(AA) Canto 41: Power Struggles
**************************************
In competition individual ambition serves the common good
Adam smith
Prophecies
Truth before time
Truth within time
Truth here & now
Guru Nanak
Nature has taught us have aspiring minds;
Fuell’d by the scholarly Byzantine drain
The genius of Leonardo finds,
& unveils, parts of our uncharted brain;
Renaissance men –
Tasso, Copernicus –
Muse with alchemic pen… with them Nostradamus
Peers deep inside his brass tripod;
Shiny, time-flickering eye
Sees mushroom clouds, brash act of god,
Pig-faced pilots heaven high,
Men harnessing a lightning rod
Tall houses scraping sky,
Saw metal monsters spitting yellow flame
Then saw a face, then heard a demon’s name.
Knocking his tripod to the floor
He shrank away in fear,
Demonic roar consumes his core,
Phantasms dissapear,
Fearing for Europe’s future ‘Hister’ writ thro’ misty tear.
Provence
1553
Thistle & Rose
Is not Thy Forth, as well as Isis Thine?
Though Isis vaunt shee hath more Wealth in store,
Let it suffice Thy Forth doth love Thee more
William Drummond of Hawthornden
London laments the passing of an age,
The virgin Gloriana breathes her last,
As cannon-molds of monarchs hold the stage
Proud Stuart bloodline pours into the cast;
Britain reborn,
One king, one law, one land!
The border guards withdrawn, the lords & ladies stand,
“Deirest bretherin & friendis
My two realmis I unite
To endis all oor quarellis,
Together wee must fyght
All oor rascally enemis,
Put them to common flyght,
Letting oor contree prosper with the peese,
& all oor revenues thereby increese.”
The world we live in day-by-day
Was born this very year,
This mortal clay, this keen swordplay,
This burgeoning idea,
That Britain is an entity, but destiny unclear.
London
1603
Pilgrim Fathers
Peach blossom that’s made thicker by the rain.
Deep in the trees, I sometimes see a deer,
And at the stream I hear no noonday bell
Li Bai
Far from the divine right of divers kings,
The Mayflower unburthens purer faiths,
Shores paradasean the North Star brings –
No longer men but ragged, pale-faced wraiths;
Indian chief
Welcomes his white guests in,
Advent of native grief, death sentences begin.
In the land of the Sequana
& the endless prairie plain,
Where the buffalo & cougar
Suckle Susquehanna’s vein,
Horseback tribes have lived forever
Praising both sun & rain,
Content to roam upon ancestral soil –
Now aiding pilgrims in their meager toil.
Seedling imperial takes root,
The plant begins to spread,
As shoot-by-shoot fresh towns recruit
Life to replace the dead,
Tough slaves are made to gather grain, rough soldiers guard the bread.
North Virginia
1628
Thirty Years War
Through a mist that makes five rivers one,
We bid each other a sad farewell,
We two officials going opposite ways
Wang Bo
As shepherds find pockets of anxious sheep
Pull from the flock, as Rajput palaces
Crumble with time, as when the pathway steep
Descends from pinnacles & promises;
Colossal Spain’s,
Catholic continent,
Enchalleng’d in her reigns by stern-soul’d protestant.
With this the vastdeath-time begun
Bespoken on gypsy palms,
Phrenzealous ‘Wars of Religion’
Pillage, blood spillage, ne’er calms,
Buoy’d by the Aztec bullion
Germany’s up in arms –
While three hundred petty princes squabble
Handsome burghers turn’d to brick & rubble.
The treaty of Westphalia
Ends three decades of wars,
When Europa had, together,
Made conflict, cause-by-cause,
With Prussian gentry musing, “this not peace, but more a pause.“
Berlin
1648
Sun-King
your smile was my sun anon,
you created upon the earth beauty with your ways,
and my soul in your garden lives on
Knut Hamsun
To be a Frenchman is to feel a king
& if a king of France then feel a god,
The fourteenth Louis, near life’s fountain spring,
Unnerving ancyent nations with his nod;
Thro’ cocksure steel,
& arrogance a shield,
Sends legions conq’ring Lille, Alsace & Flander’s field.
As godheads in their realms do reign,
Build palaces in the sky,
Upon the Parisian plain
Would heaven on earth arise,
Where courtiers sip dry champagne
& chandeliers surprise
The sycophantic fervor of Versaille –
Were men on earth ever esteem’d so high?
He builds a string of starry forts
Verdun up to Gravelines,
Then fills the ports with thrilling sorts –
Many a tough marine –
Combin’d with mountains barriers Europa’s queen’s serene.
France
1684
Treaty of Utrecht
Woe to thee, wild Ambition! I employ
Despair’s low notes thy dread effects to tell;
Born in high heaven, her peace thou coulds’t destroy
Maria Brooks
As Peneus & Alpheus combin’d,
England & Holland wash the wound of France,
Pour thwarting salts within; bloodthirsty, blind,
Into his dotage Louis did advance;
Dictating still
Quarrellings of nations,
Arse far from battle’s thrill & war’s degredations.
Then… what has France gain’d from his war?
Her towns depopulated,
Enemy pirates at the shore,
Her fields uncultivated,
Her country houses wick with Poor,
Death unsatiated –
At first, with Warfare men, say tis a sport,
But by the end just horrors they’ll report.
At last the Sun-King sues for peace,
To ‘paradise’ preserve,
By this increase Europa’s police,
Great Britain sealion verve,
Has occupied Gibraltar by which all world sealanes swerve.
Gibralta
1713
Clara MacDonald
Her suffering ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
& breathed the long, long night away
James Aldrich
She met him, in the hot flush of her youth,
Working the lobster-pots of Port Appin,
’Tween creamy kisses lips scream passion’s truth,
So wed for love, her kinsmen took him in;
She bore three sons,
Each wore her husband’s name –
The sounds of pipes & guns towards their idyll came.
Alexander away did ride,
Joining with the Jacobite,
Tho’ calm she seemeth the outside,
Tears drench’d her pillow by night,
& trembling all her time did bide
For news of distant fight,
When certain words within her soul would burn,
“O mother, when will father dear return?”
Her prayers answer’d happily,
He strolls in with the mail,
Enbalanc’d three sons on each knee,
Told them a stirring tayle
Of Highlanders proud marching for a cause that must prevail.
Scotland
1715
Culloden
The grim, grey fathers, bent wi’ years,
Come stridin’ through the muirland mist,
Wi’ beardless lads scarce by wi’ school
Charles Murray
From frilly sleeves France slips the Stuart sword,
Then plays it like a Pittsburgh poker ace,
Imperial wars these days fought abroad,
To Inverness embattl’d armies race;
Alexander
Ran with his manly sons,
Yelling altogether toward the English guns.
Clan Appin on the right flank fell,
Questing for King & country,
Eye-slicing claymores faced Burell,
Gruesome-ended ancestry
As Haelan’ hopes turn to a hell,
Cumberland’s butcherie –
Heart haunted by the death-screams of his boys,
MacDonald fled, thro’ all the fire & noise.
He comforted his grieving wife,
“O, my darlin’ Clara,
We’ve too much strife, a better life
Awaits America,”
So sail’d, with dead sons’ families, from Scotland… forever!
Oban
1746
Pre-emptive Strike
Mark now the proof I give thee, that the brave
Need no such aids as superstition lends,
To steel their hearts against the dread of death
William Cowper
Musing at the Sans Souci, free from care,
King Fred’rick contemplates his nation’s fate,
A friend & confidente of Herr Voltaire,
Thinks deep into the future of the state;
The answers come,
Great powers on each side,
To solve the conundrum to warfare all must slide.
If he who laughs last laughs longest,
Those striking first strike strongest
Facing this self-inflicted test,
Fred’rick proclaims the contest,
Now foes in battle must he best,
No momentary rest,
For Russia, France & Austria, allied –
Only Great Britain stands by Prussia’s side.
The world, once more, shown genius
Exists in martial arts,
His warriors victorious
As battle’s many parts
Like children kept; from ammo carts to patriotic hearts.
Saxony
1756
(AA) Canto 42: Revolutionaries
**************************************
The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war
Norman Schwarzkopf
General Wolfe
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light
Charles Wolfe
The global visions of William the Pitt,
See certain sections shaded Preston red,
A puzzle with one piece struggling to fit,
Like racing gates with horses poorly bred;
Chess-player sent
To North America,
With one present intent, to conquer Canada.
Beyond my triple metaphor
Sit the pretty English fleet,
Spit-snarling like the dogs of war,
Quebecois quake in the street,
Night helps slip silent boats to shore,
Outflanking move complete,
Stood with his officers at break of day
Chiaroscuro on a page of Gray…
“I would rather have that composed,
Than gain the hot day’s fame!”
The armies closed, all problems posed
Brought down with shot & flame,
“They run, they run!” tho’ dying his checkmate had won the game.
Quebec
1758
Exhausted Peace
Blissfully lying
Under the falling blossoms
A skeleton
Enomoto Seifu
The spring blooms of a generation gone,
Some daisy-beds, some lucky to grow old,
How many names bore ‘La Guerre de Sept Ans,’
How many famous stories to be told?
As lovers rest,
Ladies tire of legend,
Economies depress’d, folk will the wars to end.
Deft as gliding ballerina
Sweden sidesteps the conflict
With this new Russian Tsarina,
When war too hard to predict –
Aye, Tom Thumb & Thumbelina
In thumb war cramp have click’d –
Even Great Britain from the fight dost flit,
Whose new Clown King closes the age of Pitt.
Loquacious diplomatic spree
Warms up the winter hours,
An unfriendly hostility
Presses down the powers,
Scratching their caps oer global maps as monkeys inspect flowers.
Paris
1763
American Revolution
Haste, therefore, each degree,
To welcome destiny.
Heaven is our heritage
Thomas Nashe
Liberty is the watchword of the wise,
Breeding-ground of modernist progression,
But skeleton keys fall not from the skies,
Freedom’s rarely won without aggression;
Paul Revere peers
Thro’ hazy salmon sun,
The enemy appears, rebellion begun.
“… are coming, the British are coming!”
As militiamen bare arms,
They run t’wards rhythmical drumming
Thro’ the thickets & the farms,
Soon the Redcoats boasts sent shtumming
& when the battle calms,
The township of Concord all smoke & flame –
Old world, new world, its all the bloody same.
As Fort Ticonderoga falls
& Bunker Hill was fought
The fight appalls, hot musketballs
Break bones & pierce the throat,
While ‘Continental Congressmen’ call Europe for support.
Philadelphia
1775
The Last Jacobite
I ask the just Creator
so much refuge from Time
that a tale of mine may remain in the world
Ferdowsi
Alexander commands a private clan,
His wife & three gorgeous daughters-in-law,
Each one a mother to a strapping man,
Gone with granpaw to patriotic war;
“Let none survive,”
The old man hiss’d his hate,
“Ah maybe eighty-five but ah can still shoot straight.”
Washington launch’d verbal attacks,
“Men of our wond’rous nation,
Should we suffer a tyrant’s tax
Without representation,
Fight for your flag, both whites & blacks,
Suffer depravation,
For in the end it is our destiny
To carve a contree fit for liberty.”
Each night ‘Mac’ told the famous tayle
Of Bonnie Prince Charlie,
‘Twas never stale, did never fail
To rouse excitedly
His sons of sons, now men them all, sat proudly by his knee.
West Virginia
1778
Independence
Behold the sun, which seemed but now
Enthroned overhead
Beginneth to decline below
Panini
As Essex battl’d Tyrone’s Ulstery,
When chivalry was bogg’d down in the peat,
Cornwallis seeks American mercy,
Yorktown’s surrender rendering defeat;
Britain’s Empire,
Pitt’s darling, lies quite wreck’d,
Gunn’d down in hatred-fire, time swung to retrospect.
News is whisper’d to MacDonald,
Half-flickers of emotion,
Tho’ body limp, A mind grown old
Still swam across an ocean,
Saw Glencoe’s massacre unfold,
As he, in slow-motion,
Drops chin to chest as poppies plush with rain
Decline their heads & drooping kiss the plain.
George Washington, first president,
E Pluribus unum,
His government shall re-invent
The Grecian theorum,
Sentry of Human liberty from now ‘til kingdom come.
The United States of America
1783
French Revolution
See, at her voice a new creation springs,
Exulting Fancy claps her eagle wings;
Swift on the clouds, by sportive zephyrs drawn
JD Worgan
Our spirit touch’d by memories of man
& how lone man by men a legend made,
As restless time moves thro’ her milky span,
His nerve shall never from our vigour fade;
Napoleon!
Fame risen to the stars!
When all Europa won, when Eagles march’d with Mars!
As other young men of his age
Upheld the Revolution,
Aristocratics assuage
Their swift, sharp, cruel solution –
He took a step onto the stage,
Some stocky Corsican
Watching the rues run red with royal blood,
The fate of France by none more understood.
Below the Bastille soft flutes play’d
Amid the broken spears,
Thro’ death’s parade the widow made
A well from all their tears,
When born from such beginnings Liberty must bleed for years.
Paris
1789
Republican Dawn
The mouldy structure of injustice crumbles down,
Crushing underneath its weight envy, enmity & hate,
The soulless canons of the cross & crown
Hristo Smirnenski
A vacuum forms where lived the lion’s pride,
Long line of Louis, lords of France & Spain,
Prostrate beneath the coming regicide,
Begs Bourbon cousins, “Pray restore our reign;”
Thus Austrians,
French liberty to foil,
March beside the Prussians, plowing thro’ Gallic soil.
One hundred thousand souls conjoin,
Gather’d neath Valmy’s steeple,
The Cock’relle cause the only coin,
This Army of the People
Draws steely barb from belted loin,
Storms up a hard, steep hill;
The spoils of victory soon theirs to wield,
The Berlin phalanx driven from the field.
The King is forced to meet his fate
With Marie Antoinette,
Minos awaits them at the gate
To answer for their debt
Gallants dying for luxury, the guillotine is set…
Paris
1793
March of Napoleon
Autumn night so cooly comes.
Lights up with stars
Above the broken bones of men
George Trakl
Promotion upon noble promotion
Napoleonic fame paints peaks & skies,
Opinion, from doubt to devotion,
Purported in the populace’s eyes;
When Heaven sent
Then Fate must surely steer,
From lowly Lieutenant to Gen’ral Brigadeer.
The Revolutionary call
Transforms to one of conquest,
Hapsburg Flanders & Holland fall
With all of the Rhine Bank West,
Now striking thro’ Cisalpine Gaul
French face vital contest
At the battle of Tagliamento –
Where genius, unbridled, runs the show.
As Austria’s retreats increase
Vienna shrinks in fear,
To sue for peace, the muskets cease,
His Aide-de-Camps appear,
To herald their great champion, by victory soar’d clear.
Leoben
1797
Copenhagen
The medal is awarded
when nothing more happens,
when the artillery falls silent
Ingeborg Bachmann
Ascending in a ring of rising stars,
The great Horatio steers his native bark,
From body mark’d by brutal battle scars,
His lone arm points out to stubborn Denmark;
As Northern League
Defends neutrality –
Parisian intrigue drives English fleets to sea.
Cleaving a path between the buoys,
Rare heart on a pinn’d sleeve worn,
The lads the Adm’ralty employs,
Oaks from a press-gang’d acorn,
Drape Danishmen in death & noise,
From wreck’d ships sailors shorn,
As Nelson’s magnanimous ministry
Rescues so many from a crimson sea.
From port-to-port the stories flow,
Legends soak’d in prowess!
French Consuls know their ancyent foe
Defies naval duress,
Says Bonaparte, “We must build fleets to beat the sea’s mistress.”
France
1801
(AA) Canto 43: Deadlock
**************************************
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter
Ernest Hemingway
Rebel Mountain
There are mysteries in this land
between city and sprawl
that would take much digging
Michael Creighton
Among the shaggy hills of Montenegro
Hid ‘The Bandit’ & his apparitions,
One hundred thousand Reichsmarks for Tito,
Tying down thirty German divisions;
Force fed on zeal,
Typhus on sick parade
Despite desp’rate appeal Stalin shall send no aid.
A Wellington pass’d overhead,
Coughs drifting parachuter,
Dangling upon a nylon thread
Gangly English officer,
Donning the red cap, promptly said,
“Take me to your leader!”
(Tito laughs at that daft scarlet beret)
“You have put on a wizard show, I say!
I’m from Secret Operation’s
Special Executive,
With permission, your position,
To London I shall give,
Follow’d by airdrops & enough for you & yours to live!”
Yugoslavia
April
1943
Desert War
Only the blind and stubborn hope to track
This wilderness. The thoughtful leave their bones
In windy foodless meadows of despair
Sidney Keyes
Rommel retreats into Tunisia,
Romantic lands of Hannibal’s Carthage,
Scrapp’d out by Roman, Vandal & Berber,
Inspiring War, beautiful War, to wage;
Taking his last
Glances o’er Africa,
The vital days are pass’d, now to face Der Fuhrer.
A Sumner lad enters a room,
To bivouac there nightly,
Sauce bottle moved, boobytrap
The poor sod copp’d a blighty…
Soon led thro’ sad hospital gloom,
Leg sawn off at the knee,
From clench’d fingers the surgeon eas’d his gun,
Tom stared back blankly, “Yer goin’ home son!”
The Via Balbia is strewn
With hulks & jerricans,
The Arabs’ boon, from sten to spoon,
Bedecking caravans,
Nearby… anthracite corpses rot forgotten in the sands.
Libya
May 15th
1943
Chindits
Springtime’s rent asunder,
Half gone into pond & pool,
Half gone into the dust & soil
Tung Chieh-yuan
Thro’ delphic idyll of watery shades
Japanese lackeys track-tread sweat-streaming,
A mountain gibbon’s gibber flies & fades,
God’s artistry sweeps oer mortals dreaming;
Sly Ghurka stands
Up, up, from ground, unseen,
Sticking his dagger’d hands thro’ windpipe, throat & spleen.
The day’s bland meal had just been pann’d,
Bamboo shoots & curried snake,
A captain joins his battle-band
On a well-earn’d lazing break,
With blade & bible in each hand,
“The fourth course we shall take!
We’ll ram them up the barrel of a gun,
Keeping those bleedin’ rascals on the run!”
Hacking rough paths thro’ Jungle dense
By webs & drooping snakes
Tho tired & tense their fine-tuned sense
Always the right road takes
Til one-by-one they burst upon their goal as thin as rakes.
Irrawady River
May
1943
Dambusters
The very day one son was drowned
she lit the other’s funeral pyre;
two griefs, two gifts, destroyed her heart
Honestus
Europa’s moon looks brilliant tonight,
Peaceful apart from the lilted whirring
Of Lancaster fleet in perfect swan-wedge flight,
Splendid rows of Rolls Royce engines purring;
Wheeling around,
They face the Molder Dam,
From whom a whooshing sound & bouncing bomb did slam
Aslant the pane, leapt up & dipt
& spun for a thousand feet,
Like flat stones on a flat sea skipp’d
Twards monolithic concrete,
Then with a monstrous thunder ripp’d
A gaping hole quite neat,
Thro’ which a vast torrential ‘gan to pour
Into the vital vallies of the Rhur.
She heard a pretty whirring sound,
& turning she did pray,
Wild waters bound across the ground
Her screaming swept away,
With cars & trees & homes & livestock reeling in the sway.
Mohne
May 17th
1943
Forgotten Soldiers
We strive with earthly imaginings
To reach & understand
The wondrous & the fearful things
Otway Curry
The Gods help those who help themselves – the catch?
One’s workload must sometimes terrific be
Producing decisive effects from scratch
Gen’ral Slim reorganis’d his army;
Whose front extends
For seven hundred miles
Where Vishnu’s wish defends fresh ammo’s mush’d in piles.
Air bases rise, roads link them all,
Each man with fresh meast meted,
A single team, a single goal,
Japan must be defeated
As Monsoon rains just fall & fall
Malarials well treated
For war’s not only sword complexity –
While planners shore up each perplexity
Cha Cha Slim all sides inspires
Nothing’s too much trouble
Whose presence fires the old Empire’s
Mantras unshakeable
The sum of little victories makes us invincible.
Burma
May
1943
Lost at Sea
After the death spelt out in headlines, after the gains
Broadcast by the dispassionate voices,
Comes word to a village
John Pudney
Freda & Rose arriv’d at the butchers,
Sov’reigns & ha’pennys stretching round the back,
Where, as they went shuffling to the counters,
Foze Freda by a vision of ‘er Jack;
Pellucid glow,
Flank’d by blue guardian,
“Rose, love, we’ve gotta go… forget bloody bacon!”
Boy soldiers play War midst sandbags,
Down Cog Lane a telegram,
Some Azrael along the flags…
Maggie drops ‘er jar of jam,
Flush-hot, slips on her pumps & rags,
Rush’d out to find ‘er mam…
Collar’d with Granny flappin’ down the street,
For sev’ral seconds cold hearts lost their beat…
“Our Jack is missing, presumed dead!”
The ‘ole street ‘eard ‘er shout,
Base fears that fed on common dread,
Calamity & doubt
Are rude-releas’d into the world while scrikin’ ‘er eyes out.
Burnley
May
1943
Secret War
Then, goddess! then, while beauty blends with youth,
& wisdom woos thee to the bower of truth;
Thou com’st to genius – com’st in all thy charms
M.A. Shee
At England’s heart there stands a splendid house,
Both Oxford & Cambridge equidistant,
Grounds hush’d more than a sleeping harvest mouse,
The fine façade stately & innocent;
But step within,
A new world is reveal’d,
The day’s work shall begin for England’s unseen shield.
Crack team of elite specialists
Work hard on the ENIGMA,
Chess masters & cryptologists,
An expert crossword puzzler,
Mathematicians, star linguists
Brought from America,
To decode the unbreakable machine…
If Germany but knew she would go green!
“With but one panzer division
Reserve in Sicily,
The battle’s won before begun!”
She pour’d a pot of tea,
“As Sun Tzu said, To win a war first know thine enemy.”
Bletchley Park
June
1943
Michel’s Mystery
I know that buildings will be raised
where all you have to do is press a button –
hosts of northern lights will rise
Olga Berggolts
A man sat in a bustling Rouen street,
Sipping coffee & tripping on the talk,
“The Nazis have receiv’d tons of concrete,”
This was the moment to stub out his smoke;
His youthful mind
Sprang into sharp action.
The truth he must now find, without hesitation,
He clad himself in sober black,
Donn’d a silver crucifix,
Cycl’d along a woodland track
To the sleepy Gallic sticks,
Until he found a fence & stack
Of metal sheets & bricks –
How cautiously he changed to workmen’s blues
Then climbed the wire, wiping mud from his shoes,
Some loose, pick-axe he bluntly grabs
Aiding the deception –
One question stabs, ‘What are these slabs
Pointing toward London?
I must reduce this strange riddle,’ today his duty done.
France
June 27th
1943
Kertsch
My beloved’s hair fell, her breast throbbing
&, her eyes wilting, she asking:
for how many more days will the world burn
A.S. Said
Far from the front, from his phoney tower,
Resorting to a well-tried strategum,
Hitler arrays his army’s fair flower,
To attack the pendulum momentum;
His panzers roll,
Fresh blitzkrieg underway,
Soon first defenders fall one hot & sultry day,
Where aggression was confounded
Mid the orchards & copses,
Their panzers punisht & pounded,
Fields thicken with fresh corpses,
These killing grounds, litter’d with dead
& staggering losses
Weeping for this clash of superegos
Molten aluminium thro crackt vent flows.
Death roam’d about the battlefield
Between each pock-mark’d ridge,
No slope or shield, nor those that yield,
Were spared his privilege,
From life’s bloom bodies shrivelling, withering river-sedge.
Prokhorovha
July 9th
1943
(AA) Canto 44: Regimes
**************************************
It is easier to start a war than to end it
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Invasion of Italy
We are all in the midst of the journey
seeking the road home
in the vast universe without
Kassim Ahmad
“What is it all for, love & peace & war,
When both the wide way’d Earth & Man’s action
Remain as constant as the Northern star?”
Muse three old, mid-day crones down the station;
Their wise old eye
Translates the censor’d news,
Watching the trains pass by pack’d with Palermo’s Jews.
From harbours of Tunisia
Arab maidens sang goodbyes
To a fabulous flotilla
Form’d to ferry the Allies
To sandy old Sicilia,
Neath luscious sommerskies,
Overwhelming the unprepared beaches
Of shell-shock’d, co-axial defenders.
The scenery invokes the gleam
Of early Punic Wars,
When first the dream by hawk Tireme
Brought yon the Roman shores,
Spreading Hellenic legacy – cultura, learning, laws.
Panormus
July 10th
1943
General Patton
We are stampeding to end stampedes
We are fighting for lambs
Who are never likely to be born
Osbert Sitwell
Patton hot-steps onto the Gela plain,
With shoulder-pads & ego equal wide,
Ambitious utterly for this campaign,
A contest perfect for his buxom pride;
His bow unbent
No foeman could withstand
As Axis soldiers sent skidaddling inland.
The general struts ‘cross the stage
In a shiny, armour’d car,
All round his green swards come of age
In the the dusty hards of war,
Envisioning a full front page
Lures him like a lodestar,
“Step to it boys, come on, the Truman Trot!”
“Geeze boss, five miles an hour, its far too hot.”
The city chants, ecstatical,
“Down with Mussolini!”
Once beautiful the capital
Of citrus Sicily,
In war’s rough wake looks dead & lifeless like a leafless tree.
Palermo
July 23rd
1943
Escape from Colditz
God heard the embattled nations sing & shout
‘Gott strafe England’ & ‘God save the King!’
God this. God that, & God the other thing
JC Squire
Bligh look’d upon the verdant Molden vale,
Sheer schloss serenely firmamentward shoots,
So foreboding he grew a chloric pale,
Heart sinking to the bottom of his boots;
Oflag IVC,
Cold castle for bad boys,
Broad gates bolted firmly with such soul-scarring noise.
Oer the claustrophobic courtyard,
After evening’s cramp’d apell,
He watch’d the patterns of the guard,
Felt familiar feelings swell,
“I’ve made a plan, it sounds quite hard,
But best give it a bell!”
He told the season’d escape officer,
“Yes, good luck, it’s time we hit another…”
Nigel appear’d quite debonair
In German uniform,
Snook down the stair with perfect care,
Dropp’d where bright flashlights comb,
Brush’d off the dust, saunter’d outside & headed off for home.
Germany
July
1943
Elusiveities
Impetuous brains mistake the signs of God
Too easily. God would not have me waste
My zeal for Him in this wild enterprise
Lascelles Abercrombie
So long as tongue can build a home for song,
They’ll sing of Yeo Thomas all thro’ France,
Who parachuted in to live among
A secret army waiting for its chance;
To strike a blow
Against the thronging scum,
A struggle long & slow, “When will the Allies come?”
Thro’ brutally black market streets
To cafes of fine choosing,
Each flat-cap Maquis captain meets
Him, hearing “Hitler’s losing!”
In flawless French, as when John Keats
In a swansong’s musing,
Sang sweetly his La Belle Dame Sans Merci –
Fac’d with Gestapo grease or Police Vichy,
“Votre visage familier,”
He met with a polite,
“Vous faites erreur mon bon monsieur…
Some trick, perhaps of light…”
Then sped away by metro like a kestrel in the night.
Paris
July
1943
Turning Tide
Remember our transient life;
It takes months for a body to form,
Alas, a mere instant to go
Guru Arjan
Kertsch morphing from hope to emergency,
Its little instigator kept his cool,
Musing upon this news from Sicily,
“It must be a feint, they think me a fool!”
”Turn from assault,
From now spurn all attacks,
In Balkan hills we’ll halt them Allies in their tracks!”
& so, with all reserves coop-flown
The Wehrmacht cuts its losses,
Their Eastern Front by barrage blown,
Then sliced in two by sappers,
All round them enemy hath grown,
Asiatic faces:
A Turkestani waves the red flag high,
Storming the bridge ice-shrapnel splic’d his eye,
So drops the flag, soon waving proud
Clutch’d by some Kamchatkan,
Pick’d from the crowd a bullet cloud
Slays in decimation –
Flag rais’d by an Irkutski, always forward to Berlin!
Suska
July 12th
1943
Bombing Rome
A terrible change is come: I see a cloud
Brooding over the valley like the wing
Of a destroying angel dark & dread
CL Reddell
As a glass of wall-slung crystal shatters
Twenty-three years of servitude levell’d
By the wind, this Fascist dream in tatters
Italy dechatellis’d, dishevell’d
Whose streets accrue
Such celebrations wild
With Mussolini universally revil’d,
When pictures of his pated heads
Are gripp’d with force & fury,
Then ripp’d up, spat on, torn to shreds
The rage of the Azzurri
Rough-rip Fascisti from their beds
Judging without jury,
Serve beatings bloody, when swift to respond
With just one long wave of his hated wand
Ausonia he occupies
& bombs soon drop on Rome,
The Pope hard tries to soothe the sighs
Of those who’d lost their home
His white smock smear’d in Latin blood, tears shining in his eyes.
Albano
July 19
1943
Ousting Il Duce
In the blue span of heaven the stars appear
To wait, all gathered round;
& listen, listen! how the pipes sing clear
Giovanni Pascoli
Italia! nearest heaven on Earth,
To poetry thou art the perfect foil,
Where suckl’d Rhea’s sacred sons from birth,
Mars roams again across the blood-stain’d soil!
As capital
Suffers bombs midst beauty,
The Grand Fascist Council has summon’d Il Duce…
The coup chair’d by Badaglio,
“Our contree is in turmoil,
Thus, Mussolini, ‘YOU MUST Go!”
Fat man’s blood begins to boil,
He look’d around, “Et tu Ciano!?”
Caught in a traitor’s coil,
Dismiss’d summararily by the King
Arrested next, nursing a broken wing,
Was planted on this a pirate isle
Of coves & cliffs & peaks,
To the while in strict exile,
Where soft the old sea speaks
Of reliques of more handsome days, memorial antiques.
Ponza
July 27th
1943
Robbing Europe
He works with a darkness
behind his eyes,
understanding as he does
Owen Sheers
Long train’s pulling into stazione
Out steps green Goering, in silk pantaloons,
Kommandeering the art of a country
Pocketing Europe’s beautiful dubloons;
Such bandit runs
The Reichsbank vaults imbue,
When under Nazi guns who would dare to argue?
This perfum’d, man-mountain of flab
About Golconda lurches,
Conducting graceful smash & grab
On galleries & churches,
This Raphael, that marble slab
Kindling taste entices –
A jackal trawling thro’ those gilded stalls
Collecting choicest items for his walls.
He loaded stalwarts of rare art
Into his carriages,
As engines start, to ease his heart,
Thro’ thick ringed fingers
Bright gems cascade for men self made need re-assurances.
Rome
August
1943
Escape from Treblinka
At night, under the heavy burden
Of their dreams, their jaws move,
Chewing a non-existent turnip
Primo Levi
They’d heard the news, they knew the end was near,
Lugubrious, life pass’d knee-deep in death,
But now, O day of God, the day is here!
When valour fills the spheregusts of each breath;
The storeroom seiz’d,
Its weapons handed out,
The panickers appeas’d, the worried drain’d of doubt,
As one, four hundred storm the camp
& pierce the wire to freedom,
Thro fields soon rumbling with the stamp
Of soldiers searching for them,
“Hide down there man, it might be damp,
But away I’ll lead them
& free you when the coast is clear, dear friend!”
“Thank-you,” hugs Jankiel as his feet descend
Those cellar steps, those secret stones,
Those keepers of his fate:
Treblinka groans, Treblinka’s drones
Were his to rubricate,
Whatever fallen Nazis in the future fabricate.
Maliszewa
August 2nd
1943
(AA) Canto 45: Grappling Tides
**************************************
If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf
Nikita Kruschev
Conquest of Italy
Food is scare now, & men are scarce
Whole villages burnt to the ground,
New cities in disrepair
Michael Hamburger
Languor usurps the last coragio,
The fair share of the fighting has been fought,
No faith to summon Jupiter Stator,
Arms thrown aside men made for safest port;
From Alpine mists
The Tramontana blows,
Summoning fresh fascists, vile packs of Nazi crows.
As when the mighty Alaric,
A Magister Militum,
Entering the streets sardonic
Of old Mediolanum,
He with instancy laconic
Beat Visigothic drum,
Announcing to these Ceasar citizens,
“I seize this land, my daughters, & my sons.”
Altho’ the temple of Janus
Hath closed it’s doors to war,
Hitler’s panzers, like tight lancers,
Roll with a clank & roar,
Thro’ Rome’s gorgeous museum streets pepper’d with tombs of yore.
Rome
September 10th
1943
Operation Oak
No subject for immortal verse –
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse
Cecil Day Lewis
Vex’d by the betrayal of Italy,
As acts she some common adulteress,
Hitler is torn between deep loyalty
For his companion’s latest distress;
But friends are friends
& if them curs’d by strife
& on thine aid depend, what nobler thing in life!
Five men are summon’d to his lair,
All brimming with devotion,
“Italy! what think ye of there?”
Silence but for one captain,
Who fix’d him with a solid stare
“I am an Austrian!”
The rest were dismiss’d, instant decision,
“I offer you a sensitive mission
There is a man I care for true,
T’would mean the world to me
If, soon, would you go to rescue
My friend, Mussolini?”
“T’would be a great honour,” saluted Otto Skorzeny.
The Wolf’s Lair
September 5th
1943
Eastern Bloc
It happened in a land of farmers
on Hilly Balkan, far, far away;
A troop of students died martyred
Desanka Maksimovic
Tho’ hate burns under illustrious eyes,
Tito attacks diplomacy’s charade,
His revolution used by the Allies,
Greets Stalin as an old party comrade;
But on his back
Scars of thirty lashes,
Still echoing the crack of those captive thrashes.
“Some twenty divisions need we
If Belgrade be freed from yoke,”
“You’ll have an entire company…”
Stalin breath’d out swirls of smoke,
“…Restore King Peter’s regency;”
Tito cough’d on a choke,
“Impossible! the people will rebel!”
Earning Stalin’s respect &, “Very well,
But what if ever the English
Land on a Balkan shore?”
“We would resist, our only wish
Self-ruling, as before;”
“My friend, we must frustrate the West when we have won this war.”
Moscow
September
1943
A Dramatic Rescue
A ! Fredome is a noble thing !
Fredome maiss man to hair liking
Fredome all solace to man gifs
Robert Barbour
Humming Heinkels drew gliders deft in tow,
Releas’d them on the buxom welken swell,
Now floating to Gran Sasso, far below,
Capp’d by snow patches & this white hotel;
From splintering,
Flimsy, crashdown gliders,
Strong men rush outpouring, like brave gladiators!
The bungling gaurds jump’d out of bed,
Caught in canine siesta,
Il Duce shouts down, “No bloodshed!”
Some damsel in her tower,
A gen’ral rais’d goblet of red,
Toasted, “To the victor!”
Gobbl’d one gulp by Otto Skorzeny,
“Mein herr, please take me to Mussolini!”
“Der Fuhrer bids ye form fascist
Republic North of Rome…”
Hitting the gist Il Duce kiss’d
His saviour, “then back home,
I’ll go?” he mumbl’d humbly, sunken shadow in the gloam.
Abruzzi Apennines
September 12th
1943
Rejuvenations
It is time for me to go to attack Germans
& I want to carry your name forward
If only in my battle cry ‘Ura’
Sergeant Vlasienko
Moscow’s Bears awake from hibernation,
Claws sharpen’d for coming reconquista,
Azazelian annihilation,
Torrents from a horrent-arm’d ballista;
Stalin demands
Every god-damn German
Expel’d is from his lands, or rots there in the sun.
Altho’ they knew the war was lost,
& drown’d in diarrhea,
Each man morphs to a sturdy schloss
To fight on for Der Fuhrer,
An iron or a wooden cross,
Loyally together,
For if great Germany wins not the war,
What else in life is there worth living for?
From Smolensk to Sevastapol
The Wehrmacht, on the rack,
Bred in battle deadly skilful,
Are daily pulling back,
Bursting each mouse-trap circle thro’ exfiltrative attack.
U.S.S.R
September
1943
War’s Shadow
I know not, ah! sweet streams, despair of knowing
When I shall come again; for as I go,
And ponder why, ye fill me with such woe
Luis Vaz de Camoes
Armour’d car swept up the serpentine road
Of the mount of Saint Benedict’s abbey,
General steps out, clutching silver sword,
Eyes saccading oer the Liri Valley;
A position
Ruling wide area,
“They must take it before Casilina…”
Boot nails echoed round the cloisters
Where stood Dom Gregorio,
Flank’d by seven very pious
Monks of Montecassino,
“To stay here would be dangerous…”
“No! no! we cannot go!”
“Very well, but may I suggest, promptly,
Transport thy treasures for safe sanctuary.”
They placed gold-laced legatura,
Corali, tapestries,
Mellin, Conca, Solimena,
& bibles in lorries;
Each guarded by two monks driven to Roman galleries.
Italy
October 16th
1943
A Game of Chess
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart
Hangs on & howls, biting at air
Howard Nemerov
Pale workers spend a hard-earn’d half-an-hour
Huddl’d around blindfolded Botvinik,
Exercising, barely, deep chess power,
He beats some patzer with a knight’s fork trick;
Their foreman’s cough
Disturbs his ego show,
Taking the blindfold off, a message from Moscow!
Comrades perus’d thro’ the pages
Of this amazing letter,
“It seems, Mikhael, you are famous,
No more the mere sheet cutter,
With you lies Russia’s fate in chess
When the war is over…”
“Yes,” said Botvinik “a war we shall win…”
Nobody there dare doubt his knowing grin.
That night he mind-mapp’d the Dragon,
Sharp Yugoslav Attack,
White’s H pawn on the sixth… “White’s won…
What’s this?” An exchange sac –
Forth, with exploding forces, flow’d the the fury moves of black.
The Ural
October
1943
Irma Greese
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
Charles Bukowski
As iron clang rang Five AM apelle
The Strafkommando’s punishment detail
Was hers today, she’ll make this day like hell –
Into the wagon went them, weak & pale;
Beyond Auschwitz,
Thro’ fields of fat & stout
Beside the piles & pits Greese hisses, “Out! Out! Out!”
To the sounds of falling timber,
& the break of brittle bones,
Overseering all September,
Lumping logs & hauling stones,
She would drift off & remember
Last night’s eloping moans
With Doctor Mengele, beside his fire;
She succubus, him breathless with desire.
Her callous zeal was recogniz’d,
Rank-ascent rewarded,
Deftly devis’d deaths she disguis’d
As work widely applauded
For in such supraheathen days, evil brides are lauded.
Auschwitz
October
1943
The Swiss Role
There is delight in singing, tho’ none hear
Beside the singer : & there is delight
In praising, tho’ the praiser sits alone
WS Landor
Shrugging danger away with hearty laugh
For the heart of France brave Monsieur Holland
Risks godless torture for to photograph
These strange sites that somehow concern England;
Blueprints hidden
Within a sack of spuds
& fresh disguise woven – a cutter from the woods.
Rolls of barb’d wire the border close,
Switzerland shuns Vichy France,
Grey guards pass by, the tension grows,
Michel dashes at his chance,
But caught by wolfhound, on its nose
Punches firm annoyance,
Then thro the jagged barbs he cuts a path,
To reach his adventure’s safe aftermath.
He cursed the city’s atmosphere
Burgeoning with profits,
The Jewish fear left great wealth here,
Substantial deposits –
Accounts not to be honour’d without death certificates.
Zurich
October
1943
(AA) Gl’Immortali V
Poetry wants something enormous, barbarous, savage
Denis Diderot
Stand of Pyerun
Wind stokes the chill of the snow,
Snow borrows the wind’s grim might;
Frenzied ‘willow-floss’ panics profuse
Feng Meng-lung
Lord Pyrun, god of thine eastern tempest
Why worryst thou so? O! What a day it is,
The Hordes of Hell advancing from the west
& nothing but the hearthside deities
Of house & home
Peppering spacious steppes,
Out of the rusty gloam rocking their quadriceps.
As interplanetary coils
Do screech when them are bended,
As churning ocean squirms & boils
When streams of Kaos blended,
As when the fake-veil’d sinful soils
Virtues long defended,
As when men rage, flay’d by bubonic plague,
So does Satanus armies cross the plains!
Hard in the van four horseman trekk’d,
Ground hoof-hauls to a halt
A vast prospect by foes bespeck’d
Awaits the great assault,
That starts in flashing lightning & a smashing thunderbolt!
Edge of Asia
Duel of the Nile
By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,
Each horseman drew his battle blade,
And furious every charger neighed
Thomas Campbell
Mars donn’d a breastplate of gong-bronze gleaming,
Sharpened his broadword & polish’d his shield,
Lowered his helm, with the god-sweat streaming,
Sets out a-marching to the battlefield;
Across the seas
With one ginormous bound,
Landed amidst palm trees thrust up from sandy ground.
He follow’d the sacred Iris
Wherever the bird did go,
When, with a gasp, ‘what bliss is this,’
All in the valley below
Lay gorgeous Heliopolis
Beside the Nile’s wide flow,
As black plumes of War Kites are donn’d by Ra
His broadsword’s scarab-stone a shining star!
Towards their duel two old gods dash
Both leapt into the air
As great blades crash spark showers flash
Mars yells! Breastplate fell’d bare
So, fled to Atlas mountains, said, “I better, must, prepare!”
Africa
King in the Mountain
Here is a song
That stags give tongue
In Winter snows
William Martin
Thou catalogue of island gorgeousness,
No wonder, here, King Arthur’s spirit drew,
When Avalon became but nothing less
Than prison cell, unable to renew
His form on earth
So under Torr Maol
Awaits a ghoul’s rebirth – from his brooding gaol.
Twyx Muileann Gaoithe & KNock Dubh
Emnerg’d the first of Britons
Whose veins refill’d with blood red robe
That spill’d by hack’d down Saxons
Flesh pressing via a feeding tube
Body caparisons
When picking up Excalibur once more,
He rais’d it high & wav’d it with a roar
The world was his to set aright
& now, the second time
Has form’d to fight the shadowlight
To shine away the grime
That like false witness coats our lives with scandals, lies & slime!
Arran
Exotica
High battle for the word unsaid,
The song unsung, the cause unled
The freedom that no hope can gauge
John Drinkwater
Above the sacred sites of Shangri-La
The star temple climbs where Vishnu resides,
Watch’d by these ancyent spirits from afar,
Blessing his mind with bliss & more besides;
Fabulous wings
Of golden Garuda,
Whispers of Hindu kings enter the Preserver.
L’immortal met three lithe lizards
In a mystic kind of war,
As a wonderment of wizards
Whisk’d from Vijiyanagar
Conjur’d up whirlwinds & blizzards
Aiding their battle star,
Hurling two wounded dragons to the ground
The other panick’d with pathetic sound.
Desert-wrapt beside Meru’s vaults
Enstatured Indra stands,
Like angry Colts the jagged bolts
In each of those four hands
Went thundering to finish off the Wyvrn in the sands.
Asia
Gryphon Dawn
Love held them up to the universe
they listened to the stars. These days
poets are locked in their machines
Abbas Beydoun
Uncle Sam harbors at the Half-Moon Bay,
With war engines & eagles for the flight,
Gwyddion leads them on their lofty way
Amidst the mountains clad in snowflake white;
Britannia,
Most splendid banqueteer,
Has spread a grand dinner as battle draweth near.
While thunder-clouds rumble & pour,
St£rling & Buck$ recanting,
Employ an age-old astral lore,
Middle of a magic ring,
Where lions give a mighty roar,
& eagles beat their wing,
Sharp lightning struck those stone grey druid rods,
Great gasps of wonder rush’d throughout the gods…
Before them paw’d the claw’d Gryphon
Sleek-wingéd & rough maned
The prime weapon, the stallion,
Auld oracles ordain’d,
Lit by an iridescent gleam, the divine blessing gained.
Stonehenge
Struggle at the Gates
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
WB Yeats
Under daemon banners flocking like crows,
As Hydra-necks thro’ forest valleys wound,
Leads, Barbarossa, Asgard’s brave heroes,
Pillaging villages, all that they found
Was put to waste;
While in their monstrous wake
Four horsemen, brazen-fac’d, scour’d every wapentake.
Forc’d on the backfoot Pyren fought,
Tho’ spirit army scatter’d,
He conjur’d up a fire-flaught,
That many swanhelms shatter’d,
Arms sunder’d by a fireslaught
Down steep gorge-side clatter’d…
Staying attackers, as, on either side,
What stormcraft halts the abbadonic tide.
Pyerun summons a Polevik
Both grass & mud clinging
My spells grow stricken, so, full quick,
Fly off to the Ice King,
There, beg my brother for his help, for proof him show this ring…
Gates of Asia
Indifference of Allah
Alone on Lykaion since man hath been
Stand on the height two columns, where at rest
Two eagles hewn of gold sit looking East
Trumbull Stickney
Hino mounted the marvelous Gryphon
There with Saint George took to the trembling skies,
An important diplomatic mission,
Below their a thousand towers rise;
Atop the sky,
O city of the Djinn,
A flight of Pegasi escorted them within.
They were formally presented
To the court of grand Allah,
But their presence there resented,
“In your fight with Valhalla,
With all deity demented,
I shunn’d the theatre!”
“My noble king,” said Hino, “We protest –
Agents of thine did strike us in the West!”
Great Allah grew indifferent,
“But nothing can be done,
As evil-scented devilment
Exists beneath Heaven,
I cannot control all accounts… our discourse here is done.”
Babylon
Jove’s Vanity
Arise & take thine ease,
For thou art lord; & these
Are but as sprinkled dust before thy power
Lord de Tabley
Thro’ realms empyrean flew Gabriel,
Jove lay luxuriant ‘neath floscule fan,
Unint’rested as minions of Hell
Spread suffering & helplessness thro’ man;
“Your majesty,”
Th’archangel duly bow’d,
“I have a dream for thee,” & conjured up a cloud…
“Tis one shared by those lunatics,
Idolaters of Hitler…”
Across quintessence picture flicks
Of some darken’d chiasa,
“Where there should be a crucifix
There hangs the swastika…”
For Gabriel, it seem’d, eternity
Pass’d pleading to his master’s vanity.
At last was heard that sovran voice
Run thro’ rushing waters,
“Cast is my choice, send the envoys
To the Saintly Quarters,
We are to war, send for the steeds, summon my Sky Daughters!”
Divinnia
Warring Gods
The wind suffers of blowing,
The sea suffers of water,
The fire suffers of burning
Laura Riding
From Asgard & Ausonia hath come
A wealth of Arms, Mars chose two shining spears
& with a beating of his battledrum,
Takes desert roads, where, shaking off his fears
Prepares once more
The African to face
Who like a sunny star, descends from outer space.
Ra whispers ancyent sorcery,
Tis the sacred call to arm,
Round a rare & regal valley
Lilts the chorus of that charm –
Ragged mummies march steadfastly
Below this locust swarm –
As thro’ their ranks strides a Scorpion King,
Those howling hounds reduced to whimpering.
Battle ensues! tooth, axe & claw
Thro’ mummy-mass Mars wades,
Tears rags & gore, but still they roar,
Apep slain by Ra’s blades –
Mars flees by flying chariot as day’s dread battle fades.
Africa
(AA) Canto 46: Spiritgrind
**********************************
Where there’s life there’s hope
Terence
Savage Rape
Look how rough & coarse my fingers are!
I dug ditches close to the city, hammered
together rough coffins
Ol’ga Berggol’ts
“At last! At last! The bastards are going
& we shall know freedom!” sings Christina,
All round evacuation full flowing,
Rejoiceful, she turn’d the calm road’s corner;
But froze, face grey,
Four soldiers hanging there,
Into an alleyway they dragg’d her by the hair.
The spittle spat with hate & spite,
Lashing out with fist & tongue,
For love of life she put up fight,
But of course they were too strong
& raped her thro’ the dead of night,
None of them thought it wrong
To throw her barely breathing in a bin…
Next morning found by frantic Konstantin.
By now those Germans were long gone
& there his mother died,
An old Russian gave him a gun,
Clutch’d tightly as he cried,
“I shall avenge my family!” such hate to rage inside.
Kiev
November 6th
1943
Blood Schism
Why are you so cold?
& why do you lie with your eyes shut?-
You are not very old
Stevie Smith
“This lunatic age” sighs Friedrich Stemmler
Battling elesovetskies tooth & nail,
Will kill us all…” “Silence!” roars his father,
“The Fuhrer is the one who shall prevail!”
“But I have heard
Such horrors of the East,
To win this war absurd, our armies are deceas’d.”
“Hitler shall make right everything!”
“But Herr Hitler’s a buffoon!”
“Say one more word & I shall bring
The Gestapo to this room”
“Max! What the hell are you saying?”
This man was not her groom,
“Cover yourself in shame – he is your son!”
Huff-fac’d Max puff’d off, rough with what he’d done.
“Perhaps, perhaps, Friedrich was right,
But how, how could this be?”
They sat that night, silent, polite,
United family,
“Father, they are recruiting for backwater Normandy.”
Berlin
November
1943
Intellectual Rebellion
I tore down my thoughts
roped in my nightmares
remembered a thousand curses
Ishmael Reed
Despite enosomanian mis-state,
Some hear for certain, some the truth yet speak;
Enlighten’d few, refusing malform’d fate,
Take supper with Von Moltke every week;
Form’d to allay
The Brown Plague that renews
Its bloodbath every day, with vodka, hock & views.
As the field hare from a spaniel
Whips & darts, discussions flow,
“Armies without a general,”
States Von Stauffenberg, quite slow,
“Become unoperational…”
“Assassination?” “No!”
Von Moltke burst, “Hitler & his party
Must live to bare responsibility!”
To muse on Germany’s defeat
Strictly is forbidden,
But minds here meet as chaffless wheat,
Open hearts unhidden,
Share thoughts of tower’d ivory in stately-lidded den.
Kreisau
November
1943
Savage Battle
Ayla feels
that this start of the new day
is the end of the world
Gelu Vlaşin
As tho’ sailing on dreamy manoeuvres,
The majesty of air-space deem’d complete,
Protected by twelve aircraft carriers
America has launched a battle fleet
At the Gilberts,
Where surged the young marine,
Tween cool volcanic spurts yclad in em’rald green.
Lush saplings rush in from the sea
& plung’d into the cauldron,
Tho’ courageous mamertini
They moulder’d by the dozen,
Boys screaming out “Mommy! Mommy!”
Held pendulous chaudron…
Safe only in the space where Amtrak rolls
Unless, above them, snipers in the boles.
The twin-cylinder’d flamethrower
Blazes holes & trenches,
No surrender, “The Emporer!”
Such a grisly business,
Barely a handful faced disgrace, rest are sable corpses.
Tarawa
November 20th
1943
Bombfall
We there, in strife bewildering,
Split blood enough to swim in :
We orphaned many children
Thomas Love Peacock
That old maxim, ‘two wrongs don’t make a right,’
Forgotten on the so-call’d ‘Master Race,’
Trafalgars of death bombers every night,
What terrors on a new-born baby’s face;
A droning noise
Comes crawling from the west,
As Churchill’s Murder Boys face their most fiercest test.
Thro’ shudder-skies aflak with shot
Muscles ack-ack fully-flex,
Bombs rattle from a pepperpot
On a virous Volkssturm vex,
Dropping on them what London got
But plenish’d quadruplex,
Ths is the night aggressive war blazed home,
As when the son of Gunderic razed Rome.
As empty ten thousand shelters,
When sounded the ‘All-clear,’
Coriaceous, emotionless
Watching a lynch mob near
This ruin’d British airman begging wounded, sobbing fear
Berlin
November 24th
1943
Home Run
Oh, yes! With uncertain pace
I trod your forest lands,
And on your river banks
Jose Rizal
Bligh gazed upon the golden coast of Spain,
Desanlace of this latest aventure,
Saw only friendly faces on the train,
Far from those at the start of his saga;
Back in Colditz,
Nervy, knife-edge moments,
With Fritz checking tickets & well-forged documents.
He rode his luck to Switzerland,
Compassment the Northern Star,
At Geneva he shook the hand
Of a man named Jean-Francois,
They drove thro checkpoints seldom mann’d
To Perpignan, by car,
Where with a gourd of wine, a quart of cheese,
Young Miguel guides him cross the Pyrenees.
The Holy Grail! Empiric Rock,
His heart leapt up to see,
In sublime shock he made a dock
Of the Royal Navy,
“I am an escaped airman, could you spare a spot of tea?”
Gibralta
December
1943
Jaded Dreams
Such his arrows crossed inviolate regions,
that the rivers scarcely dared to enter,
and such he was pouring out his heroic legions
Jose Santos Chocano
Encaved in a distant reality,
Good German blood staining his vegan hands,
Entranced by ghosts & Himmler’s theurgy,
His officious imperium still stands;
While one-by-one,
His cities well destroy’d
The Allies prime weapon has dragg’d him to the void.
As Hercules donn’d last tunic
& died by his own poison,
Throughout the Reich, full bubonic,
Spread his proud war’s contagion,
Reduces homes to ash & brick,
Morbid devastation!
A bulletin! For him a worse bombshell,
Most of the VI sites destroy’d as well!
He rampaged with his jaundiced eye,
“This must be treachery!”
Drugg’d blood-supply soaring sky-high,
The traitor, “Who is he?”
Clinging sadly to slender threads of dwindling destiny.
The Wolf’s Lair
December
1943
Strange Festivities
The way to respect Christmas time
Is not by drinking whisky or wine,
But to sing praises to God on Christmas morn
William McGonagall
Christmas? “Fuckin’ Pissmass!” Patrick spat,
The death of his best brother blaz’d his brain,
He saw him laughin’ in the cracker hat
He’d always win, that tug-of-war’s long reign;
As Christmas cracks,
Pat Sumner felt like shit
Full of fake santa sacks it just wasn’t worth it.
Painful to ever reconcile
Still spaces at the table
Whose faces heap’d up in a pile
Of memories & fable –
An anecdote, a knowing smile,
Then… that folded cable,
Remember’d in the drawer where it stays,
Festivity solemnity did glaze.
Pat hit the slopes of Pendle Hill
On Boxing Day, before
Leave days instil belief & will
To trundle back to war,
Part of the spartan manhood set to slam some guarded shore.
Lancashire
December 26th
1944
Return of Rommel
I have swum too far
out of my depth
and the sun has gone
Robin Robertson
Hitler summons his favourite marshal,
Still could he stir that dusty soldier’s soul,
“This year they must try & cross the channel,
I give you France & the Atlantic Wall…
From Kirkenes
Around the Norman shore,
Down to the Pyrenees, a thousand miles or more.”
As he tours the sea defences,
Twitchy gen’rals round him host,
“Incomplete!” agreed consensus
Shattering Der Fuhrer’s boast,
“We must stop them on the beaches
In one day at the most…
If we do not then this War will be lost!”
His voice grew deep, concern’d & edged with frost.
He waves his Field-Marshal’s baton
Like wanded wizard hand,
Foxish vision sinks one-by-one
Obstacles in the sand,
To rascalise destruction when occasions make demand.
Le Vivier
January
1944
(AA) Canto 47: Enslavement
**************************************
Only the dead have seen the end of war
Plato
Death of Ciano
When partners can’t agree
Their dealings come to naught
And trouble is their labour’s only fruit.
Ivan Andreevich Krylov
See how fluctuating fortunes of war
Can be embodied in a single soul,
A prince addresses emperors no more,
Condemn’d to wallow in this Bourbon hole;
But one more day,
For his strong insistence
On toppling Il Duce earns a curt death sentence…
So… put he a pen to paper,
Converse started to confess
How his idol, & Herr Hitler,
Plung’d this world into their mess…
Smuggl’d out by darling Edda,
Tuck’d in her peasants dress,
The Truth! Salvaged for all posterity,
As enter’d, she, Switzerland, secretly.
He sat with his fellow ‘traitors,’
Before the gangster law,
Those dull soldiers were poor aimers,
(One shot him in the jaw),
& fell he groaning… as he died they’d shot him five times more.
Verona
January 12th
1944
Slave Labour
The sick bay was Heaven itself
An oasis for its inhabitants
In a desert of inhumanity & grief
Maria Joffe
They drew them from the children of Dachau,
Four corners of a suppliant empire,
Mere animals to pull the Nazi plough,
Dragg’d thro a steadily stagnating mire;
Slow work’d to death,
“Such waste to slay early,
Until it’s dying breath it can make you money.”
Thetis spat out a freezing spray,
Soak’d thinning rags on Sergei,
Whispering to himself each day,
“You must survive… do not die!”
Busying round a windswept bay,
Sand sticking in the eye,
Burying scores of deadly little mines
According to Rommel’s murd’rous designs.
How girding was each night to hear
This sweet canary sing,
End drawing near, thro’ death & fear,
Patient & enduring,
“Turn it up Stiltski…” “…World service… the Russians are winning!”
Bolougne-sur-Mer
Jan 15th
1944
Old Fathers
Oh, happy life ! To rove the mountains wild,
The waving woods, or ocean’s heaving breast,
With limbs unfettered, conscience undefiled
Anne Bronte
The darkest hour is that before the dawn,
By Slavophilic internecinum
Along the Valambrossa freight trains blown,
Halting at the sidings of th’abysm;
What ghastly smell,
Foul & nauseating
Ill-welcomes them to Hell… “Line up for delousing…”
They come to where the Grunfeld’s stood
& choose the two old fathers
With Heidi pale, whose thinning blood
That daily weaker courses,
All hugg’d & kiss’d the best they could
Until they kick’d Moses,
Yanking three kinsfolk from good family,
Put on the path to ash-eternity.
Stripping naked, they march to where
A sweet ensemble play’d,
“Why do you stare?” punching the air,
Brick chimney… all hopes fade,
Two brothers face death hand-in-hand, breath poison’d as they pray’d.
Auschwitz
January
1944
Enter the Mustang
So desperately
The leaves cling
To the departing fall
Shiki
Another daylight raid, up went the planes
Messerschmitt & Fockewulf – foes arrive
With yellow tail that effortlessly gains
Upon his finest pilot that survive
Rolls Royce purring
“Mustangs, sir!” “Fuck, look how
Fast they fly, sighs Goering, “Good, god the jigs up now.”
As Reichmarshall with sheepstuck state
Stood gaping up at the skies
As airforce once without compare
Defers to the flinderize,
Too heavy hung them in teh air,
Luftwaffe cut to size,
Whose bitty portions battle-chewe’d, spat out,
All while the raindrop bombs landed about.
He rubs the rouge in from a tin,
& dons Adonis wig,
Clean plucks his chin & summons in
Some prepubescent sprig,
& rapes young screams entwining with the whinings of his pig.
Berlin
January 23rd
1944
Gates of Hell
Poison from syringe in selected snakes
mix and add
In the colours of sighs and many worries
Giambattista Marino
The Spieglemans had gone into hiding
But not their son, by now he would be dead
Troglodytes behind false walls dividing
Refuse bunkers, swap emerald for bread;
Giant black rats
Scuttle as they huddl’d
For heat, instead of chats – kiss’d, caress’d, cuddl’d.
As Death must only be delay’d
However roll days so fair,
One wistful night their plight betray’d
Two hares in a sharing snare,
& now this new kind of afraid
Surrounds them everywhere
Thro’ punches, trucks, thro’ dogs & trains & shouts
Their bodies maul’d, while minds digest all doubt.
Train halts, & high above the gate
‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ did sneer,
A touch as fate would separate
Two soulmates, as appear
Entangibl’d, those tayles, “they’ll kill us all, & now we’re here!”
Auschwitz
January
1944
Nine Hundred Days
I wake. Yes, it’s a coffin lid.-With effort
I reach my hands out and I call
For help. Yes, I recall the tortures
Afanasy Afanasevich Fet
As the Nazis abandon positions
Proud citizens commence their rejoicing,
When only anthropophaginians
Tormented by what future’s dice may bring;
So stoical,
What fervour, phase-by-phase,
Did prove indelible those long nine hundred days.
All the city an allotment,
With not one empty metre,
Surviving all that hatred sent
Their way by mister Hitler,
Blessing the sacred sacrament
Of them & Saint Peter,
For faith can even compensate for food
When love of God lives fulminant imbued.
The guns grew silent as, at last,
To regions in the west
The war hath pass’d, the days newscast
Tho’ joyous, firmly stress’d,
Altho’ they’d won their liberty, ’til victory, no rest.
Leningrad
January 27th
1944
Cooking Pot
every tree a ghost
from the injured root
rising up mute
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Blood bubbles from the beak of bead-eye crow,
Reality worse than our harshest dreams,
All night appels stood in the sneering snow,
Life quite enslaved by what Satanic schemes?
& that vile smell,
Like rubber burning sweet..
At last they hear the bell, when lining up to eat,
With hunger rumbling unallay’d,
For every meal so meagre,
The smell of sawdust breadsticks made
Them salivate, all eager
For spoiling cheese or marmalade;
While the cooks from Riga
Stirr’d the soup, those who knew the strategy
Of where to wait would win more energy;
Those at the front will only taste
The flavour, not the veg
As down it raced, with ladle haste,
The soup made lump & wedge –
But wait too long there’ll be none left, such were the bets they’d hedge.
Auschwitz
February
1944
Monte Cassino
the last wish of heroes fallen at day-break
with a wingless stone in hand
& a thread of anger snaking from their eyes
Jofre Rocha
From white morning mists rose the Ausini,
Weaving his magick Lord Sol clear’d the scene,
Spreading thro the streets of Saint Germani,
The Allies pressed in khaki, beige & green;
Such handsome men
Met that crack mountain troop,
Again! Again! Again! Returning with a stoop.
Altho’ the abbey pleach’d sublime
Above the battle’s terrors,
Centuries shatter’d in short time
By waves of Allied bombers,
This heinous, most heathen crime,
Repeated thrice before…
Those tons of dust thrown up settl’d to show
Monks batter’d, weeping for Gregorio.
They left this bastion of faith
Like rippers leave a whore,
Some ruin’d wraith, stone sunk in Lethe,
Til she will rise once more,
A mass of grey stone sleeping in the trail of Total War.
Italy
Feb 16th
1944
Increasing Resistance
Woe to the one who decries music & war-march,
to mighty heroism inciting hosts;
great pipe that inspires all courage
Gilleasbaig na Ceapaich
Unto his hutch returns the rabbit white,
Churchill, he’s told, has minutes five to spare,
A puff of smok’d cigar, “how was your flight?”
“Shot at til England!” “Please, do take a chair…
Tell me, young man,,
How things could be improv’d…”
“Well, sir, I have a plan… reserve must be remov’d,
For those who risk lives night-on-night
For supplies that never drop,
One saboteur provided right
Complete companies can stop
I promise, sir, my friends will fight,
We’ll keep them on the hop…”
The PM notes those passions as he pleads,
“We will be amiable to your needs;
Halifax, Liberators,
I’ll order forty now,
Some might hate us, but our fate is
To fight them anyhow!”
“Oh, thank-you sir, now tell me, is it Ye-oh or Ye-ow?”
Whitehall
February
1944
(AA) Canto 48: Warfaring
**********************************
There existed in the minds of the people a very powerful general conviction of Hitler’s greatness & mission. One must therefore bear in mind the feelings of reverence for his historical magnitude with which most visitors approached him, & the significance which they therefore attached to each word of his
Albert Speer
A Desperate Escape
O Eternal Light, shine in our hearts,
O Eternal Light, deliver us from evil,
O Eternal Light, be our support
Alevin
Burned day & night the crematoria,
By body barrows feebly heav’d them fed,
By Alfred Wetzler wheel’d, Rudolf Vrba
Scrawling a secret tally of the dead;
When all must sleuth
The meaning of this sum,
For, if they’d known the truth who would have freely come?
To warn the global synagogues
Of this titan travesty,
They pris’d apart the plants & logs
Of a toilet cavity
Where, to waylay the keen-nos’d dogs
& the depravity
Of being caught & tortur’d, they did spread
Tobacco soak’d in petrol, toes & head.
Squat deep in shit, yet undeterr’d
As they heard the searches,
They never stirr’d, no whisper’d word,
Silent as clos’d churches,
‘Til third night falls, out they’ll both crawl, Holocaust besmirches!
Auschwitz
April 13th
1944
Budding Love
Now don’t go thinking I must be drunk
if I love my good lady;
for without her I cannot live
Guilhem of Aquitaine
Time rushes as the brush of history
Paints frassic varnish oer th’embattled Earth,
Sennets resounding loud for Liberty,
A generation’s sacrifice her worth;
Hebe’s darlings
From valley, peak & shore,
Lull’d by true valour’s wings & poetry in war.
Maggie ‘I’ll-do-my-bit‘ Sumner
Sign’d up to the Land’s Army,
Threshing ‘Down South’ in hot weather,
Slim, scruffy, sweaty, sultry,
“My name is Carlton Dillinger…”
“Oh aye! Mi name’s Maggie!”
“Nice to meet ya ma’m!” “This one’s got manners!”
“When d’ya finish?” “Soon… will yer wait fer us?”
By wee heliochryse they walk,
Soon skipping hand-in-hand,
They stop to smoke, soon drop the talk,
As sudden lust’s demand
Consummates the bond between America & England.
Devon
April
1944
The Great Escape
We dared to hope against the spoken word
And even when their names were there to see
We couldn’t quite believe what we had heard
Denis Mackarness
Many months of muddy perspiration
Has built unto this tense, dramatic night,
From cramp’d passages subterranean
Seventy three men crwal into moonlight;
One muffl’d cough,
A sentry makes the find!
Deliverance is off, one hundred left behind.
Scattering in all directions
Bold as brass & sly they snook,
Til shoddy documentations
Watchful volk & sheer bad luck
Has denied their demonstrations –
Fifty thrown in a truck,
Twenty serv’d a severe smack on the hand,
Only three reach all-elusive England.
The truck halts at a remote spot,
Fifty file out to piss,
A mauser shot, their stoumachs knot,
“What the bleedin ‘ell’s this?”
Hitler’s machine gun vengeance, smoking muzzles spit & hiss.
Silesia
April
1944
Truthbreak-Heartbreak
children of forest & mountain,
with their eyes they could behold themselves,
their voices named the animals
Homero Aridjis
Acute perceptions keep two freaks alive,
These brave young pups, from the Pit absconding,
But one last tense ordeal left to survive,
This risky woman – would there be bonding
Or drumming yells
Summoning a Nazi,
To drag them back to Hell’s infernal palazzi.
She was a true Slovakian,
No love for country keener,
& welcoming them back again
Led them off to Zolina,
Where converse quite unsaccharine
Silenc’d the convener
Of a meeting of this Jewish Council;
“Twelve thousand every day, you say…” a chill
Blew thro’ the room for all could see
These men were not deceiving,
“Your family, your friends, they’ll be
Dead by now – start grieving…”
& tho’ they knew this was the truth, still sat they disbelieving.
Slovakia
April 25th
1944
Burmese Box
I shall murder if I can,
Spill the jellies of a man.
Or be luckless & be spilled
John Ciardi
Chess pieces playing on a global board,
Opposing pawns clash on the Imphal plain,
Where Gen’ral Slim has drawn the polish’d sword
That whupp’d the French & whipp’d the ships of Spain
Where Vera Lynn
Inspires the men with song –
As oer barge-chok’d Khyendwen Japan’s fanatics prong.
Life sinks to insignificance
Just a tennis court apart,
Death looting with indifference
The hot vein-strings of the heart
From savage arts to diligence
Those warring soldiers dart
& back again, if only to survive
Another day of dying, but alive!
As officers charge tanks with swords
The Japanese, it seems
Trudging discords, spent cases hoards,
From Britain’s budgeless teams
All beaten back to Burma, from Kohima, with their schemes.
Nagaland
May 18th
1944
Homecoming
For it’s the same old story,
There’ll be no jokes when you come back
And little bloody glory
Timothy Corsellis
The soldier may be taken from the War,
But that War will never leave the soldier,
Into Rosegrove the train roll’d… as a door
Flung ope, there stood worm-eyed Tommy Sumner;
His only leg
Tip-tapp’d onto platform,
He paus’d, roll’d up a fag & hobbl’d his way home.
He was a simple, honest man
From streets pluck’d ordinary,
Out-serving the ferocious span
That was his ‘Tour of Duty,’
But home was where the hate began,
Twas alien country –
The fate of Western civilisation
Depends on jam, suet, spam & bacon.
Tommy carried little Lucy
To bed & said, “Goodnight…”
“Goodnight,” said she, innocently,
“Why did yer ‘ave to fight?”
“To save the world from one bad man, go sleep or he might bite!”
Burnley
May
1944
Jungle Liberty
Looking out towards the horizon
I dream of my escape
Freedom beckons me
Ernestine Northover
Shane Slater sat cracking his teeming lice
Emaciated, weaken’d with fatigue,
Sustain’d by friendship & handfuls of rice,
Laying this damn’d railway league after league;
“You are cowards!”
Brave men told ev’ry day,
Ramm’d home with fists & swords slicing ensanguin’d spray.
Poor Alfred, half dead with disease
(most thought he’d nearly had it),
Shown piles of rocks, “Coward! move these!”
He tried but could not do it,
So tied between two supple trees,
A sweep… the rope is split –
Terribly tearing his torso in two
Back upright went those bent trunks of bamboo.
Shane snaps, ghost looking on aghast,
Soul sharing his friend’s pain,
He broke & dash’d, the bullets pass’d
A bee’s dick from his brain,
Three miles of jungle flash’d before he saw his thigh’s bloodstain…
Thailand
May
1944
Traitors
It may be said that we tackled wherever we could,
That battle-fit we lived, & though defeated,
Not without glory fought
Henry Reed
With certain gen’ralry new thought took hold,
With growing doubt comes disillusionment,
Der Fuhrer naught but bemustach’d cuckold
Upon der Fatherland’s destruction bent;
“…Stalin soon here…”
“…We must agree a plan…”
“…our sacred country steer from that deadly madman!”
Having lost both an arm & eye,
Tho’ mind in prime condition,
Von Stauffenburg, willing to die,
Gneis’nau’s dashing great-grandson,
Responded to the sacred cry
Of this secret mission,
“I’ll do it if you guarantee the coup!”
“Assured, but first there’s one thing we must do…”
Von Falkenburg & Steulpagnel
Pour’d Rommel a fresh Schnapps,
“Just your name will avoid civil
War & Deutschland’s collapse!”
He thought awhile then gave it, “He’ll be martyr’d” “Yes, perhaps…”
Herlingen
May 27th
1944
Love’s Bond
Who will stir up whirlwinds of furious fire
If we do not, & those whom we call brothers?
Join us, Romantic friends! Forget all others!
Arthur Rimbaud
The moon was full & the night rippl’d fair
For the coming home of Monsieur Merlot,
Drifting gently on cushionings of air,
Dogs barking in the farmyard dark below;
Piercing the night
Shone secretive beacon,
Bright-flickering flashlight of the destination.
With wonderful euphoria
Black boots thump bon native ground,
Poetical adventurer,
Unborn children to astound;
Welcoming this paratrooper
The Maquis gather’d round –
To their lovely leader, Miss Innocent,
A concupiscent angel had been sent.
“Pierre!” “Veronique!” cheeks embrace,
Love shares its desp’rate cling,
While passions race the jaundiced face
Of Constance simpering
Distorts to monstrous maelstrom… blister’d with twisted feeling.
France
May 29th
1944
(AA) Canto 49: Rabbitcatchers
**********************************
I look forward to tea in the garden, & the flavour of bread & butter… to all teh other things that make up home
Edward Chapman
Apprehended!
I fete you dear
commanding
officer, for your stealth
Ralph Cherbo Geeplay
As Yeo walk’d he thought ‘poor Brisculette
Must rescued be, that gray streak in his hair,
Dyed black, must sooneth fade – where IS Anette!?
Not at the kiosk, no, not anywhere;’
Tho’ scream’d all nerves,
‘Man, keep your cool, keep sane,’
He, from the rendezvous, curv’d thro the streets again,
& slid back to that meeting place,
Still agent unattended,
Where springs on him a fearsome face,
Who forearms apprehended,
With neck secur’d by headlock brace,
Liberties there ended,
“Wir haben Shelley!” hiss’d the gristle-voice
“Please come this way…” as if he had a choice!
As soon as he was in the car
They smash’d him in the face
The fat one snarl’d, “Just who you are
We’ve tried & test to trace,
Then Thomas plung’d in darkness underneath a pillowcase.
Paris
May 30th
1944
A Broken Nose
Once, in the burning age
of flowing stone
the Devil’s old dark toffee overflow’d
Robin Munro
With imprecations litanizing fears,
Into a street he could not recognize,
Steps Yeo, “Schweinehund!” “Terrorist!” rakes ears,
While raw red bruis’d & broken were his eyes;
All hope abates,
Interrogation wends,
Creak open iron gates, Tom thanks his new best friends.
Counting the floors so could ken
How far he would have to leap,
Once in a room upleap’d three men,
Whom blows upon Yeo heap,
Whom manacl’d, spat at, & when
All wanted he was sleep,
In slowly walks Gestapo ghoul, who stands
Gloves slipping on, with backs of slapping hands
Beats out ‘Inglisher Hund!” on cheeks
Then punch’d & broke a nose,
Of booze he reeks, “Der Fuhrer seeks
The truth, so I’ll propose
You’ll tell us all we need to know, else, well, the Devil knows…
Paris
May 30th
1944
Resolve & Resolution
It’s gotten so dark
I feel fear within me.
The life of small noises
Rocco Scotellaro
‘This was it, my name is Kenneth Dodkin,
Whatever they might do, then things far worse;
Beatings, drownings, pierc’d by a bodkin,
Whatever meted greet with kiss or curse;
Each minute gone
A letterbox shall close
Or meeting place deem done…’ blood streaming from his nose
Soak’d red his clothes, eyes swoll’n to shade,
Neck this way, that-a way toss’d,
“Your duty’s done, don’t be afraid,
You’ve had your flutter & lost,
We know the Allies will invade
But where, but when?” – as frost
Obscures Yeo’s thoughts, hair tugg’d out in clumps,
“So tell us, yes, where are the ammo dumps?”
As tightening the handcuff sprain’d
Tom’s will-determin’d wrist,
More seconds gain’d, more time obtain’d
For lives too long to list,
& gazes mute, but fearless, mister ‘best shots I’ll resist!’
Paris
May 30th
1944
A Good Ducking
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England
Rupert Brooke
As slipping into consciousness regain’d,
Yeo’s arms blaze pain, straining each socket,
A swirl of hurl’d insults, “We have obtain’d
This ten-franc note out of your own pockets,
On which is scrawl’d
A number… whose it it?”
“I do not know…” appall’d by the sheer cheek of it
They naked stripp’d him, dragg’d him to
A tank with water filling,
“Whose is this number, tell us who?”
Plung’d under, gushes spilling
Flush’d lungs, then was dragg’d out to spew
His liquid guts, thrilling
That deep, Teutonic need for sacrifice –
Yeo clears his throat, chirps “boys, that was nice!”
They duck’d him down & out again,
Against the tiles he slumps,
Then broke his jaw, echoes the roar
“WHERE ARE THE AMMO DUMPS!”
But still defiance thrusted from nightwatchman at the stumps.
Paris
May 30th
1944
Tortureboarded
The wind suffers of blowing,
The sea suffers of water,
The fire suffers of burning
Laura Riding
The Devil stands on his high mountain peak,
Count of crude turmoil-, oxgut crashes chest
Oer stomach aquaful… enforc’d a creak,
Disgorgement…& Yeo’s pass’d his next test;
Hustl’d along
Passages, dripping wet,
He sings, inside, a song, he knows he’ll get there yet!
By well-groom’d women lining walls,
Who mock’d him as he pass’d ‘em,
With spittle-whistles & cat-calls,
He flicks his head & splash’d ‘em
With droplet blood, stumbl’d, then falls…
Hands sprawl’d, jackboots smash’d ‘em…
Dragg’d to his feet they haul’d him thro’ a door
“Those ammo dumps, or do you want some more?”
As rubber coshes rush to work
On body, legs & arms;
Like Knight or Turk right gone beserk,
For Hadith, or for Psalms,
What blows of righteous fury thrash from angry, blist’ring palms.
Paris
May 30th
1944
The Violinist
Dearly ye pay for your primal Fall –
Some flowerets of Eden ye still inherit,
But the trail of the serpent is over them
Thomas Moore
Two burly Sicherheitsdienst burst inside,
“We have him here!” “Who?” “Your telephone friend!”
Roll’d in was some wretch, limply terrified,
“Perhaps he’ll tell us where are the dumps – send
You to Auswich,
Instead, of your best fate –
The pleasant treatment which befits friends of the state.”
As stranger, young & very slim,
Claim’d, “I am a musician!”
The thugees went to work, a grim
Bestial demolition,
“Stop that at once! I don’t know him!”
Nobody would listen,
As, after blow to his ribs bonebreaking,
Yeo taken down corridors snaking
To plung’d be in some pitch black cell,
Where echo did the moans;
Twyx shout & yell he could not tell,
When silenc’d were the groans,
If that poor violinist deaf forever to the tones.
Paris
May 31st
1944
Indomitability
I have nae will to sing or danse
For fear of England & of France
God send them sorrow & mischance
Sir Richard Maitland
Dark swamps again, led all alone with thirst,
Grand aches, dull pains, his long, blood-matted face,
Drooping all pumpkin-shap’d, hoping the worst
Was over, lumphead buzzing, but with space
To calculate
This situation’s core,
Escape, for now, must wait – he’d have to suffer more.
With mouth blood-saltily impure,
Cold handcuffs biting at wrists,
He weigh’d up what left to endure,
How much torture to resist,
& if some fresh supersedure
Sadistic hedonist
Studying Dante for inspiration,
Might charge take of his interrogation.
The padlock rattl’d; priggish, rude,
Men came with bread & meat –
Flavors imbued the well-cook’d food,
“You’ll watch us while we eat!”
Tom froth’d & salivated like a babe denied the teat.
Paris
May 31st
1944
Fresh Air
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny
You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
James Thomson
Hours blend, t’were two or twenty, who could tell,
& Yeo still entomb’d, he heard the clang,
Of iron on steel, high-pitch voices swell,
“Raus!” “Raus!” “Raus!” again, cell door open sprang;
A submachine
Gun train’d at him with rage,
Unchain’d from the latrine, the rabbit leaves the cage.
They led him to a spacious hall,
Where thirty other faces
Like his appear’d, cut were them all,
As if strawberry laces,
From dirty hair did crawling sprawl,
Ticking off name spaces,
Into a prison van each man was toss’d
“Where now?” “Who knows?” “Escape!” counting the cost
Of being caught he trac’d the way,
Thro’ well-known streets they went,
& glimps’d the gay Champs d’Elysees
Beyond thumb-narrow vent,
Parisianic fondness tear-ducts triggers liquescent.
Paris
June 2nd
1944
Fresnes
Into a famous prison Yeo’s turn’d,
At least, for now, the tortures are halted,
& to alive the famishment that burn’d,
Allow’d a little oatmeal, & salted’
Two sheets each morn
Of toilet roll – small-siz’d,
Square cut & crudely torn -, wield war’s news fragmentiz’d
& so he join’d an awful stint
Of life in a caustic loop,
Where ersatz coffee made men squint
& as for mangel-wurzel soup,
Twas like rainfall in a hoof print –
Yeo refus’d to stoop
His spirit… sang his anthems, pac’d cell.
To shine a hint of Heaven on his Hell.
Upon the wall concupiscence
Screams communications;
Omnipotence, deliverance,
Crude manifestations
Of men condemn’d to carrying crosses round the stations.
Paris
June 4th
1944
Mumble Words 