(AA) Canto 59: Imperial Scrambles
:
**********************************
The soldiers fight & the kings are heroes
Talmud
Downfall!
Having reached life’s hilly stages,
Hemmed about with sleet & snow,
On a drift the swain now seated
Magnus Stefansson
The poet’s task to glorify the page
With stories richer than the Golden Fleece;
Come stand upon the threshfold of an Age
Peace-loving doves flock chirping for release;
Yet men bewitch’d
By warfare yet to come,
When antique pibrochs pitch’d to thund’rous battledrum.
Napoleon feels life’s fierce strain
Steel chains round sad soul wreathing,
Him stood upon the Trojan plain
When demi-gods were breathing,
Hot blood pulsed thro’ his temple’s vein,
Angry, proud & seething –
If Ishtar brings us empire, she’ll bring fall,
Across each tyrant’s dreams Fate hauls her wall.
Held by mercy & his victor,
Like some Sinean King,
Thro’ Mombaza, Montezuma,
To Charlie’s highland fling –
Forced to flutter – an Emperor made putty schmetterling.
Saint Helena
1815
Risorgimento
But thy sounds were sweeter
Than the dome of Peter
Flings oer the Tiber
Father Prout
No longer the montage of petty states,
Spiritus uprisen thro Italy,
Austrians driven from the city gates
By the stoic will of Garibaldi;
Bravely fighting
Where e’er his thousand ride,
Beneath a native king the North now unified.
The Kingdom of Two Sicilies
Rejects unification,
Soon subject to hostilities,
With grim determination
Palermo lost her liberties
& Naples her station,
As with one fierce, jingoist show of force
He enter’d Rome upon a flame-red horse.
From Brindisi to Lake Como
A country re-appears,
The foreign flow of soldato
Lasted a thousand years,
Now cast forever to the past by dashing cavaliers.
Rome
1864
Japanese Renaissance
Like a long, long journey
on a flax-pale steed
is man’s life
Steinn Steinarr
They watch’d them steam into the Edo Bay,
Grey smoking dragons, whose guns numerous
Serv’d the querelous Shogunate’s dismay,
Saying, “This matter does not concern us!”
White faces made
Fair sail across the sea,
Bringing the global trade of Commodore Perry.
Sensing the world had pass’d them by
Japan opens up her quays,
World influxes revivify
Evolution by degrees,
Nippon’s old masters this defy
To be dragg’d to their knees,
As bold Mutsuhito replaces school
With palaces & his ‘Enlighten’d Rule.’
Directly from Yokohama
The nation’s first train flew,
What calibre of Emporer
Into the station drew,
Inspiring such devotion as the lilies drink the dew.
Tokyo
1872
Steadying the Ship
settled on
the temple bell
a sleeping butterfly
Buson
Conscious of a manifest destiny,
Tho’ barely yet a pawn of the great game,
The fledgling wings of eagle of Liberty
Spread oer the world, fanning the flames of fame;
Yet, southern states
Fat on their their slavish fee,
Form bands of vicious mates led by courageous Lee.
Theirs was a very bitter war
Where nobody was thinkin,’
But for the great conquistadour,
A Yankee call’d Abe Lincoln,
Who won slave freedom from the gore;
As his toasts were drinkin,’
Assassins took his life & left a ghoul
Singing the national anthem every school.
A continent is set to go,
Its vast resources spend,
As Alamo quell’d Mexico,
With Canada her friend,
America shall prove the key as did the Gods intend.
USA
1865
Otto Von Bismark
Each different spike you joined into a broom,
You had the same vision
As that of Bismarck
Dhani Ram Chatrik
The German nations reach a higher gear,
With industry manpowering supreme,
Enter Von Bismarck & his vision clear,
Mind xiphoid proffering empiric dream;
Thro’ noble veins
The Junker spirit flows,
Where lust for great campaigns & martial glory grows.
Joining forces with Vienna
Denmark driven from Sleswick,
But bickering with Austria
Leads to battle ballistic,
A trial of strength at Sadova
Shows Hapsburg has grown sick –
World-status lost with Berlin’s victory,
& even Venetia to Italy!
Proclaim the hero of the hour,
First of this epoch’s men,
With deep glower what keen power
Glows rushing thro his pen,
Signing the scroll of peace, pronounce bloodshed not if, but when?
Prague
1866
European Struggle
Wild as the tomb, wild as the mountainside
A storm of hours has shaken the fine spun world
Tearing away our palaces, our faces, & our days
Kathleen Raine
The nephew of the first Napoleon
Light-hearted bent on conflict, as it nears,
What enmity ruffles thro the Prussian,
Catalyst for a century of tears;
An excuse found,
Madrid’s invalid throne,
The buglers calls resound & brutal war is born.
Abandon’d by her enemies,
Once vast manpower dwindling,
France faced the conjoin’d Germanies
Like a bee without a sting,
United were her enemies
Beneath a single king;
Baden, Württemberg & Bavaria
Merge with the North & its Prussian kaiser.
What mighty military rolls
To Paris at a pace?
Grand fortress falls, “Surrender!” calls
The emperor’s red face,
Far from Jena a great power put firmly in her place.
Sedan
1870
Defeating France
After the tumult & the blood
Had died, had dried,
Silence unmade its history
Fyodor Tyutchev
“Vive la France!” gen’ral Gambetta’s cry,
New armies rais’d to save the capital,
On ev’ry side great hordes of grey-coats lie,
Willing moments when men would do battle;
Now Paris meets
Visions of Baudelair,
Shapes grotesque grip the streets, folk starving everywhere.
While waiting for the diplomats
They gorged on their resources,
Then, after eating all the cats,
Felt forced to eat the horses,
& when the city free of rats
In march’d Bismark’s forces,
Forcing humiliation on the French,
Thro Gallic hearts avengeant thoughts entrench.
The gate went up at Brandenburg
Praising Victoria,
Crowns from Hamburg to Nuremburg
Absorb’d by the Kaiser,
A mighty friendship forged to face an unforeseen future.
Berlin
1871
Victoria
The Leaning Tower.
The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.
I made a little watercolour of them all
Carol Ann Duffy
Most rugous, longevous, famous of forms,
Roll’d slowly midst her Golden Jubilee,
Upon all sides the doting empire swarms
Piloted by her growing family;
Sitting alone
Her banquet shall begin,
The whole world bares the throne of Britain’s sovereign.
Europa’s aging grandmother
Attends her garden party,
With crown heads of Romania,
Nippon, Siam, Hawaii,
Plus dashing princes of Persia;
Many-a-majesty
Pays homage to the splendour of their Queen –
Her three grandsons play polo on the green.
A British crown prince lames the horse
Of a future Kaiser,
His curses coarse, a show of force
From the prince of Russia –
Petty is the bickering continuing thro’ supper…
London
1889
War’s Progress
With a fiend-like yelling & cheering,
They charge up the heights at a run ;
Grim men are they all & unfearing
Rev. Andrew McNab
With Gordon’s blood encrusted at Khartoum,
Bit-chomping Churchill blushing vernal haste –
Advancing to an oblivious doom
Brave Dervishes drift cross the desert waste;
Fifty thousand,
Led by bearded Emirs,
Cross tiger-lily sand, raising courageous cheers.
Hail Maxim, military king,
As the s’cockacoka glows,
Death’s mechanical chattering
Scatters Dervishes in rows,
Forms tangl’d heaps of suffering,
But few foe come to blows,
As tho’ they wore tartan at Culloden –
Dows’d in blood the desert sands grew sodden.
“Well, war has chang’d,” young Winston said,
Watching with Kitchener,
Sunset flows red, above the dead
Rose a haunting clamour,
“La llaha illa llah Muhammed Rasul Allah!”
Omdurman
1896
(AA) Canto 60: Endgame
**********************************
War does not determine who is right – only who is left
Bertrand Russell
Irreversibles
The great Soviet people
In a headlong rush of fiery lava
Will wipe out the Fascist gang!
Nikolai Tikhonov
As doom descends on the impending loss
& guillotines glint oer the Nazi neck,
Von Ribbentrop was shocked to see the boss
Turn’d uncoordinated shamble-wreck;
“Might I but try
To make some sort of peace
With Moscow, I could fly there, meet Stalin…” “Please, cease
Such talk – if I made peace today,
I’d just fight them tomorrow!”
Der Fuhrer’s pall all ashen grey,
A face surfeit with sorrow,
Pacing the banks, thro’ caustic spray,
Where Charon’s raft did row
Life’s fallen souls across the Acheron –
But Hitler, yet, to his Hell had not gone.
There was a knock upon the door,
The young Miss Braun stepp’d in,
Whose love leapt raw, “This septic war
I’m destin’d, still, to win…
Now leave us – wider than the Rhine grew Eva’s pining grin.
The Führerbunker
Mar 19th
1945
Setting Sun
These are dead faces.
Wasps’ nests are not more wanly waxen
wood embers not so greyly ashen
Herbert Read
Eph’meral empire nears obsolescence,
The Towers of Tenshu straddle the sky,
As Tojo arrived for his audience
The pale moon sang a sunset lullaby;
Hurrying thro’
An iron-studded gate,
The evening hours, he knew, drew heavy with their fate.
Out of the southern, darkling sky
Silver Superfortresses,
Like eagles hunting from up high,
Rain’d doom upon the masses,
How many children have to die
‘Til their fury passes;
Tokyo like a paper lantern burns.
Of war’s true horrors the emperor learns.
As they watch’d the flames & flashes
To raging maelstrom fann’d,
Into ashes, stonework crashes
Tojo rais’d fisted hand,
“When sacred nations combat on they’ll heed honour’s demand!”
Mount Karvizawa
March 21st
1945
Crime & Punishment
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter’s day,
Is all the proud & mighty have
John Dyer
Oer Nuremberg’s desolation total
Lone Fokker soar’d, inside Gestapo men
Separated truths from anecdotal,
Death-sentencing with tiny ticks of pen;
Plane touches down
By Salzburg, then by car,
Men driven to the town where those, those… chancers are!
Out of the Post Office they’d been
Dragg’d with imperfect purpose,
For all of them… well, some… were seen
Opening Wehrmacht packages;
Pocketing soap to keep kids clean
Then rewrapping wrappers…
Some seventeen were sentenc’d there to die…
When chaos reigns the maddest reasons why
Will fate derange, will stroke down mute
Our love of life & law
A whistle toot, as soldier’s shoot,
Good folk fell to the floor
In agonies of dying in these dreg-days of the war.
Eugendorf
Mar 24th
1945
Frightened Cows
A tight and chiming string
that resounds to anything—
a single stroke or evil blow
Ivan Vazov
Faerievolktown twinkles by Toder’s stream,
Some medieval El Dorado
Of handsome gates & cobbl’d streets, a dream
Of happy greetings each alborado;
Who’d ever thought
They’d bomb such an idyll –
Blare sirens! Cellars sought! Rilke grabs his fiddle
For to play a gentle ditty,
Children shuddering each thud
Of Ninth Air Force barbarity,
Murdering, they thought, for good,
Plundering with impunity
& sapping streets of blood,
Then back to base… emerging children ‘wow!’
As thro’ the Marketplatz storms frantic cow
With horrified, unhappy eyes
& burning at the tail,
Where cindersizing dragonflies
Flew thro’ the smoky trail,
When one-by-one, dewonder’d, kindergartens start to wail!
Rothenburg
March 31th
1945
Crossing the Rhine
he left that smell behind
it would barely linger by the time
he reached his destination
Emelihter Kihleng
As roofless, star-mark’d jeep screeches to halt,
Georgie spits out globule of cigar phlegm,
“Boys!” he address’d his American salt,
“Find ’em, fix ’em, fight ’em & finish ’em!
An ounce of sweat
Worth a gallon of blood,
Always audacious, get to grips, give it ’em good!”
As generals love glory true,
The Third Army’s matador,
Instils LUCKY, his plucky crew,
With rampant passion for war,
The Third Army’s matador,
“Advance over, under or through!”
Reaching Remagen’s shore
A rail-bridge claim’d worth more than weight in gold,
Battle’s won by the brave, but Wars the bold.
Patton pauses upon the Rhine,
Perches on pontoon plate,
Arches his spine, piss flows like wine,
Hissing with pent-up hate…
Zips up his fly, claims th’eastern bank to slay the Kaiser-state.
Emmerich
April 2nd
1945
Empirical Regrets
But these paperbacks are crumbling in my hands
seachanged bouquets, each brown page
scribbled on, underlined & memorized
Michael Donaghy
‘Twas always weltmacht oder niedergang,’
Mus’d eminent attorney on the rocks
Above his bombshell mansion, where once sang
His sister princesses, him the princox;
Epiphany!
Dark mirror of mankind
Destroy’d poor Germany that decade he’d spent blind.
As we make our vows of substance
In the moments of defeat,
Let us never let the patterns
Of such diabol repeat,
Heed the laws of ancyent Athens,
Drag tyrants from the street,
Then string these up before them killers turn
Of little kids, burnt futures for the urn.
Tho’ wealthy, jewel-school’d, well-bred,
Just now he’d realiz’d,
& shook his head for all the dead,
Der Fuhrer recogniz’d
Not as his lord & saviour but a toad to be despis’d.
Leipzig
April
1945
White House
In America
The highway runs too fast
For men to feel the ground underneath
Femi Fatoba
The blood of good men stains Okinawa,
The President prepares to share their fate,
Into the air that soothes the state of Georgia
His life’s last breaths wheeze out with gremlin grate;
He coughs, complains
Of headaches terrible,
As mighty spirit drains… & bows & leaves battle.
Being flesh & mind a human
But in stature an oak tree,
Lampadephorian Truman
Homelands his Presidency,
The ultimate American
To rule thee sensibly –
& what a time to take that foremost seat;
The Axis Powers verging on defeat.
A heads-up held behind closed door,
“There’ll be a new weapon
Ready in four months,” sat in awe
(How else would one listen),
“If it saves lives… shortens the war… then say I… yes… go on.”
Washington
April 12th
1945
Death Camp
They turn the water off, so I live without water,
they build walls higher, so I live without treetops,
they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine
J.S. Baca
If this is life then life should welcome death,
Thousands of abject shapes dull wraithdom tread,
Despair & typhus pungent on the breath,
Grey, ghastly heaps & gutters full of dead;
Bestarv’d of meat,
To stay his certain end,
A priest prepares to eat the dead flesh of his friend.
As one the rough guards up & leave
Just before GI’s arrive,
Whose haunted eyes could ne’er believe
Stick-like rakes are still alive,
All that these green lads could achieve
Was feed those who survive,
Strangurious skeletons; skin stretching
Thin; what moans… what specters… & what retching.
As Anna show’d her slump’d nephew
To Carlton Dillinger,
All blotch’d & blue, “What can you do?”
“Mam, I ain’t no doctor…”
Ludwig spasm’d… died… cried she for all of them together.
Belsen
April 15th
1945
Roaring Bears
Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs,
And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels,
And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs
Thomas Hardy
With razors grazing in a laser shave,
Thus presentable conquerors making
The Russian army, bolder more than brave,
Roads by roads up to the border snaking
Stunned by those sounds
Flung from the Reitwein spur,
That blows & blasts & pounds the Wehrmacht as they stir
To life, facing the most intense
Bombardment ever meted,
Trench-smashing without shame or sense
Those already defeated
Dog stooges to the recompense,
Precipicic teter’d,
Protectors of a capital, foresworn,
But full of dread, undeadly & forlorn.
But… krieg is krieg & schnapps is schnapps,
& to the end flows free
Those molten saps from golden taps
Plung’d in the Hitler tree,
That dripping with bloodletting drains the best of Germany
Brandenburg
April 16th
1944
(AA) Canto 61: Buchenwald
**********************************
People had become dehumanised. They were like animals, urinating & defecating wherever they were. I somehow didn’t react to the bodies, I had seen carnage galore during the war. But to see human beings walking around without any sense of dignity, that was utterly appalling. And that smell has lived with me to this day
Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown
Glimpsing Hell
I am a waterfall in the desert.
A rain from a cloudless sky.
A well known but unborn child
Dimitris Varos
A journalist from New York passes thro’
Weimar, shrine of culture – Goethe, Schiller -,
A driver from the 80th, slow drew
Them closer to the camp where the killer
Nazis deduct
-ed innocence from breath,
Life-verve by slavework suck’d, ‘til all t’were left was death.
“So, what’s this place?” says Ted Murrow,
“Well, sir, it’s pure damnation,
A camp of horrible sorrow
Bent on extermination,
Flesh beaten until pulp’d hollow,
Tortures, slow starvation,
& every single day a twelve-hour shift…”
Lifting in sight, off to the right, roofs drift.
“Is this it?” “Yes, sir!” “Oh my word…”
Thoughts difficult to hold
Spurr’d undeterr’d, gripp’d tight & stirr’d
Excitements manifold,
Well, this was it, this whirl of sins, this legend Buchenwald.
Ettersberg Hill
15th April
1945
Meeting of Worlds
A white stone half-dug into the soil,
Said to me as I was passing by:
– God bless you, pray, I’m a tombstone
Azim Souyun
The long siege broken, justice runs amok,
Wick-with-fleeing-SS fields… corner’d… shot!
About the gates a rave of pale ghouls flock
Dearanging Teddy’s brain, who clear forgot
All that he’s learn’d;
As open’d, drab gates, wide
A rush of shabsteps churn’d, gurning undignified.
They crush’d him with a short, swift surge,
Evil-smelling was this crowd,
Which courted death all on the verge
Of oblivion; brows bow’d,
Shave-headed skeletals converge,
Like corpses from a shroud,
Or scalded lepers limping falterwise –
Then one drops dead, but smiling in his eyes.
In the midst of this commotion,
Voice rose distinct & clear,
At attention an Englishman
Stands, “Delighted, old dear,
& be a darling, tell me, please, when will our chaps get here?”
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Blockhouse Triumph
I close my eyes:
ten thousand wasted people
Still piled in the flesh-pits
Phillip Whitfield
As, Virgil, Dante led, the ziggurat
Of Hell unfolding serpentine, into
A barracks with twelve hundred stuff’d, who sat
Or stood in dark, dark despair – into view
Slow strode Murrow,
Like lambkins to a teat
They crowd around & crow, kissing his hands & feet
On shoulder blades they tried to raise
Ted up, too weak to do it,
They star’d, instead, with zombie gaze,
On his passage thro’ it,
That mass who’d make us reappraise
Humanity – who knew it,
What Hitler did, this barb’d-wire fence behind,
Astonishing, admonishing the mind!
On passing by those happy rows,
People started clapping
In tame applause,like puppy paws
Of wee babies flapping,
Those of an age most int’rested in their Christmas wrapping.
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Death’s Empire
And then he died –
And though inside we may have bled
We merely shrugged & sighed
Kennethy Lang
Imprison’d by racists & a slogan,
Humanity sups vomit from latrines,
A woman defecates in the open,
Another tilts her head, to one side leans,
Then drops down dead;
By her steps another,
Clutching some lifeless lead like she was its mother.
With swaddling balanc’d on a hip,
Its face all shrivel’d & grey,
“My babe needs milk, sir, just one sip…”
Not knowing what else to say,
A G.I. drops drips on its lip,
As she walks away
The woman thanks him, crooning with brief joy,
Then fell down dead, dead as her baby boy.
Ted stares a while, this awful scene
Some tawdry vaudeville,
Only yestreen his best canteen
With whiskey did he fill,
Sensing he’d see such sights… a lengthy glug to strength instill.
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Pedocide
She has been abandoned
She has been betrayed
God has betrayed her
Mary Borden
As when Hell’s iron portal with a creak
& clang will open, so this barb’d wire gate
Scratching its bottom with a rotten shriek,
Will reveal’d, ‘these enemies of the state,’
Threatless each one,
Thirteen the eldest age,
Whose childhoods have all gone for the therapist wage.
A six-year child rolls up her sleeve;
Six, zero, three & zero –
Enough to give the heart a heave,
Even the toughest hero,
Will strive their hardest to believe
Such scenes, as from below,
Vile demons broke the surface, life defil’d –
Who’d think we’d ever ink a little child?
With tattoos on their tender skin,
To wear until they die,
“Are you coming?” Ted’s head aspin
To see some tall G.I.,
“Where too?” “The hospital…” “Don’t go!” the kids begin to cry
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
A Love of Leather
A dreadful solitude each mind insane,
Each its own place, its prison all alone,
And finds no sympathy to soften pain
J.A.Heraud
Ted stepp’d into this filthy hospital,
Whose doctor, noble, yet embarrass’d, shook
His hands, said, “every day’s a battle,
I try my best, but now I think just luck
Decides who stays
Alive, most lack desire
To live on anyway…” a man shouts out, “You liar!
I want to live, but look at me,
A-cling to my last tether,
Wait – what is that, please let me see…”
“What, this?” – “Yes, your leather,
I made those expertly, you see,
When, back in Vienna
I made the finest bags, please, may I feel
Its texture – just to test it, if it’s real?”
Ted took his wallet out & shares
His money all around
“That’s for your fares back home…” their stares
Were silent as no sound,
“Please, doctor, keep this wallet, American leather bound.”
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
The Surgeon
Need to belong has made me come
to help rebuild Jerusalem,
where everyone is family
Karen Gershon
As SS guard, from his ankles hanging,
Was beaten to a pulp, grew dead-still soon,
Teddy enters unto kitchen’s clanging,
Chefs whistling an intellectual tune
Stir stew that ‘tries’;
Brown bread a thumbs-width thick,
& butter sliced the size of a chewing-gum stick.
“Please let me introduce myself
I’m professor Charles Sarbonne,”
Who took a scalpel from a shelf
For a patient too far gone,
“All we possess here is our health,
But hardly anyone
Survives a year, so hard we’re forced to work…”
His patient spasms with a leg-kick jerk
Sends pungent puss asquirt thro’ air,
Teddys coat did splatter
The doctors stare, “You alright, there?”
“Yes, it doesn’t matter –
Have you a cloth?” out came a rag’s bloody, crudded tatter.
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Broken Ovens
Truth is the voice of Nature & of Time –
Truth is the startling monitor within us –
Nought is without it, it comes from the stars
William Thomas Bacon
“Come see the crematoriums,” said Charles,
“Three days ago the camp ran out of coke,
In piles they heap’d up limbs like knotted gnarls
That rot away where once all flames & smoke
Twas deathly still
& cold & dark & stank,
To stay they took vast will with faces white & blank.
Life is the sum of what we know,
Meaningful experience
& bookish studies blend & flow –
Thro’ this Universe, immense,
We reap not what we do not sow,
& in our youths we sense
That youth, one day, will be forever gone,
To wise old age, as sets our mortal sun.
Ted stagger’d out, struck vertigo,
Upon the precipice
Of Inferno, where down below
The fallen, foul’d souls hiss
& spit at him, “you fucking cunt!”… oh! what a thing is this!
Buchenwald
15th April
1945
Moral Vertigo
In the great, empty square
The head of a cow bawled, after the slaughterer
& shapes sought the rounds of the serpent
Federico García Lorca
Teddy got back to town a diff’rent man
Records, that night, a radio broadcast,
“Dead men are plentiful in war,” began,
“But living dead are legion, faces pass’d
Me by, like home,
America’s fabric –
Vienna, Paris, Rome – mute, featherless & wick
With fleas & typhus, slow as snails
Rabbits gnawing at a hutch,
Did praise our Roosevelt in hails,
As a man they owe so much,
Who’d bent the weight of freedom’s scales
With such a common touch –
If there a better epitaph could be
None have I heard this whole of history,
If you would Buchenwald witness
Forever you’d be chang’d,
The stripy dress, the life regress,
From liberty estranged
& forced to work oneself to death by murderers deranged
Weimar
15th April
1945
(AA) Canto 62: Victory in Europe
**********************************
How wonderful was the experience, when I went into town; work-girls, shop-girls, men assistants whom I knew,- as we clasped each other by the hand, each said to the other, I to them & they to me : “Thank God you are safe!”
Edith Sitwell
Ultimate Brass
The air is cool and night is coming.
The calm Rhine courses its way.
The peak of the mountain dazzles
Heinrich Heine
In torrents since the Normandy beaches,
The Allied flood in deluge swamps the foe
Rivers of iron pouring breaches,
With bare a halt-less battle-rush to go;
“Let’s Bremen seize
As soon as possible
Ike pondering agrees, “that won’t be much trouble,
But then Berlin in hell-bent drive
You think must be our standard?”
“I do,” said Monty, “to arrive
Before Stalin has landed,
Immoveable, for years to thrive
Proud, encamp’d & pander’d –
If they reach Berlin first they’ll only be
A wall across whole of Germany
A start! they heard, from left to right,
The first great salvo fire,
In massive might, “But listen, Dwight,
However things transpire
To beat these Nazi bastards, Britain has lost her empire.
Diepholz Airfirld
April 20th
1945
Hitler’s Birthday
The forests burn from Dresden as far as Berlin itself.
The earth is cracked as if in an inferno,
As if in an inferno the clay smoulders
Semen Gudzenko
Entomb’d in the sad swansong of his time,
Arcanum Fuhrerbunker, quetzal claws,
As geocentric wolkenkuck-kuck-sheim,
Projects the acute virtues of his cause;
While strangers wage
The Wars he brought to Earth
In this Aegyptian cage they’ll celebrate his birth.
Tho’ across him hangs a shadow
He invokes the ‘Good old days,’
“For he’s a jolly good fellow!”
The sober jamboree raise,
Soon complexion yields to sallow,
By him but one soul stays…
His little siren, the lovely Miss Braun…
He orders scorched Earth policy by phone.
He exhales with the exstasi
Of fearsome syphilis,
“For without me this Germany
Must certainly perish…”
Outside the comfort of those rooms stretch’d bleak necropolis.
Berlin
April 20th
1945
The Betrayal of Goering
Bitter winter, you crackle your fire
Winter, you consume the woods, the roofs
Winter, you slash and burn
Franco Fortini
Beneath the colour films of glory days,
Clad in woman’s garb, flicking thro’ a rail
Of old masters, Goering churn’d in a daze,
What future now? The vision, once so fair
Plunges despond,
‘Sic transit gloria
Mundi,’ his robes now donn’d, summons old Sofia
Who listens writ down, pen in hand
A telegram, by fraction;
“My Fuhrer, with your final stand
You’ll lose freedom of action,
Therefore, I shall assume command
Hearing no reaction
From you by 10 PM, as settl’d on
The 29th of June in forty-one.”
Said Sofia, “Are you sure, sir?
This might not go down well…”
“Whatever curses I’ll incur,
I’m already in Hell…”
Then gazed he on the valley troughs where evening shadows fell.
Obersalzburg
April 23rd
1945
The Betrayal of Himmler
He’d come to Earth with a hole in his heart,
Then found a way to make that hole expand
With alchemy had set himself apart,
Unwilling now to share the final stand
He reaches out,
To Folke Bernadotte,
Alternate paths to tout, they meet to hear the plot.
“Hitler is finish’d,” he began,
Drain’d of all vital power
Will die, now, any day – better plan
Europa’s future this dark hour
Without him, I can sway Japan…
So, with Eisenhower
Could meet, & bring peace to the Western World?”
Then manic-eye’d abuse Herr Himmler hurl’d,
“Then with one heart we’ll face the beast
The Bolsheviks have form’d,
Whose seed increas’d, whose breed releas’d,
Who from the east have swarm’d!”
“Of this,” says Bernadotte, “I promise Dwight wall be inform’d.”
Lubeck
April 24th
1945
Making Traitors
We are sons of the same mother
The same origin and kind
Like two joined pines
Vasile Alecsandri
With the imminence of oblivion
Heaving on his soul like a shadow,
With babblechat still spitting attrition,
This ‘man,’ whose very blood the broth of snow,
Sits down to read
A batch of telegrams,
Amongst them one did feed his egowolf the lambs.
At first he unresponsive drew,
Droop’d, then, earlobes, whispering’
Bormann insisting its a coup,
Traitors waiting to play king,
Into a fiery cage then flew
Der Fuhere, furies ring
All thro the Bunker on a daemons roar,
Then silence, then a whisper, “then the war
Is lost, but here I shall remain
& die in Berlin’s guts,
With open vein the Reich soon slain,
Death by a thousand cuts…”
The great trapdoors of history upon his chapter shuts.
Fuhrerbunker
April 25th
1945
Wounded Hearts
Verify every fear. But there is warmth
In this sudden desire to sleep,
To surrender to our common condition
Phillis Levin
Time, the devourer of every nation,
Some might say millennia, some a year
Having crept upon incastelation,
Has Hitler caught in sunless dungeon drear;
Twas Goering first
Now Himmler, too, betrays
The cause – both names he curs’d, where once was love & praise.
“As traitors must be death condemn’d
This Reichmarshal’s archest crime,
Was to assume I’d met my end
Before fate’s allotted time,
Now party membership suspend
For all who share the slime,
Of their vile station – Felelein is here…”
“Yes, Fuhrer…” “bring him to me…” – with a tear
Interrogations brusque fist halts
With sentence of death’s swift
Scythe – gun unbolts, its bullet jolts
The head as heels uplift,
Of Himnmler’s grinning adjutant, whose death was like a gift.
Fuhrerbunker
April 27th
1945
Veteran
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride & joy,
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder
Piantadosi & Bryan
Teethsinking hoarfrost left Siberia,
Coating the country of the whining shout,
Floating from volksempfanger receiver
Whom secret sniggerings call Goebell’s snout;
A call to arms;
“For Fuhrer, land & God,
Leave factories & farms, embrace vaterlandstod.”
Emerg’d Wolfgang with decision,
He should defend his city,
The sacrifice of World War One –
Incalculable pity –
Must something mean, a gun’s a gun,
Trenchtrain’d ability
Against the French & English felt ingrain’d,
Yes, he shall fight while breath in him remain’d.
Eating kohlsuppe from a mess tin,
Wolfgang clean’d spectacles,
Thro’ flames & din the foe rush’d in
Remembering the drills
He points & fires his panzerfaust – tank kills, blood spills, old thrills!
Berlin
April 25th
1945
Death of Il Duce
Gone is all that former glory
Relics of it ever glow
In the colors of the rainbow
Akaki Tsereteli
As paths of glory lead but to the grave,
On haunted men past deeds a heavy load,
Beside the beauty of the Como wave
Rough partisans blockade the convoy road;
Suspicions storm’d!
Amid the gen’ralry,
Luftwaffe uniform’d, dirty Mussolini!
After a brief & angry trial
Weeping Ceasar swiftly shot,
Then driven from that Alpine pile
To be strung up at a spot
Where hungry subjects could revile
His corpse as it did rot…
Piss’d on & spat at & hurl’d with abuse,
Full twenty years of torments letting loose.
She steps into Loreto square
Next to a cursing nun,
Her angry stare turn’d to a glare,
She aims a stranger’s gun
& shoots that bastard man five times, once for each murder’d son.
Milan
April 29th
1945
Death of Der Fuhrer
Then thy dead engine & thy broken wings
Drooped through the arc & passed in fire,
A wreath of smoke – a breathless exaltation
DC Scott
Determin’d not Il Duce’s fate to share,
He sets to his own life unrepentant
From power’s height unto a dream despair,
A dictator dictates his testament;
Herr Hitler hiss’d
(His customary mode),
“Global Jewry resist! Uphold the racial code!”
After simple ceremony
Two true lovers proved as one,
But one hour of matrimony
‘Til her husband clutch’d his gun
& stepp’d into eternity…
She, swallowing poison,
Plants tender kisses on his fingertips,
“My darling!” last words slip from dying lips.
Men paus’d awhile before the sight,
Dowsing them in petrol,
Coupl’d alight, firedrakes in flight,
O Viking funeral,
A captain of a sinking ship, a king lost in battle.
Berlin
Mayday
1945
(AA) Canto 63: Victory in Japan
**********************************
The unknown weapon is radiant lightning, a devastating messenger of death, which turned all the members of the Vrishni & Andhaka clans to ashes. Their whitened bodies became unrecognizable. Those who escaped lost their hair & nails – as if eaten by insects. Pottery shattered without cause, birds turned white. In a very short time food became poisonous, the lightning subsided & turn’d into fine ash
Vyasa
Flight of Eichmann
The air is cool and night is coming.
The calm Rhine courses its way.
The peak of the mountain dazzles
Heinrich Heine
As Messerschmitts motor thro’ morning sky
In their desperate efforts for safety,
One weary man with yet wearier sigh
Looked low upon dear burning Germany;
No sun, no birds,
Just smoke, just hate, just hell,
No more those mystic words, no more Der Fuhrer’s spell.
Down there… a soldier saw the plane
& wish’d that he flew within,
Instead, manhandl’d off the train
By avenging Konstantin,
Black memories flood-boiling brain,
That scar brought back the sin…
For what this slug did to his Dosia
He drew his knife & slew Gerhart Buscher.
Up there… Eichmann went on in flight,
Touch’d down by sultry port;
By dead of night, with nerves afright,
He boarded a small boat,
For distant Buenos Aires bound, diamonds about his throat.
Barcelona
May 4th
1945
VE Day
nurses with level eyes, & chaste
in long starched dresses, move
Amongst the maimed, giving love
Patricia Ledward
Round Fence & Barley, Altham & Burnley,
Bonfires ablaze, day spreading fine & fair,
Towards Pendle’s shepherd solitary,
Sylphs escort joyous mafficking on air;
Gleeful Sumners,
Free from their weary load,
Join the festive numbers flocking to Manny Road.
T’was the greatest of street parties
(Since the Golden Jubilee),
Flags of all the Allied contrees
Fluttering in victory,
Fun, feastings & festivities
As life’s resurgency
Spreads colours lighting up those party hats
Worn both by peasants & by diplomats.
They’d suffer’d War fer six rude years,
Life’s problems growing plump
Thro’ tides of tears, thro’ childish fears,
Dead sons & Tommy’s stump,
The Sumners battled on… young Maggie rubs her baby-bump!
Burnley
May 8th
1945
Death of a Reichsfuhrer
evil:
by me & to me –
squelches inside me
John Rodker
There is a scent of lilac in the scene,
The birds are twittering, how sweet the song,
Hosts of soft buds lighten the valley green,
Bloom, birds & bees float back where they belong;
Some scrawny, short,
Schutzstaffel Mongoloid,
No longer mustache sports, shav’d smooth to truth avoid
“Are you Himmler?” he deft defies
Gentle interrogation,
When stripp’d & search’d, the doctor tries
A small dental inspection,
Dull glimmers prise the narrow eyes,
Beacons of decision…
Crushing a small capsule of cyanide,
This secret death namore his teeth shall hide.
The Fowler died & with him went
The sad wyghts of Wansee,
Whose wails had sent the innocent
Unto that twisted tree,
Where they would hang from countless nooses’ cruellest misery.
Lueneburg
May 25th
1945
Death of Basho
Burning my house to keep
them out, you sowed wind. Hear it blow!
Soon you reap
John Beecher
The messenger sprinted across the sand,
Baring the loss of the Yamamoto,
Before the noble lord of his command…
As Basho’s senses stirr’d by Bushido;
Unsheathing blade,
Taut fingers grip’s shark skin,
No longer, now, afraid… he drew his charges in.
Cheeks grubby rubb’d rouge-powder red,
Reflected the bloody glow,
Flaring upon each soldier’s head
When sever’d from it’s torso…
Surrounded by his loyal dead
It was his turn to go –
Smiling the gravest grimace, Seppuku,
Across his side his father’s sword slow drew.
Dragonfly thron’d on lotus claw,
Sitting by bonsai tree,
Intestines pour, white waves of gore,
Honour’d Hari Kari!
Escorts the soul thro’ mystic realms of encloak’d in chivalrie.
Mount Shuri
June 21st
1945
Okinawa
Take you the folk of the Earth in pay,
With bars of gold your ramparts lay,
Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow
Ernst Lissauer
The greatest armada in history,
Far from Hawaii’s indecorous day,
Tho’ besieged by swarms of Kamakaze
Deem’d nothing but the, ‘Fleet That Came To Stay;’
Each fit GI
Surged forth victorious,
All-times supported by his forty carriers.
From sanguine path to rocky ridge
Defenders heap’d in piles,
Foxholes, fatigue & foliage,
Rallentandoid lizard isles,
The Japanese prepare the bridge
From life to death, stockpiles
Of poison wide swallow’d, down cave wall slides,
Those wasted souls, so many suicides!
A man survives, his poison weak,
His head a sobbing strain,
So took a peak, “your name,” throat-creak
“Chiyo…” “are you in pain?”
“I’m not…” come, let’s surrender, all this suicide’s insane.
Saigon
July 15
1945
A New Bomb
Westward the course of empire takes its way ;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day
Bishop Berkeley
Carefree strolling thro’ the Sans Soucci,
Poetgarden of the playboy Kaisers,
Relaxing by the royal Jungfernsee,
Stalin deeper strategies devises
For Molotov’s
Superb post-conflict plans;
Schloss Cecilienhoff’s grand gathering of clans
Conjoins occidental chieftans
Together, tongue-tied, in cheer,
Those truth-charged comments of Patton’s
Barge free about Truman’s ear;
“Why should we stop, when damn Russians
We could, too, also clear!”
The Allies seem distinctly divided,
Cautiously all converses conguided.
With Poland strangely ink-shaded,
A time for frankness come,
Truman traded glances, chaunt said,
“We have forgeth new bomb,
Intended to smite low Japan,” fresh devils beat the drum.
Potsdam
August 1st
1945
Royal Awakening
I wished to die last night. I wished to die.
But then I feared, for I was alone,
The darkness seem’d to me an ocean high
Inger Hagerup
Calls for unconditional surrender
Emanate from a stately Potsdam room,
Tojo pleads, “Terms too harsh, Lord Emperor…
The nations honour vital as her doom.”
Majestic, “No!”
Then Hirohito sigh’d,
“The time has come to grow, too many sons have died.”
While Tojo slid away to brood
At the Yasukini shrine,
The Emperor explor’d his mood
With a glass of Saki wine,
His vision ev’ry vista view’d
From Saipan to the Rhine;
Events & forces spiral from control,
A broken fortress at an empires fall.
He sent out deep meditations
Upon his fastest steeds,
“Fly, fly my sons, fly to Russians,
Fly to the Swiss, the Swedes,
Let peace rush round the world once more as water does the reeds!”
Tokyo
August 4th
1945
Nuclear Dawn
The bomb burts like a flower,
& grew upwards under the sun.
And men stood far off, & wondered
Angela M Clifton
On flexing orthoptic Truman insists,
Despite Japan’s offers of perfect peace,
B29 whines thro’ dense morning mists,
A break in the clouds… the new bomb’s release;
Their mission done
Men turn & bank away,
Flash brighter than the sun washes th’Enola Gay.
Nippon’s fair skies were ripp’d apart
By an awesome sphere of fire,
Hotter than Sol’s star-boilant heart,
Birth of the new messiah,
No brush of Pre-Raphaelite art
Could paint this awful pyre,
As in horrific instant Balrog comes
Bestride ten raging trillion atoms.
Cometh the cloud of fungal shape,
No nat’ral law could halt
Its gruesome rape, a cityscape
Spectres of Hebrew salt,
Forms leprous, red-raw populace, or shadows in asphalt.
Hiroshima
August 6th
1945
Knockout Blow
O cry it across the chasm
Of ages, how we struck
In the atom’s smithy a sword
Stanley Snaith
The shockwaves of that terrible whirlwind
Tornadoes form, F5 morality,
But, come the dusts, Democracy hath pinn’d
His badges on the breasts of Liberty,
Close must the clash,
How can Japan fight on,
When in a single flash whole cityscapes are gone.
“This morning, sire, we were attack’d…”
“Which place?” “Hiroshima,
As of yet they’ve made no contact…”
Sadness fell’d the Emperor,
“How can this be, the city lack’d
For naught, I remember…”
Came later in the day the stunning truth,
When wept he for the old ones & the youth,
When holding head in trembling hands
He rued all he had done,
& understands the world demands
The setting of his sun,
“We must make peace, prepare the press, releasing my decision.”
Tokyo
August 6th
1945
(AA) Gl’Immortali VII
When any institution, whether it be an institution of government, or any other kind of an institution, embarks on an evil course, a man has a moral responsibility not to assist it in any way, manner or fashion to carry out any part of its program
Thomas Dodd
Assault of Hell
Each time the bugle shimmers
the dead, we like to fancy, stir a little.
We care for them still. They matter
Vincent O’Sullivan
Some say the descent to Hell is easy,
But not if harken’d from divinest spheres,
Fine-linen’d Jove drove his wool-white army,
Steps heralded by stythneaf trumpeteers;
Cerberus chain’d,
Crossing the Acheron,
A horde of angels drain’d the cess-pool Stygian!
The Nether Regions’ cack & piss
Bore Babababagorath,
Pleiades sever’d with a hiss,
Skulls & carcass clear’d from path,
The Daemon hordes defending Dis
Suffer’d the Holy Wrath,
Unleash’d by the Ark of the Covenant,
On to the Phlegethon those pure souls went.
Balrog detects Satanus face
Is laced with ancyent fear,
“Desperate race, at fearsome pace
The Hosts of Heaven near!”
Claw raises gourd… “But my side of the bargain hold I here.”
Pandemonium
Gates of Asgard
For lo ! the same old myths that made
The early ‘stage successes,’
Still ‘hold the boards,’ & still are played
Austin Dobson
As sword-force from east, from west, converges
Upon goliath show of matchless force,
What champion, from mass’d ranks, emerges
With diamond spurs, riding a plated horse;
“I shall surprise
The keeper of the bridge,
Heimdall rais’d up his eyes to that shining image.
As Arthur roar’d, the born again
King of his dominions,
Who drove the Goths from Aquitaine,
Slew the Irish Fenians,
Who drew the blade no mark could stain
That the Mycyneans
In desert forges of Arabia
Created, & then nam’d Excalibur!
Heimdall was slain, as down he fell,
Tho’ end flew rapid near,
He blew the knell, the warning bell
All Asgard there could hear,
Horn tumbling from his bleeding lips, blank look, a blinkless tear…
Bifrost
Last Battle
For there’s nae luck about the house,
There’s nae luck at a’
There’s little pleasure in the house
Jean Adam
The foe advancing thro’ the Muspellsheim,
Loki intrigues with Odin to fight on,
Demagorgon withdraws into Nilfheim,
Its beastly banqueting is almost done;
Valkyries sang
A rare Bragian lay,
For those in the Thrudvang’s magnificent array.
They stood upon that oak-fringed field
With powerful, bulging thighs,
A sparkling sea of swan-helm shield
& determin’d, narrow eyes,
The king of countless trumpets pee’d
Into the Aesir skies,
Slow darkening unto dead scenes of night,
Odin seem’d jaded in the faded light.
They took their places cross the vale,
Their meet with death had come,
In blew a gale, as slow as snail
Was heard the kettledrum,
The battlelines drew daggers, Uncle Sam unflagg’d his thumb.
Valhalla
Japanoeument
It has been raining, but the rain
is done & the children kept home
have begun opening their doors
Robley Wilson
From a jubilant Americana
Departed Hino, snugly nestl’d upon
The back of an eagle, whom together
Sent by Sam upon one final mission
From leg to leg
They’ll reach an Asian peak,
Some Fire Dragon’s egg firm gripp’d by sky-steed beak.
They flew to where the foe did dwell
As an egg drops with a crack
A Dragon steps out of its shell
At once went on the attack
A rush of talonries pell mell
That broke the Wyvern’s back
& with a roar of fiery hurricane
The Kraken slipp’d beneath the blazing mane.
As Bishamon made mendicant
How humbly, he, entreats;
The arrogant turn’d suppliant
When life’s dream life defeats
We bend to beg benevolence, calamity entreats!
Mount Fujiyama
Humble Aggressor
You are the only vow I keep,
A name I do not name, an oath
I will not take, but shall not break
Henry Reed
War, the province of kings to bring about
& the duty of the gods to end it,
Is betroth’d to peace, but peace with a doubt,
For chance the mere nature of her gambit;
Eight words suffice,
Wood wisdom of the elf,
‘By war’s great sacrifice the world redeems itself.’
As seraph-winging victory
Made sail over Asgard seas
There subsided a fresh beauty,
Blossoming with birds & bees,
Thor’s e’er maturing son, Modi,
Sweeps weeping to his knees,
Arms rais’d, promises his fathers father,
“We shall be wise, always & forever.”
Bishamon becomes mendicant,
How humbly he entreats,
The arrogant soon suppliant
When life the dream defeats,
Bent to begging benevolence like whores on silken sheets.
Mount Fujiyama
Twilight of the Gods
Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack
AE Housman
How gruesome is the Gotterdammerung,
Fought in the name of gracious Liberty,
Odin weeps for his heroes, dead so young,
& dabbing tears, flyting, turns to Loki;
“Wherefore art the
Armies of Hell?” a smile –
The enfant terrible turns back into Belial.
As flew away that treach’rous cur
In a cachinnating cloud,
Rose the call for his surrender,
Odin barks refusals proud,
Fanfaronading Valhalla,
Moon dons a blood-red shroud,
Whence from the skies rain stars & satellite,
The dense one slain & with him drains the fight.
As Michael, George, Zorya, Pyerun,
Ice King, Volodomyr,
Sam, Gwyddion & proud Gryphon,
Took leave of the Aesir,
Whose land & lives behind a rising ocean disappear.
Asgard
Satanic Stand
But you cannot see the real me
My face is masked with pretence and obedience
And my smiles tell you that I care
Konai Helu Thaman
By Geryons flank’d, & vile Barbariccas,
Blade of unholy fire in talon’d hand,
Midst Malebolge’s rolling bolgias
Satanus, with his firm, shall make their stand;
Tho’ forces thinn’d,
They Seraphim first foil,
With swift, sulphuric wind malignant & aboil.
Saint Michael at the Dragon flies
& chains the grand betrayer,
Jove flings starlight from divine eyes
At Mars, whom, in terror,
Drops to knees, flops, groans & sighs,
Always & forever,
His martial age seems over with the guts
Worm-oozing from a thousand bleeding cuts.
The Devil swivels in his seat,
Hits Balrog with a smile,
“Odin’s defeat total, complete
Death, treachery & guile,
& honour has been satisfied… Balrog, the promis’d file?”
Pandaemonium
Defeating the Devil
Lord, these are Thine! With soldierly tread
Without a tremor they go their way,
Singing a hymn they march ahead
Lucian Bottow Watkins
Perhaps a year, perhaps a century,
Swerv’d battle with many an inroad gored,
‘Til all those heroes of the heresy
Were dealt full low, now Heaven is restored;
But for two ghouls –
Balrog & Satanus,
Fed on the fat of fools, sporting abhorious!
Saint Michael, at the Dragon, flies,
& chains the grand betrayer,
Jove flings fine light from divine eyes
Toward first flesh destroyer,
Beneath which death-swipes groans & sighs;
Always & forever
The Age of War was over with the guts
White-spilling from ten thousand bleeding cuts.
Jove turns to his great enemy,
Whom of those great wings shorn,
“I once loved thee, but… no mercy!
Of Eden quite forlorn,
Ye shall be cast into the pit & there become unborn!”
Divinnia
Sukhavati
Heart of the Earth beat as one,
and all the winged creatures, creatures
of the waters and the land
Homeri Aridjis
Jove flung Satanus into his abyss,
The pure perdition of nihility,
Whose penal fires all pucker up & kiss,
The promised prince into lost memory;
The deadly jaw
Of some Venus fly-trap,
The Devil’s dying roar drown’d out by thunderclap.
With this the happy Gold Age dawns
For Adam’s race in raptures,
A seraph each of them adorns –
Affluent, voluptuous –
Then blows the hallelujah horns
As numbers numberless
Uprisen from the rivers of the soul
That flows thro’ time & flows thro’ one & all.
Tho’ men were once Neanderthals,
They’ll come to surf the skies,
When fate fulfills, our good angels
In all bright spirits rise,
O race of super energies! O dashing enterprise!
New Jerusalem
(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
Mumble Words 