(AA) Canto 68: Mont Saint-Jean
**************************************
A king is for glorious deeds, not long life
Magnus Barelegs
D’Erlon’s Attack
I belong to you and call you mine
like my mother whom I did not choose
but nonetheless love
Conceição Lima
As low, dense powder clouds drifted away,
The bands struck up, notes melting the mile,
Juggernauts launch, & slowly made their way
Across the valley in the same old style;
War’s theatre
Rips with the sounds of drum;
Rrum-da, rrum-dum…rrum-da, rrubba-dabba-dum-dum!
As mile-wide lines of skirmisher
Drive the keen sharpshooters back
From behind them flaunting terror,
Five thousand from front to back,
Pass into the smoke & sulphur,
Press glorious attack
Upon the British, ignoble retreat
Must to them come, & consummate defeat.
A blaze of muskets strafed the flanks
Flung out from La Haye Saint,
From cannon clanks ploughs, thro’ the ranks,
Balls of screaming iron,
Regardless, dauntless, of their loss, men joyously march’d on.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
13:40
Death of Picton
Doing, a filthy pleasure is, & short:
& done, we straight repent us of the sport:
Let us not then rush blindly on unto it
Petronius
Below the ridge, in nervous ribaldry,
Gin rations allaying a real fear,
Ready to die, the Highlander stands steady,
Eyes on the crest, appears the Grenadier!
Fiannan roar
Defies the glide of France,
Whose tartan & claymore piped into an advance.
As driving on those men he led,
“At ’em you drunken rascals!”
A lucky shot pierc’d Picton’s head,
From his mount he slowly falls,
But still that regiment in red
Threw forwards musketballs,
As bayonets are thrust into the charge,
”Get into ‘em!” bellows their foul-mouth’d sarge.
Little do we know of courage
’Til battle’s lust takes oer,
With fearful rage our fight we rage
Altho’ we know not for,
To kill a man, be slain by him, grim sacrament of war.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
13:45
Scots Greys
O what is Death? ‘Tis life’s last shore,
Where vanities are vain no more!
Where all pursuits their goal obtain
Leigh Richmond
Lord Uxbridge watch’d the battle’s lethal course,
Observ’d the gravitas grown unsteady,
Spurr’d to face his fine phalanx of grey horse,
Order’d their sabers from rest to ready;
The bugle’s peel
Cancels all distraction,
Perform’d a perfect wheel, forth into the action
The earth-thumping hoofbeats propel
Centaurs of derring & dash,
Bloodstirring the Britisher’s yell
As into the Gaul they crash,
How many a gallant foe fell
Neath scything sabre slash
& the hooves of the stamping stallion –
Grave panic grips the forces of D’Erlon.
With the capture of their standard
Brave Frenchmen flee like sheep,
Fully routed or led founder’d,
Dead or afeign Death’s sleep,
While nigh three thousand prisoners lament the lives they keep.
The Fields of Waterloo
14:00
Sanguine Stalemate
I go up onto the rocky earth-hill summit,
Till my horses are sick with the effort;
My charioteer is poorly now
Chou South
Drunk on rum & bloodshed the Grey’s charg’d on;
No voice nor blast could halt the lusty heart
Careering round each small yet deadly gun,
Wreaking revenge for friends they’d blown apart;
Heroic fray,
Fought in that danger zone,
Skulk’d, safety, far away as panting mounts are blown.
He watch’d as tho’ struck by thunder,
A terrible sight to see,
Then cast the Polish Lancer
Against milling cavalry,
With the promise of no quarter
They spear’d the enemy,
Slaying spent stragglers with furious zest,
Oft times twenty lances punctur’d the chest.
The plain was litter’d with the slain
Like shrapnel from a bomb,
While fresh cocaine sped to his brain
He rode back to Rossome,
Scream’d, “Where the fuck is Grouchy?” & “Where are these English from!”
Rossome
June 18th 1815
14:30
Wellington’s Caution
He’d dreamt he was a shaft of wood
By axehead topp’d, his foes to fight
To chop off heads & branches smite!
Jaan Kaplinski
After such titanic surge of battle
The field lay taken by an eerie calm,
But for the musketry’s endless rattle
Rising from the blazing Hougoumont farm;
Across the ground
Ten thousand corpses strewn,
Aft’ that first frightful round e’en the stout-hearted swoon.
A young ensign upbraved the crest,
Peer’d into the smoky haze,
Saw tranquil horses, riderless,
On bleeding leg-stumps graze,
Watch’d silent, white & motionless
Whilst wounded Death’s knell raise –
‘Til BOOM! thro’ the air a cannonball cuts,
Punctures his belly, out trails white worm guts.
The ridge becomes a smoking pyre,
Armies turn to spaces,
“To dodge this fire we shall retire
Back a hundred paces!”
Breathing relief, that hot-spot left, war’s pain on strain’d faces.
The Ridge of Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
15:30
Ney’s Attack
I have seen in the hunt
The pulse of rent flesh;
Seen the fingers of Time
Mary Eliza Fullerton
Half-a-mile from the eyes of his master
Ney watch’d the scarlet enemy retreat,
Giving hordes of cavalry the order,
”Come claim the glory of England’s defeat;
In consequence
The Confederacy
Must offer no defence to French supremacy.”
Tween La Haye Saint & Hougoumont
The flawless Cuirassier,
His golden breastplate gleaming dun,
His horse-pistol & sabre,
Came on, came slow & calmly on,
Some sea-wave of summer –
A long, glittering line of man & ???
Emanating grandeur’s will to s!??
“Shoot at the horses!” came the cry,
Down fell many a steed,
A human sigh dwelt in the eye
Of our most noble breed,
Man’s heavenly companions dying hell-bent for his greed.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
16:00
Rocks of Empire
Weeping another’s death, my grief atones
No whit. All forms of human doom
Arouse but transient thoughts of joy or gloom
Jan Kochanowski
They stood about the shot-tatter’d colours,
Driven to the limits of endurance,
Defending their ground ‘gainst the warriors
Driven by the spirits of ancyent France;
Without a flinch
They took all France could throw,
Nor yield a single inch to the relentless foe.
Each wave of brave sabres withstood
By the savage squares of red,
Melting into the Belgian mud,
Courtyards litter’d with the dead,
Between each foam-fleck’d horseman flood
Descended deadly dread,
For black balls from BOOM-BOOMING batteries
Cut carnage in swathes thro’ the companies.
With each assault dwindl’d the foe,
Their dead litter’d the plain,
The weighty blow did drain & slow
Tho’ still they came again,
‘Til the last spectres of this ghastly danse macabre wane.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
17:30
Farmhouse Fall
The two God’s creatures
Fight odiously.
They fight vehemently
Gueorgui Konstantinov
With Wellington press’d hard to distraction
D’Erlons rallied remnants swarm round this farm
In the midst of a furious action,
Show contemptuous recklessness tward harm;
From shot-pock’d walls
The Kings German Legion
Pour’d streams of musketballs into the blue ocean.
As la rage steam-soak’d in despair
Hurls men at the bold defence,
Stone, cold fire of the legionnaire
Splutters to vanquish’d silence,
‘Twas such a murderous affair
The French claim recompense –
Bayonets plunge into wounded soldiers,
“Take zat for being such good defenders!”
On the key to the position
The Tricolor waved free,
The battle won! The division
Of Wellington’s army
Must soon be follow’d by the Brussels march & VICTORY!
La Haye Saint
June 18th 1815
18:00
The Killing Time
heart is dead, no longer is there prayer
on my lips; all strength is gone, and
hope is no more
Hayyim Nahman Bialik
The French advance their cannon down the slopes
& up again, where halting they commence
A constant fire, in which hot blaze lie hopes
Of victory & tigrish recompense;
Now is the time
When England’s best are slain
Cull’d savage & sublime under a silver rain.
As canister’d shells macerate,
Pulping flesh to mushy pink,
The Iron Duke now felt his fate
A-tottering on the brink,
No further minute could he wait,
No seconds left to think,
So marshalling all forces of the line
He fortifies the vital centre-spine.
As every man, & everyone,
Was taking turns to die,
Palladian the sinking sun
Diminishes the sky,
Brave Wellington gazed gravely on with grim, determined eye.
Mont St Jean
June 18th 1815
18:10
(AA) Canto 69: La Belle Alliance
**************************************
The next worst thing after a battle lost is a battle won
The Duke of Wellington
Echoes of War
Woman has two feet
To climb toward her dreams,
To stand together, firm
Chiranan Pitpreecha
Miltering from that stomach-searing stench,
Hooves thudded by each busy surgeon’s blade,
As battle’s grisly carnage, & the French,
Abandon’d by a cavalry brigade
Quite cowardly,
Bursting thro’ those wagons
Of wounded creaking free from death’s ruthless dragons.
On bolting thro’ the Namur Gate,
Grave panic spread like wylde-fire,
Fearful of the forthcoming fate,
For troops of the French Empire
Oft wreak revenge in rabid state –
Those dastards daz’d & dire,
Spread rumors rife, “We’ve heard Napoleon
Has promised two days pillage to his men.”
She gazes toward the rumbling sound,
Saw battles in her head,
She, wistful, found a spot of ground
& helpless there she led,
Not knowing if her William was wounded, well or dead.
Brussels
June 18th 1815
18:30
Napoleonic Sunset
I don’t know if the stars rule the world
Or if Tarot or playing cards
Can reveal anything
Fernando Pessoa
From thirsty throats shot a tremendous cheer
For France, the Emperor & Victory!
Faces contorted with pleasure & fear
Like some black Parisian tragedy;
Mountains of dead,
The screams, the smoke, the smell,
The dark, Dantean red that paints this trophied hell.
Ney gallop’d to his emperor,
Prussian shells fell on Rossome,
Face blacken’d with face & powder,
“Sire the time to push has come!”
“Fool! how can I manufacture
Men, where to pluck them from?
Back to battle, there do the best you can,
Spare not the efforts of a single man!”
To secure Plancenoit he threw
The Young Guard from his hand,
Then rode back to the inn to view
The battle’s prospect grand,
Sky painted black with evenfall, by smoke & ashes fann’d.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
18:45
Imperial Guard
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the blugeonings of chance
W.E. Henley
He led them upon the glorious way,
His soldiers, of the Middle, of the Old,
Once more handed the Fate of France to Ney,
More precious than his weight in Bourbon gold;
The grand guardsmen
March musically as one,
“Forwards my brave children, a Bruxelles mes enfants.”
They march’d with splendour’s cool élan
Onto the field of glory,
The power surging thro’ each man
To shape Europe’s destiny,
Brave bandsmen foremost in the van
Stirring strain’d melody,
They swept in solemn & savage silence,
Th’espirit-de-corps carv’d from deadly violence.
On march’d th’immortal sons of France,
Men who built an empire,
The eminence of their advance
Plough’d to a muddy mire,
Two columns paced into the fray straf’d by a galling fire.
The Ridge of Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
19:45
Routing the Guard
To the end they were brave
To the end they were faithful
To the end they were similar
Zbigniew Herbert
“Now Maitland! Now’s your time!” Swiftly upsprung
One long, scarlet line of grimy faces,
With one thundering volley forward flung
Murd’rous musketry at twenty paces;
Death’s wind was blown,
Driving men to their knees,
Strange field of human corn all swaying in the breeze.
“Up Guards & at ’em!” Arthur cried,
& Wellesley’d to the murder,
Where brave blues stood fresh terrified
Of death by English slaughter,
The bayonet, coldly applied,
Adds to the disorder
A cowering coward yelps a wild shout –
As one the beaten heroes turn & rout.
“La Garde recule,” ” Impossible!”
“Nous sommes traits!” the cry,
Their spirits fell, broken the spell,
To France these Frenchmen fly,
So cruel & bitter tasting tears trickle from each proud eye.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 18th 1815
20:00
The Soul of France
Oh, noble grief in the verses free,
Which sound and resound so sincere,
Will you move the feelings of men
Migjeni
Sheltering in the centre of a square,
His loyal First view their leader blankly,
Who, with the terrible rage of despair,
Stand to save the honour of the army;
Outbreaths a sigh
Retiring in all haste,
He left his men to die as on the Russian waste.
Befitting the call of glory,
Steep’d in mystique ’til the last,
Like islands in a raging sea,
Screaming comrades streaming past,
Swarm’d by hussars & infantry
Fought they fierce & steadfast –
Freddie Johnstone pleads them to surrender,
Dead silence feeds the defiant, “Merde!”
“La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!”
Twelve cannon pack’d with case
Administer the coup de grace,
Death’s scythe swept thro’ the space,
The soul of the Grand Armee duly vanish’d from Earth’s face.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
20:45
Happy Meeting
Promise of hope, a bright spark for tomorrow,
That’s who the angel did say was to come;
How can this be when the world’s so uncertain
Bruce Levitan
Tho’ the battle won & Europa saved
Death doubles his efforts as night draws in,
The mortal right to mercy clearly waiv’d,
Frenchmen hack’d down in droves for kinsmen sin;
In joyous rows
Their vanquishers advance,
As Allied pincers close about the throat of France
They meet with a gladsome greeting,
Victorious embrace share,
“My prince, that was a damn’d nice thing!”
“Oui, mon duke, une quelle affaire!”
Their triumphant soldiers singing
Stormblasted thro’ the air;
For twenty years the misery of France
Full twenty years of bloody arrogance.
The simple north country farmer
Heard English lyrical,
Crept in terror from the cellar,
Paced his ruin’d castle
Stood forever at the threshfold of a famous battle.
La Belle Alliance
June 18th 1815
21:00
Battle’s End
How some that have died, & some they have left me,
& some are taken from me’ all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces
Charles Lamb
Lone rider cross’d the scene, grave duty done,
Counting the cost of his certain glory,
“Next to a battle lost a battle won
Is the worst thing any captain could see;”
The tears he cry
Whilst whispering wistful,
“I hope to God that I have fought my last battle.”
Mangl’d thousands cover the ground
Like a shipwreck’s rippling sail,
Some dreadful organ piped hell’s sound
While the wounded shriek & wail,
One stumbling, mumbling widow found
Beloved husband pale;
Shadowy ghouls sporting guns, helms & coats
Scavenge for booty, slitting gurgling throats.
Weary the Duke of Wellington,
Bright is the moon & blue,
He trotted on past La Haye Saint
Where one lone eagle flew,
Then glanced his last & turn’d his back on the fields of Waterloo.
Mont Saint-Jean
June 18th 1815
21:30
Broken Dreams
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years !
I am so weary of toil & of tears,-
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain
Elizabeth Akers Allen
How strange that any man escap’d alive
This sorry scene of carnage incarnate,
An epic pool of death in which connive
The sobbing phantoms of a sword-law state;
While bedlam shrieks
Faces shine bright moonbeams
Upon subfuscous freaks erupting amid screams.
As men bellow their Christian hymns
Or beg to end pain, be shot,
Others untangle scrambling limbs
From a stinking horses knot,
The chance of night’s survival slims,
No pennies for the slot;
When one-by-one, as wounded men expire,
Fell ever, ever quieter, Hell’s choir.
As in light sunrise increases,
Unfolds a tragedy,
Broken pieces, choking ceases,
As life’s finality
Still weeps across that field of foes with woeful witcherie.
The Fields of Waterloo
June 19th 1815
06:30
Splendid News
Every church sings its own soft part
In the polyphony of a girl’s choir,
And in the stone arches of the Assumption
Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
The carriage thunder’d oer Westminster bridge –
Eagles poking proudly from it’s window,
Captur’d in the fight for Wellington’s ridge –
To wheel into Whitehall… the horses slow;
Grime-faced major
Brushes the guards aside,
Interrupting dinner, words bursting forth with pride.
“Great & glorious victory!”
Sang Percy to his Regent,
Kneeling upon a bended knee,
“My liberty to present
Twin colours pluck’d with gallantry
From a French regiment;
Representing Napoleon’s downfall!”
Three long hurrahs huzzah’d by one & all.
Trophies display’d to growing throng,
News flew round like lightning,
They skipp’d along awash with song
Singing, “God save the King!”
While wide across the countryside ten thousand church bells ring.
Saint James’ Square
21st June 21st
1815
(AA) Canto 70: Jihad
**************************************
King falcons of Britain, your chief song I fashion
Your chief praise I bear:
I’ll act as your bard, your judge
Your support, it befits me
Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr
Revenge
How transient that lithe-limbed lady’s life,
stooping to sow seedlings, scorched by the sun,
her face plastered with mud and dusty earth
Ukñā Suttantaprījā Ind
The Allies muster clumpetty replies,
Cluster-bombs bash, from stratofortresses,
Big-stinking paths, defenceless from the skies
Ground squadrons groan at their falling forces;
A fierce advance
Against the Taliban,
Who’ll take heroic stance, defending to a man.
Step-by-step the Allies struggle
Thro’ the rugged mountain bar,
Tho’ Taliban have fled Kabul
& battle-scarr’d Kandahar,
All the local warlords huddle
Around Bin Laden’s star,
Hiding in his protective catacoomb,
Glendower of the Tora-Boran gloom.
As every day gun-noises near
Capture draws on closer,
Fresh hopes appear, bereft of fear,
Cautiously Osama
Sped west to Pakistan thro’ the passes of Paktia.
Afghanistan
November
2001
Peace March
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
& give her to the god of storms
OW Holmes
They march’d en masse into the capital;
Made a peacehugging, socialist anthill,
Heavy-hearted with forthcoming battle,
Why would the world unleash war’s terror still?
From age to youth
Human majority
Choose not the dragonstooth of Hell’s hostility.
O world! sweet world! sweet world of mine!
&… billions of others,
Would we not wish a sun to shine
Upon a world of brothers,
Why would ye wish to hear the whine
Of our wailing mothers?
For surely cruel lessons have been learnt
When Prague fell & the streets of Poplar burnt.
I wander silent thro’ the roar
Rumtumbling thro’ the crowd,
“What is life for” “Make tea not war!”
The gentle clamour loud,
The later portions of my task with firmer thought endow’d.
Hyde Park
February 15th
2003
Invasion of Iraq
The ancient tombs lie thicker on the grass;
The new graves encroach even on the highway
Outside the city-wall there is no vacant ground
Tzu-Lan
Saxons have reach’d the beach’d Shatt-al-arab,
Where Tigris & Euphrates stem their flow
Scimitars sharpening for the scarab,
Amicus est tamquam alter ego;
The serpent’s head
Call’d the fight for heaven,
Wielding a gold-plated AK forty-seven.
As when a brave, young Persian Shah
Defied Queen Victoria,
The British Navy sails to spar
Amid the streets of Basra,
With better guns & battlestar
Marches desert soldier,
Joining opening batsmen at the crease
To end the wars with this more perfect peace.
He slipt away into the night
That man men call Hussein,
For from the fight if ye take flight
Ye live to fight again
Like Washington’s irregulars & Wellington’s young Spain.
Baghdad
May
2003
Bombing Madrid
Oh, bring not then the dread report of death,-
Of eyes to loveliness forever sealed,
Of youth that perished as a passing breath
Helena Coleman
Nine hundred & eleven days are pass’d
Since 9-11 thro’ world psyche tore,
Handsome Jihadis waking from repast,
Thrust fundamentalism to the fore;
This is Jihad!
A culture & a cause,
As out of Attobad codewords conduct the Wars.
Another routine, protein day,
As rush hour fast receeded,
“The Christian elite shall pay!”
Was warning wide unheeded,
Both ETA & the IRA
Truly superceded,
Horror striking thro’ the Spanish nation,
Ignite pack’d trains at Atocha station.
Within a week the cell is found,
Some dirty hideaway,
Arm’d police surround the plot of ground,
Young Arabs kneel & pray,
Then blow themselves to kingdom come as martyrs pass away.
Legures
March
2003
Regime’s End
A hawk’s eye
Penetrates to the core
On a hot afternoon
David Rubadiri
Pursuing the ‘most wanted’ deck of cards,
Two pictures caught, their lavishlarge mansion
Reduced, their father’s kingdom torn to yards
The focal point of the world’s attention;
Four-hour fire-fight
Odai & now Qusai
Are finally in sight, mark’d by the sniper’s eye.
Only the Ace of Spades remains,
The very ultimate goal,
First target of the Allied pains
Ten short minutes from his fall;
Namore the tyrant hydra reigns,
They’ve found him in a hole,
Without an army & without a plan,
Dishevel’d & ignoble… an old man.
They led up him up into the light,
Glanc’d he ‘cross the river
Where shines the sight, fabulous, bright,
Spinal spinning shiver,
Best of his golden palaces commandeer’d forever.
Tikrit
September
2003
Suicide Bomber
I will rise
with the soul of the earth
I will run
Moechtar Awang
As Al-Jazeera shows brave Muslims bleed
& Mosques of Leeds incite a deep passion,
Hasib abandons the young British breed –
Pop music, hedonism & fashion –
For Pakistan
Nursery of Islam,
For Allah, the Quran & elevate Imam.
“We are watchmen of the pure way,
Guardians of the martyrs,
Sons of brave Hossein Fahmideh,
Drinkers of God’s elixirs,
Death bringing to the USA
& all non-believers,
With weapons unassailable & good
Defending faith with our last drops of blood!”
On long flight home the martyr sees
Flowers cloud round heaven;
Customs a breeze, drops to his knees
At the railway station,
Life amplified for one young man plotting devastation.
Manchester
2004
Testamundi Imperatrix
The birth canal is yours
Either to open or to close.
Open it you must, dear elders
Hermana Ramarui
A poet born in Burnley, who’da thought
Of such a thing – he’d try an epic too!
Completely independent & self-taught,
Finding his art’s traditions in the zoo,
His wild heart freed
Her white wings, to obtain
This Pegasus, this steed, his precious Sylvermane.
With herbal teas & verbal tricks,
Thro’ days of molten sapphire,
He fashion’d the Imperatrix,
His ode to Britain’s empire,
& setting in its closing bricks
He read it by the fire,
A wattle church, but now what cathedral
‘Cross mind’s eye darts, & starts with a battle.
First fourteen thousand lines were done,
Among them had reviv’d
Napoleon & Wellington,
In verses keen incis’d,
Melodic’lly, & phantasmagorically contriv’d.
Burnley
2004
A New Blitz
Why came I so untimely forth
Into a world which wanting thee
Could entertain us with no worth
Edmund Waller
As Londoners rose glorious & gay,
The thirtieth Olympiad was theirs,
Whose families were flung into the fray
As thro’ the tube the first explosion tears;
Entrusted tasks,
With bomb-laden ruck-sacks,
The citizen unmasks, the terrorist attacks.
They had bought a single ticket,
Rode from Luton to Kings Cross,
Like openers at the wicket
When the Ashes first were lost,
Men of faith & peace & cricket,
But noble & brainwash’d,
A sleeper cell awoken to their rage,
A lion-thought pacing a bitter cage.
The waking world look’d on in awe,
When will we ever learn?
Still dying for the sake of war
Man’s miseries return –
The filth, the fears, the hate, the tears, the boodshed & the burn.
London
July 7th
2005
Saddam Hussein
my sister said: save me the eyes
for a pair of earrings, & Martino
our blind neighbour, bagged the guts
Piedad Bonnett
Since Tilsit’s raft two centuries are pass’d,
My, all has been remarkable sithen,
They thought that peace, now peace settles at last
Upon the warring winter-time of men;
Saddam Hussein
Face melting with the snows,
By Allied justice slain, the doors of Janus close.
Tho’ conflictions still haunts Iraq
This hanging symbolizes
The age of Mars, tied in a sack
With all his crude disguises,
Then toss’d upon the Potomac,
Drowning with the Kaisers –
So, this is the way that the World Wars die,
Not with a bang, nor whimper… but a sigh.
How many fought? How many died?
Man’s future to secure,
Tyrants defied by lands allied
Made living lives more pure,
Far from those ravages of war our ancestors endure.
Baghdad
December
2006
(AA): Canto 71: Parnassus
********************************
The world of the Greeks and Romans is my land of romance; a question in either language thrills me strangely, and there are passages of Greek and Latin verse which I cannot read without a dimming of the eyes, which I cannot repeat aloud because my voice fails me
George Gissing
Fresh Finales
Let these be thoughts for Adam’s race;
To me they do not seem untrue;
Men for a time may know their place
Muireadach Albanach
Shaking Calliope from her slumbers
I took a bag of books up to the park,
Late summer sun lit those random numbers
At any given one of them many spark;
Some word obscure,
Some sweet, well-metered line,
Hot drops of poesy pure to aid mine art’s design
From Nether Stowey balladry
To Virgil in translation,
Thro’ Rilke’s Orphic sonnetry
To Spender’s generation,
How many notions bloom’d in me,
Groom’d by transcraetion…
& now Lucretious & the Tempest lie
Preganant with possibilities nearby.
As when th’entowr’d Lady Jane
Scratch’d poesy with a pin,
From Autumn’s rain I’ll cross the main,
Unleash the coil within
& tour, once more, the Roman shore, Muse let the
games begin!
Edinburgh
September
2008
Italy
We are shining stars,
each a light unto ourselves,
yet bound together
Larry Schug
An age of freedom, long after the fall
Of liberty, in Italy, my song
Prepares its lyre, tightens its strings, sets stall
With poets of the sweeter chimes among;
Poi… Adesso!
Giro d’Italia,
Arquata del Tronto, where Tony Loffreda,
A man of eighty-seven years,
Such a wonderful tale did tell,
Of how a Scotsman dissapears
From the German hounds & yell,
At last the Gustav line appears
To break their trickster spell,
Now Jack McShiel stands tall, ‘Hugo’ no more,
Hugs his young friend & gallumphs back to war.
I, too, embraced that man so good ,
For he was still alive,
I stopp’d & stood in Dante’s wood,
Approaching thirty-five,
To share Tony’s affection for the world
which he did strive.
Ascoli Piceno
September
2008
Compositions
Outwardly, I enjoy wine, women and song.
And inwardly I work for the benefit of all beings.
Outwardly, I live for my pleasure
Drukpa Kunley
From Santa Catarina up the coast,
I sent my silent thoughts out to the day,
These are the moments Muses love the most
When shell-murmuring cauldrons come to play;
Euterpe first
Shall leave a lyric there,
To ease my rambling thirst for all the world to
share.
Finding fairest pharie abode
Of delicious asphodels,
As if my younger poet strode
Thro’ the woods by Tunbridge Wells,
Still trundling on in tryptych mode
To form my Book of Kells,
From engineering & endurance carv’d,
An inimitable instance unstarv’d!
Upon the cliff, high over sea,
Some fisherboat below,
My thought flies free, pure melody,
Thro’ poesy’s pantings flow,
Beneath the slanting Torre Santa Maria dell’Alto
Puglia
September
2008
Ascending Parnassus
Fireflies weaving aërial dances
In fragile rhythms of flickering gold,
What do you know in your blithe, brief season
Sarojini Naidu
Leaving Brindisi, Diomedes sire,
I sail’d for Hellas on a busty breeze,
To where Xerxes & Persia’s proud empire
Defiled upon the Isle Pelopponese;
Thro’ night we swept,
‘Til Dawn in purpling robes
About Lefkadi crept with gold, dust-finger’d probes.
At Sami Bay we mused & moor’d –
Silver-tongued Odysseus
Built here his famous multi-floor’d
Pillar’d pearl of palaces –
& further down the coast restor’d
The sea-cove of Phorcys!
On such stuff we Litologists depend,
To serve our pens when versifyings end.
I wander’d on in melody,
With notebook, fruit & pen,
Lidoriki, Galaksidi,
Itea’s olive glen,
& on up to Parnassus, yonder Chrissos town, &
then…
Delphi
September
2008
Parnassus
But you
Went on writing postcards. For days I rhymed
Talismans of power, in cynghanedd
Ted Hughes
Ye Bards! this is what sunset should look like
From Delphi, blood-orange, immaculate,
I urge on thee come take this healthy hike
Up to the trench where Pegasus placed foot;
Come curb your thirst!
This Castalian Spring
Shall make ye poet first, & then a druid-king!
But only if ye persevere
Thro’ twenty years of training,
Sing lyrics when the skies are clear,
Write renku when them raining,
Embrace the decades full austere,
Ever be abstaining,
From all the crude distractions of a life,
Whose only succor comes with thy true wife!
Deem women, where the Muses dwell,
Heart, twinkle, touch & trust,
Art’s dewy dell more musty cell
When lusting them non-plussed,
My love lies with me as I write, without her I am dust!
Delphi
September
2008
Culminations
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
But soaring snow-clad through his native sky,
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty
Lord Byron
Parnasso now – body, mind & soul –
A promise made indecadent before,
When Calliope wove vortical squall
While Clio taper’d arrows for World War;
An oracle,
A phantasy, a dream –
Yon Arachova’s hill I stepp’d across the stream,
Gently passing wild sparagmos
Which the maenads madly gorge,
Beside nymphaean thyiados
For the higher slopes feet forge,
Where juicy orgies soak’d the moss –
For England & King George
I plant myself upon the pointed steep,
Some Wallace on a bleeding Saxon Heap.
Just Aborigenes who see
Jasmin Valencia,
Could ever be this close to me,
Burnley’s Che Guevera,
Whom on a pittance tour’d the world to sing its
aria!
Mount Parnassus
September
2008
Dance of the Muses
Only the things touched
by the love of other things
have a voice
Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão
As the Beatles, however circumspect,
Together only won a nation’s hearts
& total televisual effect
Comes from a congregation of its parts;
My Muses nine
Hold hands in merry ring,
& I, sipping my wine, as, at the beginning…
She dons the mask of comedy,
She holds a globe & compass,
Two lyre a tender melody,
Euterpe wields her aulos,
Wearing a veil, Melopmene,
Fills the air with pathos,
Clio translating scrolls from ancyent days
While Calliope floats on sacred lays.
From Heaven Lord Apollo drifts,
With Mercury mid-flow,
The moment shifts, Euterpe lifts
Us onto sandall’d toe,
As one we fly oer mountains high, the mortal
world below.
Eubea
September
2008
Deities
Eagles & isles & unaccompanied things
The self-reliant isolated things
Release my soul, embrangl’d in the stress
Wilfrid Gibson
I landed me beside a gorge of green
& greys & beige in rugged rock ingrain’d,
Beholden to a beauty rarely seen,
Aeromancy momentary obtain’d;
Where silver lines
Swept ‘cross the snowy tops,
Below those hoary pines to roaring water drops.
I saw the twelve Olympians
Resume their former glories,
Mars & his rude centurions
Are banish’d to old stories,
Satanus & his minions
Beaten, & what’s more is,
Their dark endeavours ever put away,
The celebrating Gods before me play.
This hymnographic psaltery
Was slowly pass’d among
The company, a symphony
Of poetry & song,
Sing Plato, Aristophones & Xenophon along!
Mount Olympus
September
2008
Orpheanics
Look at a scorpion; it is attractive and tender,
Touch it and examine, it is too interesting.
Its ancestors are older than mammoth
Azim Suyun
All afloat thro’ rootless modernity,
Ilmarinen’s anchors of intension
I’ve plung’d into this vast posterity,
Found everything frozen in suspension;
This bardic art
Both past & future sees,
As summit mistlings part, gyr falcons drink the breeze.
I climb’d the mountain fast & free,
Funambulistic sailing,
Upon the peak-caps turn’d to see
The universe unveiling,
Futures luteus flew to me,
Visions uncurtailing,
Of Nostradamianical content
Mimesi messianical frequent.
Actions, places, names & dates,
Bejimbling in a dream
Of allied states, of psyche’s gates,
This is the saffron stream,
Hu preaching on a Pendragon thro’ star-fleec’d snorts of steam.
Mount Olympus
September
2008
(AA) Canto 72: Commedia
**************************************
One may gladly admit that the essential & undefinable quality that we call poetry, the quality of being poetical, is one of the eternal things in life. There is something in Homer & the Book of Job which cannot be superseded, any more than the beauty of a spring morning or the sea or a mother’s love for a child can be superseded
Gilbert Murray
Invocations
sometimes I talk in my sleep
funny how unconscious
I’m at my most awake
Megan Mccorquodale
I sat alone singing the Song of Man,
When every beating heart swam through mine own,
A swirl of swans sang in the summer’s van
& I, a sentinel on Zeus’s throne;
His vast robe flows
Before me like a flame,
As lovely as the rose Persophone became.
Strange lights & stranger sounds rang out
Above the global babble,
My spirit turning inside out,
The mage in me must dabble,
Assuaging all my deep-felt doubt,
‘Rise up from the rabble,’
& hope beyond all hope my soul may pass
The last oppression of the poet-class!
This is no simple shepherd’s song
Once sung in Sicily,
For right or wrong we bards belong
In stranger company,
Sat at the feet of godhead, pledg’d before infinity.
Mount Olympus
Poetic Meeting
Now (turned into a Man under obscure measures),
I feel within me the germs of future existences,
lives that shall rise and soar to find higher reaches
Juan Ramón Molina
Rose, from Poppi’s fields, enchanting accent,
“Dante Alighieri is my name,
Sent to attend poetical descent
Into the ovens of infernal flame!”
“Let it be so,
Let us retrace the ride
That was thine Inferno, when Virgil was thy guide.”
“Poet, thy path we have observ’d
From heavenly echelons,
How thro’ thy task ye have conserv’d
Man’s Wars & his raw weapons,
How ye wonder’d what hells reserv’d
For man’s evil actions –
For questions to be illuminated,
My mortal form here rejuvenated.”
The poet led me from the peak
Tho’ all seem’d in my mind –
Forest of teak, bent branches creak
Before us & behind,
Until we reach Hell’s opening by devil’s art design’d.
Ploutonion
Gates of Hell
lord lord
I have sinned and I confess it
but it isn’t really all my fault
Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala
‘ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE,’
Dante trembl’d once more before the gloom,
Then to nook-smitten depths did dissapear,
I join’d him as a robber stalks a tomb;
As deep distance
Echoes a frightful sound,
Sonambulants advance cautiously underground.
“Pray, Dante, stray not far from me,
As into Hades we go,”
Soon rose lung-black cacophony,
Emmuted groans of limbo,
By Acheron, glutting vile sea,
In stagnant, livid flow,
Where Charon waits to ferry fools & kings,
His haunted face bloated with hornet stings.
With old proverbs our pilot paid,
Who blinkless gave no thanks,
But silent stay’d, the boat obey’d,
Sliding tween fetid banks,
Scudding beside a sorry shore, rats scuttling on the planks.
First Circle of Hell
Ancyent Wisdom
Pardon will he obtain, who will call upon
God, and despise Him not,
And heaven the night he dies
St Eleath
Girdling circles of this infernal world
Spiral before us to a point unknown,
Thro womby vaultages shriek’d anguish swirl’d,
Like spinning pennies grating round a cone;
Souls shriek terror,
An angry nest of thieves,
Joyous, once, with honour now forced to fend for leaves.
Round stinkweed shrub a scrum did break,
Won by some toothless hoodlum,
Who gorged it down like it was steak –
Hermann Goering look’d on glum,
Who once had made Albion quake,
Turn’d London to a slum –
Now forced to bear, thro an eternal gloom,
Asthma, marasmus, spasm, qualm & rheum.
A whistle separates the drones,
Imps whip them back to work
Breaking great stones with vulture bones,
Sulphur stings those that shirk,
“Let’s deeper dive,” said Dante’s shade, & led me thro’ the murk.
Molbolgia
Eternal Tortures
O Lord, I am submitting myself to you
I am entangled in these worldly bonds
I am attracted by Karma & its consequences
Krishnamacharya
Encountering the last few laps of Hell
We improvis’d steep course thro’ Caina,
Our eyes upon a dreary vision fell,
Pale-faced & shrunk in weary demeanour;
Some demon shade,
Its eye-pits flicking flame,
Clutch’d tight a crooked blade… Herr Hitler was his name.
“He was placed so close to evil,
With the sins of treachery,
Those high sinners of the Devil
Who betray their own country
& in its destruction revel,”
There for eternity,
Hounded by hosts of hungry mosquitoes,
He was condemn’d to dwell on all his woes.
“Now we are done here,” Dante said,
Let us start ascending,
Foul phantoms fed our clammy dread
Til the stairwell’s ending,
On mortal earth, where further climb’d rainbow roads upwending.
Purgatory
Pearly Gates
I wrote on the rocks & on the waves of the sea
Your name, my Beloved,
But the winds erased what I had written
Abu Firas
A golden staircase in our hearts appears,
& so uprose we to those realms of bliss,
A stunning clock of seven spinning spheres,
The perfect paradise that Heaven is;
Where waits one soul,
My eternal Grandma,
Who shunn’d the mortal fall for Jimmy God’s lodestar.
“My son, tho’ ye are far away,
From low troubles upon earth,
I still recall the special day
Heaven calls your day of birth,
& daily for your safety pray
Beside the astral tirth,
To see you up in Heaven makes me proud…”
Her sweet voice falls, her face cover’d by cloud.
I watch’d her fading with a pang
& whisper’d true yikor,
The angels sang, their fanfares rang,
But still I wanted more…
“Go on my child,” her voice was mild, grief lifted from my core.
Ring of Lesser Spheres
Heavenly Passage
I had no beginning & I shall have
no end : the beam of light
stretches out before & behind
Ron Padgett
Light illimitable thrusts in plenitude,
The extravagant rising of a star,
All minds on earth sophisticate & crude
Awaken to the worlds these rays unbar;
Archangel stands
On battle cairn of bones,
Pearl pibroch in his hands straining the noble tones.
Souls join’d him in his lofty song,
Triumphant in harmony,
Exalted voices deep & strong,
Charlemagne & Duke Godfrey
But two cantari in that throng
Of dashing chivalry,
The music of the soldiers of the cross,
Lamentation-tinged for their war-gods loss.
Now the long page of peace begun
& legends live namore,
Thro’ gore & gun our world wars won,
Wisdom sent to the fore,
When modern human automons may only read of war.
Ring of Mars
Epic Vistas
The bud
stands for all things
even for those things that don’t flower
Galway Kinnel
Like Burnley men when misty Pendle clears,
Fresh vistas spread, each vein’s fibres tingl’d,
Symphonious, the planetary spheres,
Mazy in a spangling motion mingl’d;
The Righteous blurr’d,
Merging as solid gold,
Spelling the holy word in splendours manifold.
‘DILIGITE JUSTITIAM.’
Forms upon the firmament,
Then, ‘QUI JUDIATIS TERRAM,’
Spread across the starry tent,
Yet other phrases praise the Lamb,
We watch’d them all silent,
& yet, our souls were singing in concord
To this lovely libretto of the Lord.
“Now,” serves Dante, “Our paths must part,
This time together flown,
Before ye start open thy heart
& turn thy sins to stone,”
Then with a smile he join’d his kin & left me there alone.
Ring of Jupiter
Circle of Fixed Stars
On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning’s, lay;
And those plumes its light rain’d through
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I climb’d up to a pearly battlement,
Mocking all human art, menhir fortress,
With stars & planets circumambient,
I saw Christ on his triumphal progress;
Saintly nation,
Forming translucent flame,
Gracious congregation chaunting their saviour’s name.
I tip-toed thro’ those holy halls
Upon a course collision,
Portraits of saints hung from the walls,
“Forgive my imposition…”
Jove’s gloriousness awenthralls,
O! Beatific vision!
That bathes my senses to my unclos’d core,
As now I write can recollect no more!
I woke up with rose-wreathed crown
Gliding by angel wing,
She set me down above the town
Upon a mountain king,
Then soar’d thro’ sky, shrinking to raven, thrush, fly, then… nothing.
Mount Olympus
(AA) Gl’Immortali VIII
An eye for an eye blinds the world
Ghandi
Passing the Trial
But I shall not compare today with yesterday.
We, people, can get used to everything.
But the battlefield was too terrible
Konstantin Simonov
On the solitude of a mountain slope,
Silent but for the buzzing of a fly,
Fair Gwyddion is fill’d with fresher hope
Watching the vapours vanish from the sky;
The beast was gone
The cause of all his woes
Altho’ the wars were done gulf-tide of sadness flows.
Down the mountain tall bounds leading
Went the great god of the Celts
T’where Oxslip & Love-lies-bleeding
Intermingled with wolf pelts,
By the Golgoth grass receding
Demeanour nobly melts,
Wailing a wylde wail with a doleful sound,
Here INNOCENCE lies dead within a mound.
Britannia potter’d solemnly
Thro’ dew-drench’d bluebell wood
T’where Liberty had carved a tree
With names of famous good,
Supping the toasts of heroes from a cup of Vishnu’s blood.
Albion
Faerie Exodus
Where is her light? her crown? her ornaments?
Her chain of love? her peace? her puritie?
Her fruitfull gardens? her fair continents?
Sir William Mure
The realm of the immortal quiet grows
A first few weeds have climb’d into the scene
From Europe’s plains to Asgard’s tumbling snows
It seem’d like the great battle had not been,
But for the pyre
Lit by the firefly,
Where Toutatis & Tyr make ashes in the sky.
Sprinkling upon the faerie way
Her procession fell silent
What once was floral turns to grey
& the trees lay bare & bent
They come at last to this cold bay
No longer innocent
Where in the wake of ravaging excess
They boarded barges for the exodus
& left with tender memories
Of ruby Europa
Her energies, her soft beauties
& her blessed nature
Yes left for safer gardens, both far off & forever…
Oceania
Second Coming
Our cup is fill’d with doings fell;
Provoking in a rage of hell
Bless’d God the Highest
John MacCodrum
Now at the time that was before agreed,
The Gods assembl’d all on Arlo Hill,
& at their heart, upon a jasper steed,
Jove sat resipiscent in silence still;
His daughter rides
Upon the divine lap
As angel army glides, marching to thunderclap.
“My new saviour,” said Jove, “Shall free
The virtue of Orlando,
Agamemnon’s nobility,
The goodness of Godfredo,
Bare Gloriana’s chastity,
Ethics of Rinaldo,
Like Aeneas adventure overseas
With the persistence of bold Ulysses.”
From heavenly hyacinthine
Saffia descended,
The sacred queen of all that’s been,
Beauties never ended,
Not knowing that our Universe on her worth depended.
Midgard
Balrog’s Legacy
The padre’s voice had scarcely ceased from prayer
When distant rounds of cheering tore the air;
Wild, yet harmonious; then loud song burst forth
Anna Durie
Long-horn hastily mounts his vampyre steed
Replenish’d of it’s stock of scarlet fuel,
“Satanus, I shall help you as agreed,”
& gave his friend that crackling, azure jewel;
Then giddiyupp’d
Beyond the halls of Hell,
To violently erupt by Midgard’s cloudy swell;
Then shooting thro’ the stratosphere,
Summer twinkling with all stars,
Satanus watch’d them disappear,
Slouch’d ‘hind adamantine bars,
Stroking his technologic gear,
Aid for his future wars,
Push’d diamonds in its sockets for to glean
Secrets mysterious filling the screen.
Grey Tepig passes Jupiter
Uranus & Pluto,
Her warrior, her passenger,
Hauls reigns… as she did slow
Balrog back-glances on a dancing planet’s blue-green glow!
Space
End of War
There shall be peace forever between these people
Zeus, the allseeing met with destiny to confirm it
Singing all follow our footsteps
Aeschylus
War, the province of kings to bring about
But the duty of the gods to end it,
Is married to Peace, but Peace has a doubt,
If life wed together, how to spend it?
Mere words suffice,
The wisdom of an elf,
“By War’s great sacrifice the world redeems itself!”
As seraph-wingéd Victory
Sails over Asgard seas
Heaven woke in vernal beauty
Blossoming with birds & bees,
Where Thor’s maturing son, Modi,
Projects from his knees,
Arms rais’d, promising his father’s father
We shall be wise, always & forever.
Britannia strode thro’ countryside,
Paus’d by the Bluebell Wood;
There, sudden, cried, for all that died,
Remembering the Good –
Swore to praise their martyrdoms with monoliths & sainthood.
Albion
Judgement of Jupiter
My God! I will address Thee
In loudest hymns of praise;
Then, too, my soul shall bless Thee
Synyesius
Jove reach’d the ruins of a city lost
Long times ago, when Mars was in his prime,
Calling for Jupiter his echoes toss’d
That name thro’ temples in a mono-rhyme;
Some ghostly shade
By faith namore sustain’d,
Slouch’d humbl’d & afraid, by ev’ry breath bepain’d.
“Old god,” spoke Jove, “Look in these eyes,
Tho’ your body crippl’d, weak,
Your mind still prospers very wise,
I’ve travel’d to hear ye speak,
Of better lives we phantasize,
Of finer age we seek,”
The old god thought awhile, & then did say,
“Bring Mars to trial, then fling him leagues away.”
“Wise words,” mused Jove, “My thanks, old friend,”
The great God out-thrust palm,
That did suspend, Rome’s best legend
Hard-grabs instead his arm,
& squeez’d it tight, “Put him some place he’ll never do us harm!”
Olympus
Heavenly Judgement
Lord of the world, He reigned alone
While yet the universe was naught.
When by His will all things were wrought
Solomon Ibn Gabriol
Jove greets the Gods, campus-stella seated,
On deathless islands spinning round his own,
Mars stood there, dejected & defeated,
Tied to white rocks in front of Heaven’s throne;
The trial begins,
The Prosecution starts,
Listing a bunch of sins & crunching juror’s hearts.
“But need we him,” springs Liberty,
“When tyranny uprising,”
“Surely not,” sings Saraswathi,
“Warfare aids each tyrant king,”
“Let him keep his divinity,”
Offer Buck$ & St£rling,
“I disagree,” groans greying Gwyddion,
“Hough! Look at what his presence here hath done!”
After the Gods had rais’d their voice
A show of hands was sought,
Angels rejoice! O happy choice!
“Guilty!” proclaims the court,
As, gurgling on congealing blood, “NOOooooo!!….” roars from War’s raw throat.
Empyrean
Imprison’d
The crood streams flowed at happy pace,
A couthy look on ilka face ;
Thinks I the warld’s a nae ill place
Elsie Rae
With Jove’s archangels hovering above,
Mars was allow’d to kiss his last goodbyes,
Thro’ bloodshot eyes Venus would beam her love
As he was led beyond her thro the skies;
Deep into space
Universal frontiers,
Where sable pits replace the suppermassive spheres;
They found an ancyent galaxy
Where supernovae flashes
Implode in awesome density
& turn diamonds to ashes,
They cast Mars to that gravity –
“Tho he yells & thrashes
He will never be able to escape
To fill us with killing, pillage & rape,”
Said Mab, sipping her herbal mead
Of soft-scented flowers,
KARMA agreed with quaint, “Indeed,”
Age of Aquarius
Enters the harbour of the world, a bay so beauteous.
Shangri-La
War’s Futility
I got used to missing you
You came back after a long time
I now love longing for you more than I love you
Aziz Nesin
We are all planets to a greater star,
These stars subservant to a further force,
Balrog, at last, returns to his own war,
Dadghab-at-arms tethers his feather’d horse;
Shock & relief
Swept thro’ his regiment,
Whose chieftans shall debrief this errant lieutenant.
Says Balrog, “I have seen a sphere
Not worth our recognition…”
“Then come,” says Gen’ral Balthazeer,
“There is a vital mission,
The armies of the Usgoth near
Marching in precision,
We press on ye the need to make attack,
To win the day & fling these rascals back!”
Our mighty Balrog join’d a horde
Of dashing cavalry,
With plasma-sword, with purpose, pour’d
Into an enemy,
To be soon slain… from war’s cruel pain tragedy comes only.
Dadghabbi
(AA) Canto 73: Childe India
**********************************
The poet is like the prince of the clouds,
Who haunts the tempest & mocks the archer;
Exiled on the earth in the midst of derision
His giant wings keep him from walking
Baudelaire
Second Wind
the blackbird sings to him, brother, brother,
if this be the last song you shall sing
sing well, for you may not sing another
Julian Grenfell
I had assumed my quillerie was done…
My soul exhumes th’electric, triptych train
& in a half-light Nostradamian
Projects through time, I shall to thee again,
Muse of my life
When wedded with all this
Thou art the waspen knife embedded in my bliss.
I took a walk round Whittinghame
On an early summer’s day,
When bees about wild garlic hum
Gorse engolden in god’s sway,
Hearing a faerie kettledrum
Beat yonder house crow-grey,
Where Balfour read Plato before Israel,
Sensing I had to finish yet my tale.
I clambour thro’ thick thornbush throng,
Veins pierc’d by splinter-pin,
Not sucking tongue, nor needle long,
Could pluck it from within,
That itch, y’know, that can’t be scratch’d that’s just beneath the skin.
East Lothian
August
2008
Departures
Oh, I got tired of the northern sun,
Of white anxious ghost-like faces,
Of crouching over heatless fires
Abioseh Nicol
Accompanied by Apollonians,
O mystic ladies of these sentences!
Gallivanting from the Europeans
& these coetanian acquaintances;
For India,
In silence, did I fly,
Musing poesia beneath a breathless sky.
About us atmospherics wailed
Of a gamesome energy,
& I, a Wellesley, as we sail’d
Startling barques of destiny
Beyond Iraq… beneath me paled
The Sea of Araby,
As Byron rode to Ali Pasha’s feast,
Yes! Yes! I was a poet in the East.
As Wellington stood at Assaye
I stept out of the plane
& met Bombay, a cloudless day
Far sultrier than Spain,
Raj fanning all before me like the wisdom of the Jain.
Mumbai
September
2008
Bombay
I’ll never change myself to gold.
Other fools that want can make
themselves into big-chested bulls
Bassus
We stand at the gateway to India,
Grand sentinel arch of Britannia’s stream
About us the swirl of Bon Bohia,
Thou seven-islanded mercantile dream;
All senses drown’d
In native hue & cry,
We swathe thro’ sight & sound sweat-streaming, lips parch’d dry.
In tortured droves the Hindu pours
From Pakistan’s cruel Koran,
Where VT’s gothic gargoyles rose
Oer many a fam’ly man,
No rooms, no work, no peace, no laws,
No pity & no plan –
Would all those men who plying Empire’s vision
Could see the suff’rance at its partition.
Squalid, one-room’d, tarpaulin lives
Smile at me thro’ the glass,
Human beehives; men, spawn & wives
E’er buzzing as we pass
Identical, dark shanty streets choked with the underclass.
Dharavi
September
2008
Nandi Hills
Tell me, sir.
Have you ever heard
A peacock sing?
Suzy Kassem
The plateaux of the Deccan beckons me,
Pepper’d with arcane & boldering hills,
Balance acts defying rock gravity,
Where, checking the architectural skills
Of Cornwallis,
Ascend, I, heap’d up mound
Of earth to find there is Heaven on this high ground.
When Tipoo Sultan cameto stay
The trees flock’d full of bunting.
With fat-fac’d guests, by light of day,
Would trawl the slopes a-hunting,
Where pheasants soon no longer gay
&, as boars ceas’d grunting,
Abundant India kick’d into gear
& slopes would be restock’d within the year!
The Horticulture Minister,
Hands clutching pad & pens,
Descends by the brown banister,
A gaggle of men-hens
Around him, fussy following, all of his whys & whens.
Karnataka
September
2008
Madras
So Gods eternall bounty ever shin’d
The beames of beeing, moving, life, sence, minde,
& to all things him selfe communicated
William Alabaster
My driver sure don’t know the highway code,
Thro vast, suburban, lawless sprawl haring,
Thirty kilometres of ribbon road,
Shops, neon signs & chi stalls commingling;
A diff’rent class
Of Indian City,
Formally Queen Madras, maid of an English sea.
Into the caves of Mylapore
Hot blood gusht from the doubter,
Dragging himself across the floor…
Savage loin-cladded hunter
Hath thrust a spear into his core…
Whispering last prayer
He saw the sweet beatific & he cried,
“Thou art fulfill’d…” the martyr smiled & died.
By Fort Saint George such church stands tall
As English as the Downs,
On sacred wall writ the roll call
Of heroes & of towns,
When London’s lackeys grappl’d with & toppl’d Hindu crowns.
Chennai
October
2008
Andaman
I asked for
this primitive afternoon
away from it all
Richard Allen Taylor
I dawdl’d four days on the Nancowry,
Small taster of the voyages of yore,
Fodder’d on a bland, suspicious thali,
My heart leapt up to see Hanuman’s shore;
Some deep & sheer
Mountain range submarine
Thrusting it’s summits clear in shades of leafy green.
The cellular jail built to last
Thro good ol’ British know how,
Where Freedom Fighters earn repast,
Some colonial Dachau,
Where bull whips crack’d & rough sticks flash’d
Guantanaman know-how
A place where proud blood flows for liberty…
How could my contree build Kalapani?
I took a boat to Ross island
Across clear water’d bay,
Wylde Banyans stand on buildings grand,
Imperious Pompeii,
Where now the White Man’s Burden is a ghost town in decay.
Port Blair
October
2008
Bengal Bay
I love, O, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon
Barry Cornwall
We sail’d from the comforts of Port Blair
Into the wide-wave level loveliness,
We men have conquer’d mountains, moats & air,
But never on deep ocean made impress;
We watch’d the fins
Of silver fish skimming
Where flipp’d slick-back Dolphins ribbon’d in star-swimming.
Empiric British ambition
Found a human pulse in Clive,
Whose self-righteous indignation
Blazed triumphant to arrive
& address the situation
Within this Nawab’s hive,
His tiny fleet transporting all his boys,
These royal redcoats & loyal sepoys.
We sighted land on the fourth day,
Sunder’d by a river,
Naiad gateway to the wide way
Of th’AryaVarta –
I have travers’d from South to North via the Nirvana!
Hugli
October
2008
Colonial
News from a forrein Country came,
As if my Treasure & my Wealth lay there;
So much it did my Heart Enflame !
Thomas Traherne
Akbar’s passengers rush from the harbour,
Haul’d by rickshaw thro’ wacky racer streets,
Power’d by pedal, petrol or runner,
Til once again the Western posse meets
Mid Sudder’s share
Of the Imperatrix
I felt without a care, bouy´d up by British bricks.
Magnificent Pax Mughala
Declines into decadence,
The Nawab, Siraj-ud-Daula
Grows in scope & confidence,
His army march’d to Kolkatta
& English arrogance –
Abandon’d, but for those too late to leave…
Slamm’d in the hole…dawn breaks…few left to breathe.
Grand ocean of humanity,
Sea of friendly faces,
From to native tea, & black taxi,
Betting down the races,
An excellent community garnished with English graces.
Calcutta
October
2008
Forgotten Fields
I see it as I leave the inn
The dark of night, an evil djinn
Pursues me close, each step I take
Fadhil Al-Azzawi
Life simple mid familiar surrounds,
But senses of adventure grow depress’d
So I set forth, a hunter with the hounds,
In pursuit of another interest;
Some battlefield
Lies died for to the North,
If feeling it shall yield a call may be of worth.
All in this monsoon of Indra’s
Growl the scowling guns of France,
By rhino shields & scimitars
Howdah’d behemoths advance…
Rudely halted by Clive’s soldiers!
Mir Jaffa sees the chance,
His mass of decision led from the field,
This treachery the Nawabcy must yield.
My cycle rickshaw gliding hies
From the glean of battle,
A poets prize…dark dragonflies
Dart oer the arable –
My guide plants me on northbound bus roaring at full throttle!
Plassey
October
2008
(AA) Canto 74: Subcontinental
**********************************
There is no more absorbing story than that of the discovery & interpretation of India by western consciousness
Mircia Eliade
Bus Crash
I think about the moments
Moments I dread
Moments I can’t seem to forget
Muhammad Afzal
I awoke in a strange, white-sheeted bed,
Fellow passengers moaning in sev’ral ways,
Soak’d in blood & clutching a concuss’d head
I stumb’ld to a taxi in a daze!
“Driver, just drive!”
I fled that hospital
Lucky to be alive, the crash had been fatal.
Why am I in a strange white bed,
Woke by moans? to my amaze,
Bags lying by my concuss’d head,
Stumbling out in blood-soak’d haze,
In old, odd rickshaw off I sped
Such are our brave young days,
Though full of life oftentimes we feel faint
When thunder breaks & goddesses our saint
I took a room to convalesce
Mid palatial surrounds,
I was a mess, for more or less
A week of sleeps & sounds,
Until half-heal’d I took the sights, great palaces & grounds.
Murshidabad
October
2008
Sacred City
Wither’d lotus petals,
Pale, faded,
Aged stems tottering in the wind
Liu Ping-chung
Alluvial flatlands roll ever West,
The Ganga Matha shimmers into sight,
Here came the British banquet of conquest
To dine on the age old City of Light;
Siva’s domain
Beside her fragrant flow
Where marigold & grain ash-daub’d ascetics throw.
To Sarnath, thou deer park of bliss,
Stretch’d by the Holy River,
He came, gave men a kiss,
“No longer I Siddhartha!”
They knew not what to make of this,
“Call me, please, the Buddha!”
They sat & listen’d to the first sermon
Soft on the lips of the enlighten’d one.
Hypnofixed on that bamboo bier
Down by the riverside,
The pyres appear, fire’d atmosphere
Reeking for those that died
Their blessed death, Kashi lit up as Vedic chantsmen vied.
Varanasi
October
2008
Mutiny
In ripen’d years, when blood flows cool,
Then mankind cease to play the fool,
Grow mighty cautious, grave & wise
Allan Ramsay
Countryside chiming like a park of Kent,
No wonder here they chose to stamp the Pax,
Alas, civilisation really meant,
The ignorance, the excrescence, the tax;
Shame struck the Oudh,
Their noble kingdom next,
Shamed as their Nawab bow’d while the British annex’d.
The North declared the battleground,
Fuels focus for mutiny,
Fifty thousand aggriev’d surround
Eurasian residency,
All day & night the cannon’s pound
The dreams of Dalhousie,
Til’ Redcoats, march’d under merciless skies,
Redemption bring, slaying those who’d dared rise.
Regent ruins as red as dust,
Cupid’s nuzzling couples,
Are held in trust, coated with dust
From those desp’rate battles,
They form symbolic sepulchre of empiric shackles.
Lucknow
October
2008
Delhi
This is a sight that Wordsworth never knew,
whether looking down from mountain, bridge or hill:
An endless field of lights, white, orange, & blue
Bruce Bawer
I stood tall as the mountains for a week,
Better tall than a tourist at the Taj,
Each morn spent with the Empire’s highest peak,
The summit of my soiree round the Raj;
With dew-eyed wrench
I ride back to battle,
The noise, the heat, the stench cloaking the capital.
From the steppes of central Asia
Camest Nadir Shah, great guest
Of mickle-minded emporer,
Th’ancestral riches to wrest,
Twas a festival of slaughter,
Blood splasht on treasure chest
As seized from the fabulous peacock throne
He gripp’d the Koh-i-Noor, Babar’s bright stone.
As a hundred Sunday innings
Spreads round the grassy mile,
Tricky spinnings, wicket winnings,
Each man an Anglophile,
For cricket is to India as Egypt needs the Nile.
Old Delhi
November
2008
Taj Mahal
in its eyes you will see a rare
ancestor
a mystique, long gone
Ana Golejshka Dzikova
To leave no regrets is to lead good life,
& so, despite cursing the tourist trail,
That glory-monument to man & wife
Upon my wanderlust must now prevail;
Oer crowd & lane
The Taj Mahal arose,
No dome of France nor Spain could match her matchless poise.
The house of Shah Jahan grew hushed
His grief was overbearing,
But chieftains prosper best when crush’d,
The weeping wreath outwearing,
He briefly with the heavens brushed,
All who saw were staring,
A testament to beauty’s deep adore,
The Taj Mahal, Cupid’s conquistador.
With prime Indian Icon
Tick’d from my tourist box,
The North was won, tour almost done,
As workers watch the clocks,
Downloading my flight details as the homeward notion knocks.
Agra
November
2008
Cricket
Since man’s but pasted up of Earth,
& ne’er was cradled in the skies,
What Terra Lemnia gave thee birth
John Hall
This short, Byronic sortie to the East,
Sometimes tourist, sometimes adventurer,
Sees sublime sunsets as each new night pieced
This myriad India together;
Yon Udaipur,
The honeymooner’s dream,
I trundl’d to Jaipur to watch my native team.
Some worship Christianity,
Or pray five times to Mecca,
Perhaps Laxsmi, Saraswathi,
Lord Vishnu, Krishna, Siva,
The Buddha, Kali, Parvati,
Durga or Ganesha,
But all thro India one god is king –
Sachin Tendulkar at the opening.
With Brits I met at Andaman
We watch’d a thrilling game,
With swifty ton K Peiterson
Native spin bowlers tame,
Each stroke applauded by our hosts, the batsman flashing flame.
Jaipur
November
2008
Kipling Country
With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave & Sultan scarce is known
Omar Khayyam
Reaching the eastern edge of Rajstahan
The stands abandoned fortress goblin-hewn
While wandering within & round its span
I wondered if it was some vedic boon;
Neath red rampart
I Kipling’d for a week,
For poets slowly part from places quite unique.
From dying Satis’ final words
Flew an ancyent prophecy,
“When princes meet hunting the herds,
Born of Mewar & Bundi,
One must die!” Ajit aim’d at birds,
His arrow flies keenly…
Whether by chance, by fate, by secret gain,
Rana, the prince of Udaipur, lay slain.
I took a ride thro villagery,
Sought out a waterfall,
It seemed to me like ecstasy,
Immersing body’s all,
& driving back, dried by the breeze, felt burdens lift from soul.
Bundi
November
2008
Desert Fortress
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the organ
Arthur Sullivan
My camel treks thro’ realms of chivalry,
Follow’d barefoot by this gypsy player
Conjuring scenes upon his Sarrangee,
Charming the desert night with sung prayer;
Ah! Completed
Is our nomadic flow,
An ancyent city stood on tabletop plateau.
At the steep walls of the fortress
Insatiable Akbar stared,
Those soldiers in their saffron dress
Say Jauhar has been declared,
They rode to die in gentilesse,
A martyrdom soon shared…
As wives & children step in to the fire
Chants of victory climb with the empire.
The sun hoists flame up oer the walls,
A cruel & hostile red,
My contree calls, fresh footstep falls
By dry Ghamberi’s bed,
Aim’d at Burnley, on the dusty Daksinpatha I tread.
Chittorgarh
November
2008
L´Envoi
How far from Malaya
To snowy Ben Doran?
How far from Johore to Saltcoats or Ross?
David Ross
I pause in Ratlam for a two night stay,
My long tours’s circle drawing to a close,
An obscure spot to while the last full day
Before the latest triumph of the Rose;
One more sleeper,
Neath overarching sky,
Yon the pale Narmarda, pulls back into Mumbai.
I saw so many miseries
But I saw much beauty too,
All of mankind’s categories
Thro’ this single city drew,
What mixture of cacophonies
Climb’d with the morning dew –
Them to mine ears did seem a morning choir,
The chauntings of the children of empire.
I step ‘tween mendicants, oxen,
Fresh stools, strays, tips & crows,
Strange monkeymen, hags, swine & then
A sense of friendship grows,
One glorious sub-continent, as complex as a rose!
Dharavi
November
2008
(AA) Canto 75: Bleeding Streets
**********************************
I bow in front of the victims of this monstrous crime
Joachim Gauck
Life is Cheap
Star-shine and darkness are blended
as we gather with those we hold dear.
And the Light is present among us
Katy Phillips
As Qasab boards the boat thoughts flutter’d back,
To days when came those well-dress’d men to town,
His father offer them potato snack,
Instead they’d look’d his boy, him, up & down;
“He’s fit & strong,
Please, for a righteous cause,
& money, lot’s of it, relinquish what is yours.”
Eftsoons this boat left Pakistan
To fight the unbelievers,
Hearing the mantra of one man,
‘The world shallgrow to fear us!’
A tap upon his shoulder’s span,
“Paradise is near us,
But first we must kill & keep on killing,
Then Allah will receive us” “God willing!”
The vessel furrow’d steadily,
The sunset left the sky
“For this to be successful see
That all of ye will die,
No spirit faint, no nerveless limbs, let glory amplify!”
Arabian Sea
23rd November
2008
Bollywooder
Each pace precipitates an infinite staircase,
Each gesture the nucleus of a new cosmos.
If the wise sows not, he is but barren reason
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Some say Bollywood is monotonous,
Verdict of thirty thousand King & I’s,
But life is better led monogamous,
Too many fingers & too many pies;
Pluck’d from the street
An extra was I made,
Thro fancy dress & heat & thousand rupees paid.
I met her in a dressing room,
Fair actress of the Deccan,
Both hearts beating a little boom
As though we duell’d at Tekken,
The jewels of romancing bloom
Well, that’s what I reckon,
For from this pretty princess of the Raj
An invitation to dine at the Taj.
My life blended with India,
O diamond in the crown!
The emperor, the hag-beggar,
The pale-face & the brown,
The gutter-dwellers looking up the godheads looking down.
Mumbai
November 26th
2008
Angels of Death
So warm were they, with destinies
Like straining stars that lustrously
Bore Goethes, Newtons not to be
Olive Tilford Dargan
The Kuber grew dense with the stench of death,
Decks sticky with the dead crews’ bloody pool,
Their captain panicking breath-on-sharp-breath
Beneath such bullies barely out of school;
“Tis Allah’s will
&, with Allah willing,
Five thousand we shall kill, kill & keep on killing!”
Each lad was born in poverty
Midst the slums of Pakistan,
Each son was bought for no small fee,
Little pawns in grander plan,
Up in Thatta’s rugged country
Hard train’d the Taliban
& the keen-eyed Lashkar-e-Taiba,
Melding proud, young footsoldiers together.
When them just ten miles from the shore,
They cut the captain’s throat,
With bag & oar ten ‘students’ pour
Into a dinghy boat,
Flinging Islamic retribution ‘cross the Mumbai moat.
The Arabian Sea
November 26th
2008
First Landing
A man may tear a jewel
From a monster’s jaws
Cross a tumultuous sea
Bhartrihari
Night nestled midst the vast financial core
Of our globe’s most massive democracy,
Where twenty seven million or more
Live in a state of guarded apathy;
The terror threat
For Mumbaikers distinct,
But far too fast to fret vast lives in living link’d.
Three wallahs watch the rubber craft
Slip inside their slummy quay,
Ten kempt lads leap ashore & laugh’d,
Shaking off the liquid sea,
An old man thought this rather daft,
Asking who could they be?
”Mind your business,” spoke a lad in blue,
Not in Mharati but fluent Urdu.
They clasp’d each others shoulder-blades,
& there did pray awhile,
Ten young, outrageous renegades
Into five pairs now file,
& flag down five black hackney cabs to fly the final mile.
Colaba
November 26th
2008
Last Supper
Soldiers who spoke
A terrible language
Broke into the mosque
Robert Minhinnick
Full unaware he bore Death’s messengers,
Their shifty ambience so strange & cold,
Mohammed dropp’d off his young passengers
Outside the bustling Café Leopold;
A famous place
Racing with western dress
Whose smiling, happy face would soon be bloody mess.
At first a hand grenade goes off
In momentary stunning
Unpitying the gunmen scoff
At cowering & running
Aiming their train’d kalashnikov
At them all down-gunning –
If you were eating in this place that night
A bullet would have been your only bite!
The gunmen smugly stroll’d outside
Into an empty street
The shutters slide as all folks hide
& fleet are fleeing feet
As two young Muslims move along these murders to repeat.
Colaba
November 26th
2008
Stood Up
Man is his own star: & the soul that can
Render an honest & a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate
John Fletcher
I was an English poet on the road
Destin’d to write an epic for the world,
Had met a pretty Dutch girl far abroad,
With polish’d skin & eyebrows heaven curl’d;
We’d made a date
To dine up at the Taj
Where, early, I would wait, sate dreaming of the Raj.
I was namore that bastard boy
From a two-up, two-down town,
Instead the flash Viscount Mountjoy,
With connections to the crown,
Whose mistress lives at the Savoy,
For whom I’d bought a gown
Of sleeveless saree-silk… my trance distress’d
By ringing phone… “hello’ there’s great unrest
About the city, roads are closed,
I cannot get to you,”
My date disclos’d, our date depos’d,
I might as well just do,
That dinner on my own & gaze upon this gorgeous view.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Victoria Station
Men watched the drama from the foreturret,
Perched on the crosstrees, on the yards & masts
In an exploded pyramid of caste
Douglas Dunn
Still dripping in her British Empire bling,
Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus,
To temple, village, wages & wedding
Carries half of India’s passengers;
Fifty-four lives
Buy their one-way singles,
Amang men, bairns & wives random murder mingles.
As Ajamal sprays cold bullets wide
He feels the floor vibrating,
The sadness of his suicide
This moment satiating,
His friend & team-mate by his side
& them hyped awaiting
The Heaven that a martyr hopes to gain,
Thoughts amplified by infidels in pain.
As policemen leapt into battle,
They instantly leapt out,
Pot-shot pistols, jamming rifles,
Were never in the bout,
Where should be gushing bravery but fluster-headed drought.
CST Sation
November 26th
2008
Familicides
It’s not the pack who were the stronger,
Smaller beasts beat you to tatters –
And who fights now over your carcass
Frigyes Karinthy
She threw herself upon the only child
Of her fourth daughter, as the floor vibrates,
She saw his tiny face & slowly smil’d,
As mothers do to soothe our troubl’d states;
“Hey – hey grandma
Why did we take the train?”
Blood swilling in her bra, grin wincing, now, with pain,
“& why is grandpa bleeding there,
Unmoving where he’s lying?”
“Be quiet, shhh…” piercing the air
Scrape-seers a baby’s crying,
Whose mother smothers her with care,
Bullets started flying,
& blew away that mother’s bloody head,,,
Another thudding body joins the dead.
He look’d upon this busy work,
The scene was slaughter glum,
As with a jerk, from gun bezerk
To thoughtful ‘ergo sum’,
They left that British terminus buzzing on more to come
V.T. Station
November 26th
2008
Antisemitismus
How beautiful it would have been
Living under that roof
The two together always
Manuel Acuna
On mobile phones the leader’s voice arrives,
“Among the distortions & perversions
Of self-seeking priests & pandits, the lives
Of Jews worth fifty non-Jews…” aspersions
Chok’d thick with bile,
As kick’d-down double doors
Reveal’d a handsome pile upstretching sev’ral floors…
As Rabbi Hollzberg & his wife,
The pretty Rivka, chatted,
She chopping garlic with a knife,
Idyllic was shatter’d,
Whose guests that day possess’d a life
More than their lives matted
For they were hosts – & bloodlust to decrave
Shouted, “Shoot me! Shoot me!” both instant brave.
& being symbiotic,
Their deathblood merg’d in pools,
Robotical men shot each skull
Once more, then dragg’d their tools
Of murder on remorselessly, like horses rode by ghouls
Nariman House
November 26th
2008
(AA) Canto 76: Terrorisms
**********************************
What trouble is beyond the rage of man?
What heavy burden will he not endure?
Jealousy, faction, quarreling, & battle,
The bloodiness of war, the grief of war
Sophocles
Friends & Enemies
There was a corpse outside
It was a fine and cruel noose
coming out the corpse’s mouth
Ramón Palomares
Meltem Muezzinoglu tests her husband,
“Those must be fireworks”, “for the cricket”
“I’m sure,” says Seyfi, stroking soft her hand,
But life’s ludicrous lottery ticket
Might win, might fail…
At gunpoint sardine press’d
Crams many tremble-pale Trident Oberoi guest.
They march them to a staircase top
Found guns towards them aiming,
“We are Turkish!” pleads Seyfi, “stop!”
“Get down…” forced down, as flaming
Muzzles ten poor guests do drop
Murderously maiming,
Just five were left, three women & the Turks
Buried in bodies spasming death jerks.
Reloading from an ammo belt,
Off led that battle team
In her back Meltem coldly felt
A rifle, says Hakim
‘Just to be, no more, this is all, this is the joy supreme.’
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Small Matter of Timing
Alone at the bar, strangers everywhere,
the waiter is filling my glass with wine
glass after glass
Mohammed Bennis
As gunmen from the sanguine Leopold
Make contact with a fellow battleteam
For the next part of the raid to unfold
They must now strike at Mumbai’s social cream;
Security
All gunn’d down at the dawn
Such brash militancy the world has never known!
So, as I felt a movie star
Soaking up the superb views
Some Maharajah at the bar
Sparkling in his diamond shoes
My soul sensed Vishnu’s avatar
& there began to muse
On this moment’s explosive catalyst
A thousand thoughts too terrible to list!
I’d never felt alive before
Our streets now the front line
As more & more the art of war
Moves through this life of mine
First nervousness on undergrounds now gunsounds as we dine!
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Attacking the Taj
I pity all that evil are –
I pity & I mourn,
But the Supreme hath fashioned all
Robert Nicol
As gunmen from the sanguine Leopold
Make contact with a fellow battleteam,
For the next part of the raid to unfold
They’ll have to strike at Mumbai’s social cream;
Security
Gunn’d down quite merciless,
Jumpit militancy, girl slumps dead in a dress!
I felt a modern movie star
Soaking up the superb views,
Some Maharajah at the bar
In his sparkling diamond shoes,
Soul sensing Vishnu’s avatar
& there began to muse
Upon this night’s explosive catalyst,
A thousand thoughts too terrible to list!
I’d never felt alive before,
Our streets now the front line,
As more & more the Art of War,
Moves through this life of mine,
First nervousness on undergrounds now gunsounds as we dine!
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Death of a Bell-boy
Alas ! that death-like Sleep, or Night,
Should power have to close those Eyes ;
Which once vy’d with the fairest Light
Richard Leigh
Inside the Trident Oberoi hotel
The bell-boy stuck to that boring routine,
Of guest, & bag, & lift, & room, & bell
That strict path ground out since he was sixteen;
What was that sound,
Like cars cought in a crash?
He fearing spins around to see the front doors smash
& caught a bullet in the gut,
& dropp’d like Balfour pheasant,
Losing sensation in his foot,
His vision deliquescent,
He slowly let his eyelids shut,
His heart grew hesitant,
Then beat its last, & as his limbs relax,
His brain shuts down like wick-flame doused in wax.
As gunfire rattled floor-to-floor,
All the guests grew fearful,
Phoning the law, bolting the door
For something horrible
Was happening in their hotel, something incredible.
Trident Oberoi
November 26th
2008
The Death of Thalkur Woghela
No sooner had I got back home
Than they told me straight away
How my best friend had been killed
Konstantin Vanshenkin
On ample barenesses of poverty
Build gods our thrones, Thalkur calmly squats
By his young child, absorbing utterly
The fragrances upfloating from the pots;
A thudding knock
Opens the wooden doors,
A sudden sense of shock, a holy moments pause,
& then existence theater
Into intuition sprang,
Ishmail hisses, “give me water!”
Thakur felt the truthbomb bang,
Caught he’d been by a predator,
The sounds of gunshots rang,
Another unbeliever bidden dead,
His young son hidden underneath the bed.
“My brother,” blurted Kassab, “come
We have much work to do…”
So, chewing gum, they left the slum,
An uncheck’d wrecking crew,
Who like those two Columbine lads towards the next kill drew.
Mumbai
November 26th
2008
Wedding Crashers
All day; in troops they pursued the hostile people.
They hewed the fugitive grievously from behind
With swords sharp from the grinding
Egill Skallagrimsson
As when the seers of aulden times first saw
The face of God, these boys were mesmerized
By opulence bored deep in Vedic lore,
For many moments they stood hypnotis’d;
Voice breaks the trance
“Go, brothers, start the fires,”
Nearby, two men from France, the dregs of old empires,
Beg for their lives, but blown away,
As round them doors down booted
By chaos children, whose cruel play
By Loki’s Lashkar tutor’d,
Whom, like a Viking popinjay,
Moral laws refuted,
& brought down death, efficiently, on lives –
Fate knows, but time will tell, which skull survives.
A bolted door was tattershot,
Amit & Varsha scream’d,
They’d only got to tie the knot
That day, but then were cream’d
By slayers of the innocent, that dozen, double-team’d.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Random Murder
I will walk these streets
without fear of whatever unforeseen
may lunge at me when I’m lost in thought
Miguel Barnet
A taxi stopp’d for Laxmi Narayan,
A businessman now several minutes late,
With hindsight ‘twould be better if he’d ran.
& put escaping death down to good fate;
Seconds to slow
Kasab’s black bag was seen,
That with a bull’s bellow proceeds to smithereen!
Five taxis had quite random fann’d,
All thro’ the conurbation,
Each setting up a firebrand
To spread the devastation,
A Muslim Iman lost a hand
In a petrol station,
Proving how conflict in religion’s name
More ploy by power delegating blame.
She was a happy citizen
& now she has no legs,
Another sundown denizen
To join the gutter-dregs,
Like blind & tuneful eunuchs or the waddling leper-pegs.
Wadi Bunder
November 26th
2008
Wounded!
And will future generations
recite these stories by heart, hand
over chest?
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
The call came in from deepest Pakistan,
“Brothers, you may commence your killing spree!”
But nothing in their multi-layer’d plan
Prepar’d them for such pangs of luxury;
Wild opulence
Blows peasant minds aback…
Gathering their senses they went on the attack.
Splitting their murder squad in two
One vaults the cantilever,
& every movement, in their view
Soon dying non-believer,
Into my own life-space they flew
Like the swine-flu fever,
Unwelcome & unwanted & unwell,
We sweated til a bullet broke the spell.
Shot ripping thro’ mine upper arm,
Dropp’d I, death-pretending,
No magi psalm, no pagan charm
Could prevent death’s pending…
So held my breath until I heard those murderers descending…
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Meeting Spirits
The night is full of mystery,
Whose understanding is
In trying no more to understand
William Montgomerie
As ugliest commotion moves elsewhere.
An aesthete at a wild tornado’s heart.
I saw a wise man sat upon a chair,
Seeking pleasant refugia, set apart;
His beard was long,
Hill rustic was his dress,
With flight of beads among white robes of simpleness,
Who said, “I am a student of
Peerless Shantiniketan,
Perusha’s all-pervading love
Denies all definition,
Sometimes the astral spheres above
Separate contrition
From human conscience, letting angers rise…”
I stood & star’d into these endless eyes.
As ignorance must drift away,
Knowledge stays immortal,
The gentle sway of gods at play
Simmering aortal,
Engag’d my my spirit, full of peace, thro’ Nabataean portal.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Mumble Words 