”
“One man becomes one nation!”
“So be it! If peace shall not do
Increase the realms taxation,
A million muskets, Marshall Soult,
Treble the conscription,
Arm all the gendarmes, secure the borders,
Allez mon marshalles, await my orders.”
The city cool’d as blue moonlight
Shone with the tinkling stars,
The eagle’s flight span cross the night
To sweep across old Mars,
Who shone a little redder with the blood of coming wars.
Paris
March 22nd
1815
A Very English Affair
at that very first hour
the destiny of us all
began to be fulfilled
Jorge Barbosa
The Duke of Richmond look’d down on his ball,
A fete of English suave & gaiety,
Ladies holding darling captains in thrall
Amidst a swirling, twirling company;
Fast thro’ the door
Burst the Prussian Muffling,
To struggle cross the floor huffing & a-puffing.
Wellington took him to one side
& frown’d as the Prussian spoke,
Then an aristocratic glide
Swept them thro’ the dancing folk,
Deepest anxieties did hide
Neath noble, smiling cloak…
“Richmond, do you have a map anywhere?”
“Yes I do…” They stole up the ballroom stair.
“By Gad! That man has humbugg’d me!
What nerve to choose Charleroi –
Thus the army must speedily
Converge on Quatra Bras…
& if not there then Mont Saint-Jean must dowse his martial star.”
Brussels
June 15th 1815
22:00
Battle’s Eve
that is why you remind me of music
If this song were to end
I’ll continue marching, leaving sound-tracks
Kyle Louw
The Emperor reach’d the inn tward sunset
Lord of a footsore, rain-sodden army,
Viewing lush fields he never would forget
Rippling yellow in the shallow valley;
“Dare he stand here?
The battlefield so small!”
A stench of secret fear now permeates his soul.
Thro’ Heaven waltz’d the Evening Star
As four French cannonballs fly,
The grand, full-throated voice of war
As sixty roar in reply,
Thick blood puls’d thro’ his throbbing scar,
“These English want to die –
Have the troops bivouac here for the night,
First light shall prove their stomach for the fight.”
Thro’ starry climes the Eagle flew
Oer each moon-sprinkl’d cloud,
Then swoop’d down to the farm Caillou
Close to the cheering crowd,
For thro’ them rode an Emperor, the father of the proud.
Maison du Roi
June 17th 1815
21:00
Imperial Breakfast
you have so much of confidence
and trust it with a brilliance
you are kind-hearted
Hasmukh Amathalal
The Marshalls receive the summons to dine
Breaking the night’s fast with Napoleon,
Whose smile, as soft as Corsican sunshine,
Settles their spirits, they know they must win;
“Still he stands fast,”
Spew’d thro’ some chew’d-up fish,
“Then I have them at last, these whore’s bastard English!”
“Attack at nine!” “It can’t be done,
The ground is as a quagmire.
I cannot move all my cannon
To the open fields of fire.”
“What do you think of Wellington?”
“Strong when well posted sire.”
“Nonsense, you’ve all been beaten by a dick!
This battle shall be but a child’s picnic.”
With certain generals he did meet,
Then parles with his colonels,
For something sweet he sate to eat
Plates of sugar’d mussels –
Guzzl’d down, gracef’ly upstood, “Tonight we sleep in Brussels.”
La Ferme de Caillou
June 18th 1815
08:00
French Optimism
The eyes of the owl
closed on the plain
of death
Juan Sánchez Peláez
How they march’d onto the field of slaughtersm
With music & banners to daunt the foe,
& the Emperor’s beautiful daughters
Wheel’d into position, row after row;
Plush cavalry
Mounted on fine horses –
In sight for all to see, the mighty French forces.
Along the front their leader made
The grand tour of inspection,
As tho’ his men were on parade,
Abundant with affection,
Steeping upon his cavalcade
Rapt’rous salutation,
“Before the sun sets we shall, together,
Help France rise more glorious than ever.”
He sat at a small deal table,
Down shone a burning sun,
“By a brutal assault frontal
We must take Mont Saint-Jean,
But first, to draw the reserves out, let us tease Hougoumont.”
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
11:00
Prussian Advance
Walking the mudflats,
I pass a stranger. We nod.
And leave it at that
Pat Boran
As cannonades echo for miles around,
Slowly, along those atrocious back lanes,
The Prussian hastens to the battleground
Thro’ marshland swollen by the recent rains;
Knee deep in mud
Blucher waves high his sword,
“Forwards, my men, ye would not have me break my word.”
Marching on a murd’rous ordeal
Men moved thro’ glutinous goo,
Took three of them to free a wheel
As weary exhaustion grew,
But with that great Teutonic zeal
Them close to battle drew,
Emerging from the woods by Saint-Lambert,
The bloodshed spread below them everywhere.
Napoleon gazed hopefully
Along the Eastern track,
“They could well be troops of Grouchy…”
“Perhaps, sire, Prussian black!”
“It makes no difference to us now, on with D’Erlon’s attack.”
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
13:30
(AA) Canto 68: Mont Saint-Jean
**************************************
A king is for glorious deeds, not long life
Magnus Barelegs
D’Erlon’s Attack
I belong to you and call you mine
like my mother whom I did not choose
but nonetheless love
Conceição Lima
As low, dense powder clouds drifted away,
The bands struck up, notes melting the mile,
Juggernauts launch, & slowly made their way
Across the valley in the same old style;
War’s theatre
Rips with the sounds of drum;
Rrum-da, rrum-dum…rrum-da, rrubba-dabba-dum-dum!
As mile-wide lines of skirmisher
Drive the keen sharpshooters back
From behind them flaunting terror,
Five thousand from front to back,
Pass into the smoke & sulphur,
Press glorious attack
Upon the British, ignoble retreat
Must to them come, & consummate defeat.
A blaze of muskets strafed the flanks
Flung out from La Haye Saint,
From cannon clanks ploughs, thro’ the ranks,
Balls of screaming iron,
Regardless, dauntless, of their loss, men joyously march’d on.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
13:40
Death of Picton
Doing, a filthy pleasure is, & short:
& done, we straight repent us of the sport:
Let us not then rush blindly on unto it
Petronius
Below the ridge, in nervous ribaldry,
Gin rations allaying a real fear,
Ready to die, the Highlander stands steady,
Eyes on the crest, appears the Grenadier!
Fiannan roar
Defies the glide of France,
Whose tartan & claymore piped into an advance.
As driving on those men he led,
“At ’em you drunken rascals!”
A lucky shot pierc’d Picton’s head,
From his mount he slowly falls,
But still that regiment in red
Threw forwards musketballs,
As bayonets are thrust into the charge,
”Get into ‘em!” bellows their foul-mouth’d sarge.
Little do we know of courage
’Til battle’s lust takes oer,
With fearful rage our fight we rage
Altho’ we know not for,
To kill a man, be slain by him, grim sacrament of war.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
13:45
Scots Greys
O what is Death? ‘Tis life’s last shore,
Where vanities are vain no more!
Where all pursuits their goal obtain
Leigh Richmond
Lord Uxbridge watch’d the battle’s lethal course,
Observ’d the gravitas grown unsteady,
Spurr’d to face his fine phalanx of grey horse,
Order’d their sabers from rest to ready;
The bugle’s peel
Cancels all distraction,
Perform’d a perfect wheel, forth into the action
The earth-thumping hoofbeats propel
Centaurs of derring & dash,
Bloodstirring the Britisher’s yell
As into the Gaul they crash,
How many a gallant foe fell
Neath scything sabre slash
& the hooves of the stamping stallion –
Grave panic grips the forces of D’Erlon.
With the capture of their standard
Brave Frenchmen flee like sheep,
Fully routed or led founder’d,
Dead or afeign Death’s sleep,
While nigh three thousand prisoners lament the lives they keep.
The Fields of Waterloo
14:00
Sanguine Stalemate
I go up onto the rocky earth-hill summit,
Till my horses are sick with the effort;
My charioteer is poorly now
Chou South
Drunk on rum & bloodshed the Grey’s charg’d on;
No voice nor blast could halt the lusty heart
Careering round each small yet deadly gun,
Wreaking revenge for friends they’d blown apart;
Heroic fray,
Fought in that danger zone,
Skulk’d, safety, far away as panting mounts are blown.
He watch’d as tho’ struck by thunder,
A terrible sight to see,
Then cast the Polish Lancer
Against milling cavalry,
With the promise of no quarter
They spear’d the enemy,
Slaying spent stragglers with furious zest,
Oft times twenty lances punctur’d the chest.
The plain was litter’d with the slain
Like shrapnel from a bomb,
While fresh cocaine sped to his brain
He rode back to Rossome,
Scream’d, “Where the fuck is Grouchy?” & “Where are these English from!”
Rossome
June 18th 1815
14:30
Wellington’s Caution
He’d dreamt he was a shaft of wood
By axehead topp’d, his foes to fight
To chop off heads & branches smite!
Jaan Kaplinski
After such titanic surge of battle
The field lay taken by an eerie calm,
But for the musketry’s endless rattle
Rising from the blazing Hougoumont farm;
Across the ground
Ten thousand corpses strewn,
Aft’ that first frightful round e’en the stout-hearted swoon.
A young ensign upbraved the crest,
Peer’d into the smoky haze,
Saw tranquil horses, riderless,
On bleeding leg-stumps graze,
Watch’d silent, white & motionless
Whilst wounded Death’s knell raise –
‘Til BOOM! thro’ the air a cannonball cuts,
Punctures his belly, out trails white worm guts.
The ridge becomes a smoking pyre,
Armies turn to spaces,
“To dodge this fire we shall retire
Back a hundred paces!”
Breathing relief, that hot-spot left, war’s pain on strain’d faces.
The Ridge of Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
15:30
Ney’s Attack
I have seen in the hunt
The pulse of rent flesh;
Seen the fingers of Time
Mary Eliza Fullerton
Half-a-mile from the eyes of his master
Ney watch’d the scarlet enemy retreat,
Giving hordes of cavalry the order,
”Come claim the glory of England’s defeat;
In consequence
The Confederacy
Must offer no defence to French supremacy.”
Tween La Haye Saint & Hougoumont
The flawless Cuirassier,
His golden breastplate gleaming dun,
His horse-pistol & sabre,
Came on, came slow & calmly on,
Some sea-wave of summer –
A long, glittering line of man & ???
Emanating grandeur’s will to s!??
“Shoot at the horses!” came the cry,
Down fell many a steed,
A human sigh dwelt in the eye
Of our most noble breed,
Man’s heavenly companions dying hell-bent for his greed.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
16:00
Rocks of Empire
Weeping another’s death, my grief atones
No whit. All forms of human doom
Arouse but transient thoughts of joy or gloom
Jan Kochanowski
They stood about the shot-tatter’d colours,
Driven to the limits of endurance,
Defending their ground ‘gainst the warriors
Driven by the spirits of ancyent France;
Without a flinch
They took all France could throw,
Nor yield a single inch to the relentless foe.
Each wave of brave sabres withstood
By the savage squares of red,
Melting into the Belgian mud,
Courtyards litter’d with the dead,
Between each foam-fleck’d horseman flood
Descended deadly dread,
For black balls from BOOM-BOOMING batteries
Cut carnage in swathes thro’ the companies.
With each assault dwindl’d the foe,
Their dead litter’d the plain,
The weighty blow did drain & slow
Tho’ still they came again,
‘Til the last spectres of this ghastly danse macabre wane.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
17:30
Farmhouse Fall
The two God’s creatures
Fight odiously.
They fight vehemently
Gueorgui Konstantinov
With Wellington press’d hard to distraction
D’Erlons rallied remnants swarm round this farm
In the midst of a furious action,
Show contemptuous recklessness tward harm;
From shot-pock’d walls
The Kings German Legion
Pour’d streams of musketballs into the blue ocean.
As la rage steam-soak’d in despair
Hurls men at the bold defence,
Stone, cold fire of the legionnaire
Splutters to vanquish’d silence,
‘Twas such a murderous affair
The French claim recompense –
Bayonets plunge into wounded soldiers,
“Take zat for being such good defenders!”
On the key to the position
The Tricolor waved free,
The battle won! The division
Of Wellington’s army
Must soon be follow’d by the Brussels march & VICTORY!
La Haye Saint
June 18th 1815
18:00
The Killing Time
heart is dead, no longer is there prayer
on my lips; all strength is gone, and
hope is no more
Hayyim Nahman Bialik
The French advance their cannon down the slopes
& up again, where halting they commence
A constant fire, in which hot blaze lie hopes
Of victory & tigrish recompense;
Now is the time
When England’s best are slain
Cull’d savage & sublime under a silver rain.
As canister’d shells macerate,
Pulping flesh to mushy pink,
The Iron Duke now felt his fate
A-tottering on the brink,
No further minute could he wait,
No seconds left to think,
So marshalling all forces of the line
He fortifies the vital centre-spine.
As every man, & everyone,
Was taking turns to die,
Palladian the sinking sun
Diminishes the sky,
Brave Wellington gazed gravely on with grim, determined eye.
Mont St Jean
June 18th 1815
18:10
(AA) Canto 69: La Belle Alliance
**************************************
The next worst thing after a battle lost is a battle won
The Duke of Wellington
Echoes of War
Woman has two feet
To climb toward her dreams,
To stand together, firm
Chiranan Pitpreecha
Miltering from that stomach-searing stench,
Hooves thudded by each busy surgeon’s blade,
As battle’s grisly carnage, & the French,
Abandon’d by a cavalry brigade
Quite cowardly,
Bursting thro’ those wagons
Of wounded creaking free from death’s ruthless dragons.
On bolting thro’ the Namur Gate,
Grave panic spread like wylde-fire,
Fearful of the forthcoming fate,
For troops of the French Empire
Oft wreak revenge in rabid state –
Those dastards daz’d & dire,
Spread rumors rife, “We’ve heard Napoleon
Has promised two days pillage to his men.”
She gazes toward the rumbling sound,
Saw battles in her head,
She, wistful, found a spot of ground
& helpless there she led,
Not knowing if her William was wounded, well or dead.
Brussels
June 18th 1815
18:30
Napoleonic Sunset
I don’t know if the stars rule the world
Or if Tarot or playing cards
Can reveal anything
Fernando Pessoa
From thirsty throats shot a tremendous cheer
For France, the Emperor & Victory!
Faces contorted with pleasure & fear
Like some black Parisian tragedy;
Mountains of dead,
The screams, the smoke, the smell,
The dark, Dantean red that paints this trophied hell.
Ney gallop’d to his emperor,
Prussian shells fell on Rossome,
Face blacken’d with face & powder,
“Sire the time to push has come!”
“Fool! how can I manufacture
Men, where to pluck them from?
Back to battle, there do the best you can,
Spare not the efforts of a single man!”
To secure Plancenoit he threw
The Young Guard from his hand,
Then rode back to the inn to view
The battle’s prospect grand,
Sky painted black with evenfall, by smoke & ashes fann’d.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
18:45
Imperial Guard
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the blugeonings of chance
W.E. Henley
He led them upon the glorious way,
His soldiers, of the Middle, of the Old,
Once more handed the Fate of France to Ney,
More precious than his weight in Bourbon gold;
The grand guardsmen
March musically as one,
“Forwards my brave children, a Bruxelles mes enfants.”
They march’d with splendour’s cool élan
Onto the field of glory,
The power surging thro’ each man
To shape Europe’s destiny,
Brave bandsmen foremost in the van
Stirring strain’d melody,
They swept in solemn & savage silence,
Th’espirit-de-corps carv’d from deadly violence.
On march’d th’immortal sons of France,
Men who built an empire,
The eminence of their advance
Plough’d to a muddy mire,
Two columns paced into the fray straf’d by a galling fire.
The Ridge of Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
19:45
Routing the Guard
To the end they were brave
To the end they were faithful
To the end they were similar
Zbigniew Herbert
“Now Maitland! Now’s your time!” Swiftly upsprung
One long, scarlet line of grimy faces,
With one thundering volley forward flung
Murd’rous musketry at twenty paces;
Death’s wind was blown,
Driving men to their knees,
Strange field of human corn all swaying in the breeze.
“Up Guards & at ’em!” Arthur cried,
& Wellesley’d to the murder,
Where brave blues stood fresh terrified
Of death by English slaughter,
The bayonet, coldly applied,
Adds to the disorder
A cowering coward yelps a wild shout –
As one the beaten heroes turn & rout.
“La Garde recule,” ” Impossible!”
“Nous sommes traits!” the cry,
Their spirits fell, broken the spell,
To France these Frenchmen fly,
So cruel & bitter tasting tears trickle from each proud eye.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
20:00
The Soul of France
Oh, noble grief in the verses free,
Which sound and resound so sincere,
Will you move the feelings of men
Migjeni
Sheltering in the centre of a square,
His loyal First view their leader blankly,
Who, with the terrible rage of despair,
Stand to save the honour of the army;
Outbreaths a sigh
Retiring in all haste,
He left his men to die as on the Russian waste.
Befitting the call of glory,
Steep’d in mystique ’til the last,
Like islands in a raging sea,
Screaming comrades streaming past,
Swarm’d by hussars & infantry
Fought they fierce & steadfast –
Freddie Johnstone pleads them to surrender,
Dead silence feeds the defiant, “Merde!”
“La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!”
Twelve cannon pack’d with case
Administer the coup de grace,
Death’s scythe swept thro’ the space,
The soul of the Grand Armee duly vanish’d from Earth’s face.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
20:45
Happy Meeting
Promise of hope, a bright spark for tomorrow,
That’s who the angel did say was to come;
How can this be when the world’s so uncertain
Bruce Levitan
Tho’ the battle won & Europa saved
Death doubles his efforts as night draws in,
The mortal right to mercy clearly waiv’d,
Frenchmen hack’d down in droves for kinsmen sin;
In joyous rows
Their vanquishers advance,
As Allied pincers close about the throat of France
They meet with a gladsome greeting,
Victorious embrace share,
“My prince, that was a damn’d nice thing!”
“Oui, mon duke, une quelle affaire!”
Their triumphant soldiers singing
Stormblasted thro’ the air;
For twenty years the misery of France
Full twenty years of bloody arrogance.
The simple north country farmer
Heard English lyrical,
Crept in terror from the cellar,
Paced his ruin’d castle
Stood forever at the threshfold of a famous battle.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
21:00
Battle’s End
How some that have died, & some they have left me,
& some are taken from me’ all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces
Charles Lamb
Lone rider cross’d the scene, grave duty done,
Counting the cost of his certain glory,
“Next to a battle lost a battle won
Is the worst thing any captain could see;”
The tears he cry
Whilst whispering wistful,
“I hope to God that I have fought my last battle.”
Mangl’d thousands cover the ground
Like a shipwreck’s rippling sail,
Some dreadful organ piped hell’s sound
While the wounded shriek & wail,
One stumbling, mumbling widow found
Beloved husband pale;
Shadowy ghouls sporting guns, helms & coats
Scavenge for booty, slitting gurgling throats.
Weary the Duke of Wellington,
Bright is the moon & blue,
He trotted on past La Haye Saint
Where one lone eagle flew,
Then glanced his last & turn’d his back on the fields of Waterloo.
Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
21:30
Broken Dreams
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years !
I am so weary of toil & of tears,-
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain
Elizabeth Akers Allen
How strange that any man escap’d alive
This sorry scene of carnage incarnate,
An epic pool of death in which connive
The sobbing phantoms of a sword-law state;
While bedlam shrieks
Faces shine bright moonbeams
Upon subfuscous freaks erupting amid screams.
As men bellow their Christian hymns
Or beg to end pain, be shot,
Others untangle scrambling limbs
From a stinking horses knot,
The chance of night’s survival slims,
No pennies for the slot;
When one-by-one, as wounded men expire,
Fell ever, ever quieter, Hell’s choir.
As in light sunrise increases,
Unfolds a tragedy,
Broken pieces, choking ceases,
As life’s finality
Still weeps across that field of foes with woeful witcherie.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 19th 1815
06:30
Splendid News
Every church sings its own soft part
In the polyphony of a girl’s choir,
And in the stone arches of the Assumption
Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
The carriage thunder’d oer Westminster bridge –
Eagles poking proudly from it’s window,
Captur’d in the fight for Wellington’s ridge –
To wheel into Whitehall… the horses slow;
Grime-faced major
Brushes the guards aside,
Interrupting dinner, words bursting forth with pride.
“Great & glorious victory!”
Sang Percy to his Regent,
Kneeling upon a bended knee,
“My liberty to present
Twin colours pluck’d with gallantry
From a French regiment;
Representing Napoleon’s downfall!”
Three long hurrahs huzzah’d by one & all.
Trophies display’d to growing throng,
News flew round like lightning,
They skipp’d along awash with song
Singing, “God save the King!”
While wide across the countryside ten thousand church bells ring.
Saint James’ Square
21st June 21st
1815
(AA) Canto 70: Jihad
**************************************
King falcons of Britain, your chief song I fashion
Your chief praise I bear:
I’ll act as your bard, your judge
Your support, it befits me
Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr
Revenge
How transient that lithe-limbed lady’s life,
stooping to sow seedlings, scorched by the sun,
her face plastered with mud and dusty earth
Ukñā Suttantaprījā Ind
The Allies muster clumpetty replies,
Cluster-bombs bash, from stratofortresses,
Big-stinking paths, defenceless from the skies
Ground squadrons groan at their falling forces;
A fierce advance
Against the Taliban,
Who’ll take heroic stance, defending to a man.
Step-by-step the Allies struggle
Thro’ the rugged mountain bar,
Tho’ Taliban have fled Kabul
& battle-scarr’d Kandahar,
All the local warlords huddle
Around Bin Laden’s star,
Hiding in his protective catacoomb,
Glendower of the Tora-Boran gloom.
As every day gun-noises near
Capture draws on closer,
Fresh hopes appear, bereft of fear,
Cautiously Osama
Sped west to Pakistan thro’ the passes of Paktia.
Afghanistan
November
2001
Peace March
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
& give her to the god of storms
OW Holmes
They march’d en masse into the capital;
Made a peacehugging, socialist anthill,
Heavy-hearted with forthcoming battle,
Why would the world unleash war’s terror still?
From age to youth
Human majority
Choose not the dragonstooth of Hell’s hostility.
O world! sweet world! sweet world of mine!
&… billions of others,
Would we not wish a sun to shine
Upon a world of brothers,
Why would ye wish to hear the whine
Of our wailing mothers?
For surely cruel lessons have been learnt
When Prague fell & the streets of Poplar burnt.
I wander silent thro’ the roar
Rumtumbling thro’ the crowd,
“What is life for” “Make tea not war!”
The gentle clamour loud,
The later portions of my task with firmer thought endow’d.
Hyde Park
February 15th
2003
Invasion of Iraq
The ancient tombs lie thicker on the grass;
The new graves encroach even on the highway
Outside the city-wall there is no vacant ground
Tzu-Lan
Saxons have reach’d the beach’d Shatt-al-arab,
Where Tigris & Euphrates stem their flow
Scimitars sharpening for the scarab,
Amicus est tamquam alter ego;
The serpent’s head
Call’d the fight for heaven,
Wielding a gold-plated AK forty-seven.
As when a brave, young Persian Shah
Defied Queen Victoria,
The British Navy sails to spar
Amid the streets of Basra,
With better guns & battlestar
Marches desert soldier,
Joining opening batsmen at the crease
To end the wars with this more perfect peace.
He slipt away into the night
That man men call Hussein,
For from the fight if ye take flight
Ye live to fight again
Like Washington’s irregulars & Wellington’s young Spain.
Baghdad
May
2003
Bombing Madrid
Oh, bring not then the dread report of death,-
Of eyes to loveliness forever sealed,
Of youth that perished as a passing breath
Helena Coleman
Nine hundred & eleven days are pass’d
Since 9-11 thro’ world psyche tore,
Handsome Jihadis waking from repast,
Thrust fundamentalism to the fore;
This is Jihad!
A culture & a cause,
As out of Attobad codewords conduct the Wars.
Another routine, protein day,
As rush hour fast receeded,
“The Christian elite shall pay!”
Was warning wide unheeded,
Both ETA & the IRA
Truly superceded,
Horror striking thro’ the Spanish nation,
Ignite pack’d trains at Atocha station.
Within a week the cell is found,
Some dirty hideaway,
Arm’d police surround the plot of ground,
Young Arabs kneel & pray,
Then blow themselves to kingdom come as martyrs pass away.
Legures
March
2003
Regime’s End
A hawk’s eye
Penetrates to the core
On a hot afternoon
David Rubadiri
Pursuing the ‘most wanted’ deck of cards,
Two pictures caught, their lavishlarge mansion
Reduced, their father’s kingdom torn to yards
The focal point of the world’s attention;
Four-hour fire-fight
Odai & now Qusai
Are finally in sight, mark’d by the sniper’s eye.
Only the Ace of Spades remains,
The very ultimate goal,
First target of the Allied pains
Ten short minutes from his fall;
Namore the tyrant hydra reigns,
They’ve found him in a hole,
Without an army & without a plan,
Dishevel’d & ignoble… an old man.
They led up him up into the light,
Glanc’d he ‘cross the river
Where shines the sight, fabulous, bright,
Spinal spinning shiver,
Best of his golden palaces commandeer’d forever.
Tikrit
September
2003
Suicide Bomber
I will rise
with the soul of the earth
I will run
Moechtar Awang
As Al-Jazeera shows brave Muslims bleed
& Mosques of Leeds incite a deep passion,
Hasib abandons the young British breed –
Pop music, hedonism & fashion –
For Pakistan
Nursery of Islam,
For Allah, the Quran & elevate Imam.
“We are watchmen of the pure way,
Guardians of the martyrs,
Sons of brave Hossein Fahmideh,
Drinkers of God’s elixirs,
Death bringing to the USA
& all non-believers,
With weapons unassailable & good
Defending faith with our last drops of blood!”
On long flight home the martyr sees
Flowers cloud round heaven;
Customs a breeze, drops to his knees
At the railway station,
Life amplified for one young man plotting devastation.
Manchester
2004
Testamundi Imperatrix
The birth canal is yours
Either to open or to close.
Open it you must, dear elders
Hermana Ramarui
A poet born in Burnley, who’da thought
Of such a thing – he’d try an epic too!
Completely independent & self-taught,
Finding his art’s traditions in the zoo,
His wild heart freed
Her white wings, to obtain
This Pegasus, this steed, his precious Sylvermane.
With herbal teas & verbal tricks,
Thro’ days of molten sapphire,
He fashion’d the Imperatrix,
His ode to Britain’s empire,
& setting in its closing bricks
He read it by the fire,
A wattle church, but now what cathedral
‘Cross mind’s eye darts, & starts with a battle.
First fourteen thousand lines were done,
Among them had reviv’d
Napoleon & Wellington,
In verses keen incis’d,
Melodic’lly, & phantasmagorically contriv’d.
Burnley
2004
A New Blitz
Why came I so untimely forth
Into a world which wanting thee
Could entertain us with no worth
Edmund Waller
As Londoners rose glorious & gay,
The thirtieth Olympiad was theirs,
Whose families were flung into the fray
As thro’ the tube the first explosion tears;
Entrusted tasks,
With bomb-laden ruck-sacks,
The citizen unmasks, the terrorist attacks.
They had bought a single ticket,
Rode from Luton to Kings Cross,
Like openers at the wicket
When the Ashes first were lost,
Men of faith & peace & cricket,
But noble & brainwash’d,
A sleeper cell awoken to their rage,
A lion-thought pacing a bitter cage.
The waking world look’d on in awe,
When will we ever learn?
Still dying for the sake of war
Man’s miseries return –
The filth, the fears, the hate, the tears, the boodshed & the burn.
London
July 7th
2005
Saddam Hussein
my sister said: save me the eyes
for a pair of earrings, & Martino
our blind neighbour, bagged the guts
Piedad Bonnett
Since Tilsit’s raft two centuries are pass’d,
My, all has been remarkable sithen,
They thought that peace, now peace settles at last
Upon the warring winter-time of men;
Saddam Hussein
Face melting with the snows,
By Allied justice slain, the doors of Janus close.
Tho’ conflictions still haunts Iraq
This hanging symbolizes
The age of Mars, tied in a sack
With all his crude disguises,
Then toss’d upon the Potomac,
Drowning with the Kaisers –
So, this is the way that the World Wars die,
Not with a bang, nor whimper… but a sigh.
How many fought? How many died?
Man’s future to secure,
Tyrants defied by lands allied
Made living lives more pure,
Far from those ravages of war our ancestors endure.
Baghdad
December
2006
(AA): Canto 71: Parnassus
********************************
The world of the Greeks and Romans is my land of romance; a question in either language thrills me strangely, and there are passages of Greek and Latin verse which I cannot read without a dimming of the eyes, which I cannot repeat aloud because my voice fails me
George Gissing
Fresh Finales
Let these be thoughts for Adam’s race;
To me they do not seem untrue;
Men for a time may know their place
Muireadach Albanach
Shaking Calliope from her slumbers
I took a bag of books up to the park,
Late summer sun lit those random numbers
At any given one of them many spark;
Some word obscure,
Some sweet, well-metered line,
Hot drops of poesy pure to aid mine art’s design
From Nether Stowey balladry
To Virgil in translation,
Thro’ Rilke’s Orphic sonnetry
To Spender’s generation,
How many notions bloom’d in me,
Groom’d by transcraetion…
& now Lucretious & the Tempest lie
Preganant with possibilities nearby.
As when th’entowr’d Lady Jane
Scratch’d poesy with a pin,
From Autumn’s rain I’ll cross the main,
Unleash the coil within
& tour, once more, the Roman shore, Muse let the
games begin!
Edinburgh
September
2008
Italy
We are shining stars,
each a light unto ourselves,
yet bound together
Larry Schug
An age of freedom, long after the fall
Of liberty, in Italy, my song
Prepares its lyre, tightens its strings, sets stall
With poets of the sweeter chimes among;
Poi… Adesso!
Giro d’Italia,
Arquata del Tronto, where Tony Loffreda,
A man of eighty-seven years,
Such a wonderful tale did tell,
Of how a Scotsman dissapears
From the German hounds & yell,
At last the Gustav line appears
To break their trickster spell,
Now Jack McShiel stands tall, ‘Hugo’ no more,
Hugs his young friend & gallumphs back to war.
I, too, embraced that man so good ,
For he was still alive,
I stopp’d & stood in Dante’s wood,
Approaching thirty-five,
To share Tony’s affection for the world
which he did strive.
Ascoli Piceno
September
2008
Compositions
Outwardly, I enjoy wine, women and song.
And inwardly I work for the benefit of all beings.
Outwardly, I live for my pleasure
Drukpa Kunley
From Santa Catarina up the coast,
I sent my silent thoughts out to the day,
These are the moments Muses love the most
When shell-murmuring cauldrons come to play;
Euterpe first
Shall leave a lyric there,
To ease my rambling thirst for all the world to
share.
Finding fairest pharie abode
Of delicious asphodels,
As if my younger poet strode
Thro’ the woods by Tunbridge Wells,
Still trundling on in tryptych mode
To form my Book of Kells,
From engineering & endurance carv’d,
An inimitable instance unstarv’d!
Upon the cliff, high over sea,
Some fisherboat below,
My thought flies free, pure melody,
Thro’ poesy’s pantings flow,
Beneath the slanting Torre Santa Maria dell’Alto
Puglia
September
2008
Ascending Parnassus
Fireflies weaving aërial dances
In fragile rhythms of flickering gold,
What do you know in your blithe, brief season
Sarojini Naidu
Leaving Brindisi, Diomedes sire,
I sail’d for Hellas on a busty breeze,
To where Xerxes & Persia’s proud empire
Defiled upon the Isle Pelopponese;
Thro’ night we swept,
‘Til Dawn in purpling robes
About Lefkadi crept with gold, dust-finger’d probes.
At Sami Bay we mused & moor’d –
Silver-tongued Odysseus
Built here his famous multi-floor’d
Pillar’d pearl of palaces –
& further down the coast restor’d
The sea-cove of Phorcys!
On such stuff we Litologists depend,
To serve our pens when versifyings end.
I wander’d on in melody,
With notebook, fruit & pen,
Lidoriki, Galaksidi,
Itea’s olive glen,
& on up to Parnassus, yonder Chrissos town, &
then…
Delphi
September
2008
Parnassus
But you
Went on writing postcards. For days I rhymed
Talismans of power, in cynghanedd
Ted Hughes
Ye Bards! this is what sunset should look like
From Delphi, blood-orange, immaculate,
I urge on thee come take this healthy hike
Up to the trench where Pegasus placed foot;
Come curb your thirst!
This Castalian Spring
Shall make ye poet first, & then a druid-king!
But only if ye persevere
Thro’ twenty years of training,
Sing lyrics when the skies are clear,
Write renku when them raining,
Embrace the decades full austere,
Ever be abstaining,
From all the crude distractions of a life,
Whose only succor comes with thy true wife!
Deem women, where the Muses dwell,
Heart, twinkle, touch & trust,
Art’s dewy dell more musty cell
When lusting them non-plussed,
My love lies with me as I write, without her I am dust!
Delphi
September
2008
Culminations
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
But soaring snow-clad through his native sky,
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty
Lord Byron
Parnasso now – body, mind & soul –
A promise made indecadent before,
When Calliope wove vortical squall
While Clio taper’d arrows for World War;
An oracle,
A phantasy, a dream –
Yon Arachova’s hill I stepp’d across the stream,
Gently passing wild sparagmos
Which the maenads madly gorge,
Beside nymphaean thyiados
For the higher slopes feet forge,
Where juicy orgies soak’d the moss –
For England & King George
I plant myself upon the pointed steep,
Some Wallace on a bleeding Saxon Heap.
Just Aborigenes who see
Jasmin Valencia,
Could ever be this close to me,
Burnley’s Che Guevera,
Whom on a pittance tour’d the world to sing its
aria!
Mount Parnassus
September
2008
Dance of the Muses
Only the things touched
by the love of other things
have a voice
Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão
As the Beatles, however circumspect,
Together only won a nation’s hearts
& total televisual effect
Comes from a congregation of its parts;
My Muses nine
Hold hands in merry ring,
& I, sipping my wine, as, at the beginning…
She dons the mask of comedy,
She holds a globe & compass,
Two lyre a tender melody,
Euterpe wields her aulos,
Wearing a veil, Melopmene,
Fills the air with pathos,
Clio translating scrolls from ancyent days
While Calliope floats on sacred lays.
From Heaven Lord Apollo drifts,
With Mercury mid-flow,
The moment shifts, Euterpe lifts
Us onto sandall’d toe,
As one we fly oer mountains high, the mortal
world below.
Eubea
September
2008
Deities
Eagles & isles & unaccompanied things
The self-reliant isolated things
Release my soul, embrangl’d in the stress
Wilfrid Gibson
I landed me beside a gorge of green
& greys & beige in rugged rock ingrain’d,
Beholden to a beauty rarely seen,
Aeromancy momentary obtain’d;
Where silver lines
Swept ‘cross the snowy tops,
Below those hoary pines to roaring water drops.
I saw the twelve Olympians
Resume their former glories,
Mars & his rude centurions
Are banish’d to old stories,
Satanus & his minions
Beaten, & what’s more is,
Their dark endeavours ever put away,
The celebrating Gods before me play.
This hymnographic psaltery
Was slowly pass’d among
The company, a symphony
Of poetry & song,
Sing Plato, Aristophones & Xenophon along!
Mount Olympus
September
2008
Orpheanics
Look at a scorpion; it is attractive and tender,
Touch it and examine, it is too interesting.
Its ancestors are older than mammoth
Azim Suyun
All afloat thro’ rootless modernity,
Ilmarinen’s anchors of intension
I’ve plung’d into this vast posterity,
Found everything frozen in suspension;
This bardic art
Both past & future sees,
As summit mistlings part, gyr falcons drink the breeze.
I climb’d the mountain fast & free,
Funambulistic sailing,
Upon the peak-caps turn’d to see
The universe unveiling,
Futures luteus flew to me,
Visions uncurtailing,
Of Nostradamianical content
Mimesi messianical frequent.
Actions, places, names & dates,
Bejimbling in a dream
Of allied states, of psyche’s gates,
This is the saffron stream,
Hu preaching on a Pendragon thro’ star-fleec’d snorts of steam.
Mount Olympus
September
2008
(AA) Canto 72: Commedia
**************************************
One may gladly admit that the essential & undefinable quality that we call poetry, the quality of being poetical, is one of the eternal things in life. There is something in Homer & the Book of Job which cannot be superseded, any more than the beauty of a spring morning or the sea or a mother’s love for a child can be superseded
Gilbert Murray
Invocations
sometimes I talk in my sleep
funny how unconscious
I’m at my most awake
Megan Mccorquodale
I sat alone singing the Song of Man,
When every beating heart swam through mine own,
A swirl of swans sang in the summer’s van
& I, a sentinel on Zeus’s throne;
His vast robe flows
Before me like a flame,
As lovely as the rose Persophone became.
Strange lights & stranger sounds rang out
Above the global babble,
My spirit turning inside out,
The mage in me must dabble,
Assuaging all my deep-felt doubt,
‘Rise up from the rabble,’
& hope beyond all hope my soul may pass
The last oppression of the poet-class!
This is no simple shepherd’s song
Once sung in Sicily,
For right or wrong we bards belong
In stranger company,
Sat at the feet of godhead, pledg’d before infinity.
Mount Olympus
Poetic Meeting
Now (turned into a Man under obscure measures),
I feel within me the germs of future existences,
lives that shall rise and soar to find higher reaches
Juan Ramón Molina
Rose, from Poppi’s fields, enchanting accent,
“Dante Alighieri is my name,
Sent to attend poetical descent
Into the ovens of infernal flame!”
“Let it be so,
Let us retrace the ride
That was thine Inferno, when Virgil was thy guide.”
“Poet, thy path we have observ’d
From heavenly echelons,
How thro’ thy task ye have conserv’d
Man’s Wars & his raw weapons,
How ye wonder’d what hells reserv’d
For man’s evil actions –
For questions to be illuminated,
My mortal form here rejuvenated.”
The poet led me from the peak
Tho’ all seem’d in my mind –
Forest of teak, bent branches creak
Before us & behind,
Until we reach Hell’s opening by devil’s art design’d.
Ploutonion
Gates of Hell
lord lord
I have sinned and I confess it
but it isn’t really all my fault
Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala
‘ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE,’
Dante trembl’d once more before the gloom,
Then to nook-smitten depths did dissapear,
I join’d him as a robber stalks a tomb;
As deep distance
Echoes a frightful sound,
Sonambulants advance cautiously underground.
“Pray, Dante, stray not far from me,
As into Hades we go,”
Soon rose lung-black cacophony,
Emmuted groans of limbo,
By Acheron, glutting vile sea,
In stagnant, livid flow,
Where Charon waits to ferry fools & kings,
His haunted face bloated with hornet stings.
With old proverbs our pilot paid,
Who blinkless gave no thanks,
But silent stay’d, the boat obey’d,
Sliding tween fetid banks,
Scudding beside a sorry shore, rats scuttling on the planks.
First Circle of Hell
Ancyent Wisdom
Pardon will he obtain, who will call upon
God, and despise Him not,
And heaven the night he dies
St Eleath
Girdling circles of this infernal world
Spiral before us to a point unknown,
Thro womby vaultages shriek’d anguish swirl’d,
Like spinning pennies grating round a cone;
Souls shriek terror,
An angry nest of thieves,
Joyous, once, with honour now forced to fend for leaves.
Round stinkweed shrub a scrum did break,
Won by some toothless hoodlum,
Who gorged it down like it was steak –
Hermann Goering look’d on glum,
Who once had made Albion quake,
Turn’d London to a slum –
Now forced to bear, thro an eternal gloom,
Asthma, marasmus, spasm, qualm & rheum.
A whistle separates the drones,
Imps whip them back to work
Breaking great stones with vulture bones,
Sulphur stings those that shirk,
“Let’s deeper dive,” said Dante’s shade, & led me thro’ the murk.
Molbolgia
Eternal Tortures
O Lord, I am submitting myself to you
I am entangled in these worldly bonds
I am attracted by Karma & its consequences
Krishnamacharya
Encountering the last few laps of Hell
We improvis’d steep course thro’ Caina,
Our eyes upon a dreary vision fell,
Pale-faced & shrunk in weary demeanour;
Some demon shade,
Its eye-pits flicking flame,
Clutch’d tight a crooked blade… Herr Hitler was his name.
“He was placed so close to evil,
With the sins of treachery,
Those high sinners of the Devil
Who betray their own country
& in its destruction revel,”
There for eternity,
Hounded by hosts of hungry mosquitoes,
He was condemn’d to dwell on all his woes.
“Now we are done here,” Dante said,
Let us start ascending,
Foul phantoms fed our clammy dread
Til the stairwell’s ending,
On mortal earth, where further climb’d rainbow roads upwending.
Purgatory
Pearly Gates
I wrote on the rocks & on the waves of the sea
Your name, my Beloved,
But the winds erased what I had written
Abu Firas
A golden staircase in our hearts appears,
& so uprose we to those realms of bliss,
A stunning clock of seven spinning spheres,
The perfect paradise that Heaven is;
Where waits one soul,
My eternal Grandma,
Who shunn’d the mortal fall for Jimmy God’s lodestar.
“My son, tho’ ye are far away,
From low troubles upon earth,
I still recall the special day
Heaven calls your day of birth,
& daily for your safety pray
Beside the astral tirth,
To see you up in Heaven makes me proud…”
Her sweet voice falls, her face cover’d by cloud.
I watch’d her fading with a pang
& whisper’d true yikor,
The angels sang, their fanfares rang,
But still I wanted more…
“Go on my child,” her voice was mild, grief lifted from my core.
Ring of Lesser Spheres
Heavenly Passage
I had no beginning & I shall have
no end : the beam of light
stretches out before & behind
Ron Padgett
Light illimitable thrusts in plenitude,
The extravagant rising of a star,
All minds on earth sophisticate & crude
Awaken to the worlds these rays unbar;
Archangel stands
On battle cairn of bones,
Pearl pibroch in his hands straining the noble tones.
Souls join’d him in his lofty song,
Triumphant in harmony,
Exalted voices deep & strong,
Charlemagne & Duke Godfrey
But two cantari in that throng
Of dashing chivalry,
The music of the soldiers of the cross,
Lamentation-tinged for their war-gods loss.
Now the long page of peace begun
& legends live namore,
Thro’ gore & gun our world wars won,
Wisdom sent to the fore,
When modern human automons may only read of war.
Ring of Mars
Epic Vistas
The bud
stands for all things
even for those things that don’t flower
Galway Kinnel
Like Burnley men when misty Pendle clears,
Fresh vistas spread, each vein’s fibres tingl’d,
Symphonious, the planetary spheres,
Mazy in a spangling motion mingl’d;
The Righteous blurr’d,
Merging as solid gold,
Spelling the holy word in splendours manifold.
‘DILIGITE JUSTITIAM.’
Forms upon the firmament,
Then, ‘QUI JUDIATIS TERRAM,’
Spread across the starry tent,
Yet other phrases praise the Lamb,
We watch’d them all silent,
& yet, our souls were singing in concord
To this lovely libretto of the Lord.
“Now,” serves Dante, “Our paths must part,
This time together flown,
Before ye start open thy heart
& turn thy sins to stone,”
Then with a smile he join’d his kin & left me there alone.
Ring of Jupiter
Circle of Fixed Stars
On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning’s, lay;
And those plumes its light rain’d through
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I climb’d up to a pearly battlement,
Mocking all human art, menhir fortress,
With stars & planets circumambient,
I saw Christ on his triumphal progress;
Saintly nation,
Forming translucent flame,
Gracious congregation chaunting their saviour’s name.
I tip-toed thro’ those holy halls
Upon a course collision,
Portraits of saints hung from the walls,
“Forgive my imposition…”
Jove’s gloriousness awenthralls,
O! Beatific vision!
That bathes my senses to my unclos’d core,
As now I write can recollect no more!
I woke up with rose-wreathed crown
Gliding by angel wing,
She set me down above the town
Upon a mountain king,
Then soar’d thro’ sky, shrinking to raven, thrush, fly, then… nothing.
Mount Olympus
(AA) Gl’Immortali VIII
An eye for an eye blinds the world
Ghandi
Passing the Trial
But I shall not compare today with yesterday.
We, people, can get used to everything.
But the battlefield was too terrible
Konstantin Simonov
On the solitude of a mountain slope,
Silent but for the buzzing of a fly,
Fair Gwyddion is fill’d with fresher hope
Watching the vapours vanish from the sky;
The beast was gone
The cause of all his woes
Altho’ the wars were done gulf-tide of sadness flows.
Down the mountain tall bounds leading
Went the great god of the Celts
T’where Oxslip & Love-lies-bleeding
Intermingled with wolf pelts,
By the Golgoth grass receding
Demeanour nobly melts,
Wailing a wylde wail with a doleful sound,
Here INNOCENCE lies dead within a mound.
Britannia potter’d solemnly
Thro’ dew-drench’d bluebell wood
T’where Liberty had carved a tree
With names of famous good,
Supping the toasts of heroes from a cup of Vishnu’s blood.
Albion
Faerie Exodus
Where is her light? her crown? her ornaments?
Her chain of love? her peace? her puritie?
Her fruitfull gardens? her fair continents?
Sir William Mure
The realm of the immortal quiet grows
A first few weeds have climb’d into the scene
From Europe’s plains to Asgard’s tumbling snows
It seem’d like the great battle had not been,
But for the pyre
Lit by the firefly,
Where Toutatis & Tyr make ashes in the sky.
Sprinkling upon the faerie way
Her procession fell silent
What once was floral turns to grey
& the trees lay bare & bent
They come at last to this cold bay
No longer innocent
Where in the wake of ravaging excess
They boarded barges for the exodus
& left with tender memories
Of ruby Europa
Her energies, her soft beauties
& her blessed nature
Yes left for safer gardens, both far off & forever…
Oceania
Second Coming
Our cup is fill’d with doings fell;
Provoking in a rage of hell
Bless’d God the Highest
John MacCodrum
Now at the time that was before agreed,
The Gods assembl’d all on Arlo Hill,
& at their heart, upon a jasper steed,
Jove sat resipiscent in silence still;
His daughter rides
Upon the divine lap
As angel army glides, marching to thunderclap.
“My new saviour,” said Jove, “Shall free
The virtue of Orlando,
Agamemnon’s nobility,
The goodness of Godfredo,
Bare Gloriana’s chastity,
Ethics of Rinaldo,
Like Aeneas adventure overseas
With the persistence of bold Ulysses.”
From heavenly hyacinthine
Saffia descended,
The sacred queen of all that’s been,
Beauties never ended,
Not knowing that our Universe on her worth depended.
Midgard
Balrog’s Legacy
The padre’s voice had scarcely ceased from prayer
When distant rounds of cheering tore the air;
Wild, yet harmonious; then loud song burst forth
Anna Durie
Long-horn hastily mounts his vampyre steed
Replenish’d of it’s stock of scarlet fuel,
“Satanus, I shall help you as agreed,”
& gave his friend that crackling, azure jewel;
Then giddiyupp’d
Beyond the halls of Hell,
To violently erupt by Midgard’s cloudy swell;
Then shooting thro’ the stratosphere,
Summer twinkling with all stars,
Satanus watch’d them disappear,
Slouch’d ‘hind adamantine bars,
Stroking his technologic gear,
Aid for his future wars,
Push’d diamonds in its sockets for to glean
Secrets mysterious filling the screen.
Grey Tepig passes Jupiter
Uranus & Pluto,
Her warrior, her passenger,
Hauls reigns… as she did slow
Balrog back-glances on a dancing planet’s blue-green glow!
Space
End of War
There shall be peace forever between these people
Zeus, the allseeing met with destiny to confirm it
Singing all follow our footsteps
Aeschylus
War, the province of kings to bring about
But the duty of the gods to end it,
Is married to Peace, but Peace has a doubt,
If life wed together, how to spend it?
Mere words suffice,
The wisdom of an elf,
“By War’s great sacrifice the world redeems itself!”
As seraph-wingéd Victory
Sails over Asgard seas
Heaven woke in vernal beauty
Blossoming with birds & bees,
Where Thor’s maturing son, Modi,
Projects from his knees,
Arms rais’d, promising his father’s father
We shall be wise, always & forever.
Britannia strode thro’ countryside,
Paus’d by the Bluebell Wood;
There, sudden, cried, for all that died,
Remembering the Good –
Swore to praise their martyrdoms with monoliths & sainthood.
Albion
Judgement of Jupiter
My God! I will address Thee
In loudest hymns of praise;
Then, too, my soul shall bless Thee
Synyesius
Jove reach’d the ruins of a city lost
Long times ago, when Mars was in his prime,
Calling for Jupiter his echoes toss’d
That name thro’ temples in a mono-rhyme;
Some ghostly shade
By faith namore sustain’d,
Slouch’d humbl’d & afraid, by ev’ry breath bepain’d.
“Old god,” spoke Jove, “Look in these eyes,
Tho’ your body crippl’d, weak,
Your mind still prospers very wise,
I’ve travel’d to hear ye speak,
Of better lives we phantasize,
Of finer age we seek,”
The old god thought awhile, & then did say,
“Bring Mars to trial, then fling him leagues away.”
“Wise words,” mused Jove, “My thanks, old friend,”
The great God out-thrust palm,
That did suspend, Rome’s best legend
Hard-grabs instead his arm,
& squeez’d it tight, “Put him some place he’ll never do us harm!”
Olympus
Heavenly Judgement
Lord of the world, He reigned alone
While yet the universe was naught.
When by His will all things were wrought
Solomon Ibn Gabriol
Jove greets the Gods, campus-stella seated,
On deathless islands spinning round his own,
Mars stood there, dejected & defeated,
Tied to white rocks in front of Heaven’s throne;
The trial begins,
The Prosecution starts,
Listing a bunch of sins & crunching juror’s hearts.
“But need we him,” springs Liberty,
“When tyranny uprising,”
“Surely not,” sings Saraswathi,
“Warfare aids each tyrant king,”
“Let him keep his divinity,”
Offer Buck$ & St£rling,
“I disagree,” groans greying Gwyddion,
“Hough! Look at what his presence here hath done!”
After the Gods had rais’d their voice
A show of hands was sought,
Angels rejoice! O happy choice!
“Guilty!” proclaims the court,
As, gurgling on congealing blood, “NOOooooo!!….” roars from War’s raw throat.
Empyrean
Imprison’d
The crood streams flowed at happy pace,
A couthy look on ilka face ;
Thinks I the warld’s a nae ill place
Elsie Rae
With Jove’s archangels hovering above,
Mars was allow’d to kiss his last goodbyes,
Thro’ bloodshot eyes Venus would beam her love
As he was led beyond her thro the skies;
Deep into space
Universal frontiers,
Where sable pits replace the suppermassive spheres;
They found an ancyent galaxy
Where supernovae flashes
Implode in awesome density
& turn diamonds to ashes,
They cast Mars to that gravity –
“Tho he yells & thrashes
He will never be able to escape
To fill us with killing, pillage & rape,”
Said Mab, sipping her herbal mead
Of soft-scented flowers,
KARMA agreed with quaint, “Indeed,”
Age of Aquarius
Enters the harbour of the world, a bay so beauteous.
Shangri-La
War’s Futility
I got used to missing you
You came back after a long time
I now love longing for you more than I love you
Aziz Nesin
We are all planets to a greater star,
These stars subservant to a further force,
Balrog, at last, returns to his own war,
Dadghab-at-arms tethers his feather’d horse;
Shock & relief
Swept thro’ his regiment,
Whose chieftans shall debrief this errant lieutenant.
Says Balrog, “I have seen a sphere
Not worth our recognition…”
“Then come,” says Gen’ral Balthazeer,
“There is a vital mission,
The armies of the Usgoth near
Marching in precision,
We press on ye the need to make attack,
To win the day & fling these rascals back!”
Our mighty Balrog join’d a horde
Of dashing cavalry,
With plasma-sword, with purpose, pour’d
Into an enemy,
To be soon slain… from war’s cruel pain tragedy comes only.
Dadghabbi
Mumble Words 