(AA) Canto 1: Broken Peace
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One sees from many examples
In ancient & modern history
That good follows ill, & ill good
That glory ends in blame,
& blame in glory
Ariosto
11/11/18
The glories of our birth & state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate
James Shirley
Ye, yet to live, will speak with sheer disgust,
Of those who prompted roaring War to reign,
To these I leave my tryptychrie in trust,
So things like these just shan’t occur again:
A grievous weight,
Responsibility,
Beginning on this date for all futurity!
Whom of the future could defend
Calculated & condoned
Destruction, ossuaries blend,
Deep well’d & myriad-bon’d,
A massive task to comprehend
Let past not be disown’d,
For surely this, this ‘War to end all Wars’,
Will relic turn, like ribcage dinosaurs.
Alas, wars will not finish if,
Bitter in its ending,
The petroglyphic hippogriff
Bursts from stone, ascending
Up to those dirty psychospheres where Death darts heartrending.
Earth
November 11th
1918
Armistice
And view with retrospective eye
Th’Imperial States whose awful destiny
It was to fade, decay, & disappear
Count Frederick Von Erlach
Your wars are over, so no more killing,
Human splendor move thro’ many nations,
& mops our sodden brows, when, god willing,
We’ll only know cordial relations;
Order’d to yield,
The Wehrmacht leave the trench,
Behind, a bitter field & the ecstatic French.
The Hohenzollern dynasty
Emulates the ancyent Czar,
Forfeits the Kaiser’s monarchy
To the fortunes lost in war,
The Junkers of old Germany
Gathering at Weimar,
Shall delegate, with democratic air,
This treacherous republic to declare.
In some disused railway carriage
All honour sign’d away,
A fretful page, a flaming rage,
To burn some bitter day,
When rise once more shall Germany, when all the world shall pay.
Forest of Compeigne
November 11th
1918
Hitler Awakes!
Indeed the idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men’s Eye much wrong :
Have drown’d my honour in a shallow cup
Edward Fitzgerald
Far from the front rested little Hitler,
Bed-stricken with a bout of syphilis,
Into the ward bursts a babbling pastor,
“Friends, we are beaten, there’s an armistice!”
The war was lost,
As fury rakes the room,
Into a sea-storm toss’d souls suffering in gloom.
He struggl’d to his feet in pain,
Rush’d pass’d the shell-shock’d patients
Into an evening’s winter’s rain,
Cursing the western nations,
“Is all our sacrifice in vain?
All our bleak privations?”
How could this be, he’d sens’d it in his core,
Herr Hitler was a superman of war.
Slump’d by rain-swept roadside seated,
Sobbing for Germany,
His depletedly defeated,
Yet wunderbar contree,
He felt true future grooming him, assuming destiny.
Pasewalk
November
1918
Flight of Peace
Simple and bare we languish,
Not happy, but from the anguish
Of life at last set free
Giacomo Leopardi
Where once was warring calm must reign supreme,
Let analysts asses all the data;
Oer Saharan hues, cerulean dream,
Dovelets flew, ellipsing the Meseta;
Dog-rough cloud rolls
Inspiral from the Earth,
Lest we forget those souls who sacrificed their birth.
The tumult & the shouting dies,
The world three armies receives;
The first with murder in the eyes
When a wounded heart bereaves,
The next already on the rise
As good men become thieves,
Then pity the last! forced to bear the cost
Of battle… some crippl’d, some mad, some lost.
O birds of peace & slender mein,
Men watch ye as ye fly
Up over Spain & in thy train
We made contented sigh,
Watching thee dance amid the burning tapers of the sky.
Europe
November
1918
English Salon
Touch’d by this vastness
I ask the boundless earth;
Who after all will be your master
Mao Tse-Tung
Congather’d for Parisian soiree,
The leading lights of England, more or less,
Collected like a Bloomsbury bouquet
By Mary Borden, warden, chief hostess;
When, with war won,
Gone was the nervous strain,
Which flummox’d everyone like maggots in the brain.
Lloyd-George was there, his snow-white hair
Did flutter with the winces,
Winston would mutter with a stare,
While one of nature’s princes
A garb of Arab robes did wear
“Moscow shan’t convince us,”
Splurts Churchill, “of their Bolshevik journey,
One might as well legalize sodomy!”
“Now of the Germans let us speak…”
“The Kaiser should be shot!”
“Let’s squeeze & tweak until pips squeak,
Seize war debts ‘til we’ve got
Enough to pay off Washington & stave the Empire’s rot.”
Paris
January
1919
Soloheadbeg
And the fugitives crossed
land & rivers
& swept their trails clean
Simon Ortiz
“Home rule is Rome rule”, the Six Counties say,
The rest of Ireland bounc’d back from the booths,
Sinn Fein land-sliding, biding ’til this day
Of souls exploding to their simple truths;
Ireland’s Ireland,
Let’s send the British home,
But Ulstermen won’t stand the slightest link with Rome.
As gelignite, by horse-drawn cart,
Trundles down a country lane,
Six rifles aim’d at head & heart,
Halts two soldiers in its train,
A moment’s madness made them dart
For cover, but were slain,
Whose deaths – before false warriors were blam’d –
The Irish Republican Army claim’d.
“Posters pasted like paper swords
Praise dutiful martyrs,
Plying rewards from London’s lords
& pardons meant to part us…”
“We’ve got ’em rattl’d lads, fuck their English Magna Cartas.”
Tipperary
Jan 21st
1919
Nostoi
That, setting, the sun has only to highlight
Girls crowding the railway track, as the train slows,
For me to discover it is not my station
Boris Pasternak
At the Douamont fort, by sunset shades,
Lay veterans a wreath to heal Verdun,
Melancholic souls of fallen comrades
Escort a living one to Briancon;
Two hundred francs,
Two shirts, shoes, suit, there’s more;
Aye, all the nation’s thanks for winning them the war.
Click-clack’d the slowly sloping train
Up thro’ the Alpine passes,
Attack’d by shawls of driving rain,
He wipes his misty glasses…
“At last! Mon coeur sees home again!”
Light & glossy lasses –
Like flutes, dribbling jubilant glucose –
Applaud homecomings of handsome heroes.
He sees his street, he sheds a tear,
A gasp! “C’est Jean-Francois!”
The pub did cheer as sank, he, beer,
Drenching thirst in nectar,
“Deux francs,” “Deux francs! C’est ridicule pour une Stella Artois!”
France
March
1919
Herman Hesse
A troubadour, I traverse all my land
exploring all her wide-flung parts with zest
probing in motion sweeter far than rest
Dennis Brutus
The Spring has come, the first in seven years,
When war or looming threat of war stood rife,
The deadly dread of mourning dissapears
& brings living back to living life;
One writer knows
Ruin’d was his marriage
Off for a fresh start goes, in a horse-drawn carriage
That carried all his library,
The canton of Ticino
All picturesque posperity,
As over Lake Lugano
Did Montagnola perch, pretty
Churches, perfect flow
Of nature, with humanity, in blend,
‘Twas here, for him, the war, at last, would end.
Perch’d on a rich creative seam
His soul began to dance,
With Elohim, a mellow dream,
A poet’s own romance
Where mountain meadows help forget the slaughterswathes of France.
Switzerland
April
1919
Spoils of War
No longer hosts encount’ring hosts
Shall crowds of slain deplore
They hang the trumpet in the hall
Michael Bruce
They came like Jackals to a wounded bear,
Reflected in the mirrors of the Hall
Men shone no souls – remorseless, unaware,
That what they will’d would build a gilded wall
Twyx world & peace,
This fog-drench’d vengeful clime,
When, who was there to police the intransigent crime
Of Germany’s reparations,
When memories of menace
Choke all cautious moderations –
Grunting hogs like top-tier tennis,
Carcass-tooth’d the delegations,
Concurring, say “When is
A conqueror unable to dictate
What crown or territory to mandate!”
On Berlin foists the guilt of war,
The peace branch but a twig,
That scratches sore, a corridor
Links Warsaw to Danzig –
The French entrenching with revanch, how deep the spurr’d heels dig.
Versailles
June 28th
1919
(AA) Canto 2: Delegations
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Older men declare war, but it is youth that must fight & die, & it is youth that must inherit the tribulations, the sorrow, & the triumphs that are the aftermath of war
J E Hoover
Returning Heroes
Goodbye my friend, without hand or word,
and don’t let sadness furrow your brow,
in this life dying is not a thing unheard
Sergei Yesenin
When Alister & Charles Glen Rosa reach,
Miraculously both twins had surviv’d
The war unscath’d, one day on Brodick beach
They took a picnic, felt they’d home arriv’d
Safe from the sights
Of body-bits in sacks
Of lives in sniper sights ‘tween suicide attacks.
What men the boys had all become,
Tensions ever simmering,
Jock wheel’d round Lamlash by his mum,
Jabber-gibbon gibbering,
& Douglas, ne’er without his rum,
Persistent pestering;
“I fought for you, & I lost my brother…
Those who’d stay’d at home bought him another.
Our twins stroll to their timeless glen,
Untouch’d by all the games
Of Gods & Men, Goat Fell was then
In green & orange flames
Lit by the sun, they sat scene-stunn’d, whispering dead friends’ names.
Arran
July
1919
Reparations
“Upon the sacred soil of Vaterland,
No enemy had stepp’d a single foot,
Thus how audacious are they to demand
Such reparations;” tuskers in a rut,
For Germany
Never might recover
As when two soul mates see each other with a lover.
As shrunken, starving babies curse
The birth that they were fated,
As once pure housewives fill a purse
Thro’ men’s lust satiated,
The scapegoat sentence well rehears’d,
“Let the Jews be hated,
Living luxuriously while we strive
Each day of desecration, to survive!”
Six cases of the best Moet,
Black-markets Ribbentrop,
Round plays, ballet & cabaret
He tour’d his mobile shop,
Some handsome, dashing chancer dancing, somehow, to the top.
Berlin
November 1919
Brave New World
Sleep, for the yards of jail houses
Are all teeming with violent death,
And you are the more in need of rest
Muhammad Mahdi Al-Jawahiri
“Let us establish a League of Nations,”
Say the wardens of a war-weary world,
Glimpsing Man’s maturer aspirations,
Now that his battle-banners have been furl’d;
The status quo
Returns to normalcy,
The nurse-child of Anglo-Saxon hegemony.
Britain proclaims pre-eminence,
Now Russia has revolted,
The moral laurels worn by France,
For ‘peace’ truly devoted,
But spurning this most perfect chance,
Ostrich isolated,
The Yanks withdraw yon oceanic moats,
Jealous of England’s empire’s six full votes.
On a simple piece of paper
‘World Peace’ has had its birth,
America’s non-signature
Belittling its worth,
Shirking responsibilities as policemen of the Earth.
Geneva
January 1920
War & Peace
I am the rustling of the world
the swaying between here and elsewhere
the dumb foliage of the cactus
Abdourahman A. Waberi
As the snarl of that Star-Spangl’d nation,
Which ended Europa’s love of violence,
Shrivels, daily, into isolation,
Two Philopoema, charg’d with their defence,
Nestle to eat
Pot hot, home-made dinner,
Fans wafting off the heat from a white veranda.
As Mrs Patton pours the wine,
The gentlemen wisdom share,
Drape musings with a southern whine,
On the art of Tank Warfare,
“To penetrate the foe’s front line
Swift as a grizzly bear
“Plucks salmon, strike, back’d by artillery,
Not hamper’d spread defending infantry.”
Once Mrs Mamie Eisenhower
Had serv’d the last liqueur,
A quick shower, within the hour,
They’ll start a smart lecture
On ‘Pursuit of Routing Armies,’ by a young MacArthur.
Camp Meade
September
1920
The Nazi Party
I cannot tell what ails me,
But this I know for sure,
Thou only art my cure
Baba Tahir
He took the stand before a growing band
Of misfits, bandits, madmen & chancers,
Enchants them with a panorama spann’d
Over time across epic expanses;
His voice rings loud,
Flush’d with higher German,
Binding demotic crowd to th’ypnotic sermon.
“For over fifteen centuries
Reign’d the Holy Roman law,
When Fate unites the Germanies
We shall speak the peace once more
& Versaille’s damned iniquities
Demolish with a roar!”
”Rubbish!” some quatted heckler dares a noise,
Dragg’d off, rough’d up by tough-mouth’d bully-boys.
All hail the hero of the right,
Staunch National Socialist,
Ready to fight by plebiscite
Thro politics & fist,
The decadent democracies… his horde applaud upryst.
Munich
December
1920
Baby Boom
Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads,
Like gnats around a streetlight in summer,
The children we could have
Sharon Olds
Charlie Sumner stagger’d down Accy Road,
Hit Havelock’s lock-in, a quick whiskey,
Then thro’ his crude two-up, two-down, tiptoed,
To pounce upon his wife, drunk & frisky;
“Gerroff!” a clout,
His silent smile’s intrigue
Bends to triumphant shout… “We’ve won the blummin’ league!”
How rare is it to find true mate
To share thy meagre ration,
Youths rush upstairs to celebrate,
Indulging perfect passion
Without a jonny, for, of late,
Babies are in fashion:
He gasps as he sighs as his seed slips in,
A cry! Rose rises, “Our Jack needs feedin!”
His wife away…. some charabang
Lets off a lively BOOM!
With barren pang the clammy clang
Of battle claims the room,
While friends that fell at Passcheandale wail, “Charlie!” thro’ the gloom.
Burnley
May
1921
Enchanted Land
water they needed
this morning when
the river was drying
Rina Garcia Chua
The Oppenheimers lov’d the holidays,
Whose Picassos, hung at Riverside Drive,
Were nothing to the glorious haze
Of shimmering sun the days they’d arrive
Back at the ranch,
Hard by Albuquerque,
For barbies, branch-by-branch, jug-glugs of Wild Turkey.
Young Bobby donn’d a cowboy’s hat
Said to the ranchers, ‘let’s go,’
With native shaman sat to chat
& smok’d & tok’d each next go,
Then kinda stoned in silence sat
By Sangre de Cristo
Where lonely, wee Los Alamos appear’d
To strike some chord within him, fraught & weird.
He rode back home, where there did sit
Some letter forwarded,
So open’d it, a flapping fit!
‘Mom, I’ve been accepted,”
She rushes in; “Where is it?” “Ma” “What?” “I’m off to Harvard!”
New Mexico
June
1921
The Birth of Ulster
The cavalry flew by and vanished,
The storm thundered and hushed.
Lawlessness bore down, bore down
Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin
From powderkegs of possibilities,
Europa exploded with republics,
Enjoying the responsibility
Of self-determination – old dog tricks
Of sit, beg, stand,
Silenc’d, & forever,
Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia!
Now Ireland wants a bit of that
Again, quite complicated,
As murder gangs go tit-for-that,
Assassins unabated,
The Black & Tans despising ‘Pat,’
Heinous & hated,
This crowded hour of Gaelic history,
Deals in dark death instead of liberty.
Partitioners accept the curse,
Imperial hybrid;
It could be worse, the public purse
No thirsty invalid,
For, to be fair, wealth everywhere blares what the British did.
Ireland
July
1921
Curiosity
a poet came,
lightly opened his lips,
and the inspired fool burst into song
Vladimir Mayakovsky
“The reason I have usher’d you here for,
Truman, is to find out information,”
Said the American ambassador,
“On a political demonstration,”
“Where, sir?” “Munich…”
“The Nazis?” “Yes…” “The place?”
“Cornelius Street, quick field check, y’know, just in case.”
Smith silent sits as Hitler stands
Above the hundertschaften,
Where ruffians in red armbands,
Men of lowly origin,
Goose-stepping slid to marching bands,
Twas such a raucous din,
That any tetratologist would think
Some creature-thing was shrieking at the brink.
Outslurr’d the Juden diatribe
From babbling, bubbling craw;
Thro’ jeer & jibe threats clear proscribe
The shirkers of the war,
Whose profiteering cowardice sets fires in the straw.
Munich
November 15th
1922
(AA) Canto 3: Saunterings
**************************************
We have Napoleon to thank that a couple of warlike centuries can now follow on one another which have no equal in history, in short we have enter’d the Classic Age of War
Frederick Nietzsche
Putsch
Who is this screamer in the street?!
With a frightened voice and broken heart
Who is this mad man?!
Ali Khalifa
Minacious voice yelling, “Now is the time!”
Bullies into the Beurgerbraukeller,
Bemedall’d Ludendorf lending his crime
A strange respect – that dangerous fella,
Unfash’nable,
Leaps up, shooting his gun,
“Countrymen the national revolution’s begun!”
While Roehm mans up the Ministry,
Hitler’s phrenzied followers
Steam enteric thro’ the city –
Trucks of singing stormtroopers-,
To ringing Rathaus chivalry,
Down Residenstrasse’s
Streets to the Odeonsplatz… in their way,
Long line of carbines straining for the fray.
“March with me men!” they step, a roar
Of angry bullets fly,
Hitting the floor, splatter’d in gore,
Bullets graze Goering’s thigh,
While Hitler scamper’d safely off, & left good friends to die.
Munich
1923
Distant Rumbling
Within the flower there lies a seed
Within the seed there springs a tree
Within the tree there spreads a wood
Katherine Raine
Chartwell, bought with his publisher’s advance,
& Rolls Royce too, bustl’d with builder’s noise,
But Winston Churchill deaf to noise, the trance
Of painting scenes late Autumn’s sun enjoys;
Then call’d inside
By Clemmy, for a meal
Of veg heap’d to the side of gravy, pork & veal.
He took a hot knife from the flame
To slices of fresh meat carve,
“While rises yet my writer’s fame
You know we shall never starve…”
“Your brandy & cigars I still blame,
Without them we could halve
All of our expenses…” “Pass me the Times…”
Some silence… “you need to see this…” as chimes
Ghoul from the clock, the floorboards creak,
“Here, read this story, dear,
Down in Munich, only this week,
A message sent quite clear
There’s something queer emerging from those German halls of beer.
Kent
November
1923
Bolshevik Baton
After your death
It was windy every day
Every day
Anne Carson
Death shadow’d the legend-life of Lenin,
That ceaseless leader-slayer of the Tsar,
Wheel’d thro’ wet woods, slowly, by Joe Stalin,
Spoon-feeding poison’s ruthless coup de grace;
The man is dead,
But now the God is born,
Drap’d in the Russian red like rosy-finger’d Dawn.
As bonfires warm the freezing square,
Queues trail down every side-street,
Breath funnelling the sunless air,
Patiently wait to meet
A corpse embalm’d – the empire’s heir
Sentinel, stamping feet,
Stood guard o’er the focus of devotion –
Before him coasted a bear-fur ocean…
…To whom he gestures for silence,
Voice stylish, loud & clear
The arrogance, the violence,
The flashy Cavalier-
“We shall make Mother Russia great!” for “Stalin!” thousands cheer.
Moscow
January
1924
Mein Kampf
Everybody must roar his defiance.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Millions of hearts with one mind
Tian Han
The world’s press finds the Blutenburgstrasse,
Beheld a new media sensation,
Some strange, enigmatic insurrector,
Shrieking, “I am the nation’s salvation!”
Thought’s purest prime
Hess summons to his room,
Dictating all the time his stately visions bloom.
“The Germans are the Master Race
& over the Earth shall lord,
We must secure our living space
Eastwards with a war-sharp sword,
Where Slavic chaff shall serve our grace
& Sanhedrim abhor’d
Be cut out like the cancer that they are…
Then build a global throne upon the scar!
…But first must come conflict’s dull pain;
The reckoning with France,
Then march to gain Russian champaigne,
Such fertile, vast expanse…”
A warbling lark left both entranced, watching the blossom dance.
Landsberg
June
1924
Busker’s Holiday
The more the autumn wind is wicked
And the moon desperate, —
The merrier we, vagrants, get
Georgiy Ivanov
The Putsch becomes a martyrs’ memory…
His wound well heal’d, tho’ each day morphine craves,
Herr Hitler’s plenipotentiary
To Venice travels, of the tender waves;
His wife beside,
In love to all appear,
As gently they did glide by tendant gondolier.
They took a train to meet, in Rome,
Il Duce’s iconoclast,
But heard, each hour, “he’s not at home,”
Such a dirge of days were pass’d
Round Roman tombs, St Peter’s dome,
‘Til realis’d, at last,
His mission, to acquire from Fascist friends,
Firm source of funds had fail’d… Herr Goering sends
A letter to Bavaria,
Which disappointment fills;
While, scarier, there’s barely a
Pfenning to pay the bills,
The Nazi squirearchy into obsoletion spills.
Prenestina
July
1924
Monty’s School
On the strength of one link in the cable
Dependeth the might of the chain;
Who knows when thou mayest be tested?
Captain Ronald Hopwood
As mortal mixtures of Earth’s many moulds
In substance vary – density & mass
& destiny, too, which Lachesis holds;
Those student soldiers, one afternoon class,
Sense something deep
Within their teacher’s soul,
Like greatness half asleep, behind time’s creeping wall.
“The soldiers art is pure details,
From the spotlessness of dress,
To knowing all his effort fails
If a moment of success
Unfollow’d up, triumph soon stales,
Inactions deem useless –
So, be incisive boys, whene’er you can,
& victory springs from the simplest plan!”
With common sense quite clarified,
His lads all loved to learn,
& bright applied each light their guide
Thro warfare’s fires did burn –
A luminary torch to whom with joy they yearn’d return.
Camberly
November
1924
Mussolini
more faithful man was never known,
and (from Valerius) we learn
that he was named the Great in Rome
Compiuta Donzella
As rivers gently drift along the glen,
Then gather speed & gallop down the falls,
New Ceasar, elevated by his men,
Has cross’d his Rubicon to take Rome’s walls;
Whose government
Made Fascist Mafia,
Whose Black-shirts implement a fresh brand of terror.
Ciano left the rush of Rome
To meet his lord & idol,
Strolling about his famous home
Beneath some crumbling castle,
Where playing in the sunswabb’d gloam,
A pretty, pig-tail’d girl,
“Signori, who is she?” “My eldest child.”
“Her name is?” “Edda, essentially wild!”
Il Duce donn’d his sleeping robe,
“My boy I must retire,”
Thick fingers probe the spinning globe,
Rest on his heart’s desire –
The little isle of Malta to attend his Black Empire.
Rocca Delle Caminale
1925
The Pilgrim
The altars burn,
And our voices soar
To God’s very throne
Anna Akhmatova
It was a day of thunder in the hills,
When Winifred beshook Herr Hitler’s hand!
Electric shock unblocks the pagan thrills,
He surely was the wonder of the land,
As Wagner was
When Nibelungen wrung
From primal minds because their spirit must be sung.
The orchestra did sooth & rage
To beautiful conduction,
Brunhild & Seigfreid gave the stage
A seminal production,
& then, when Wotan war did wage,
Valhalla’s destruction
Induc’d, in Hitler, total ecstasy,
That art for us, was for him prophecy.
She led him to the private tomb
Of the Wagner garden,
In moonlit gloom one could assume
Moods were tun’d by Hadyn,
As felt he brother demigod, Zeus, to this Poseidon.
Beyreuth
July 23rd
1925
Squadron-Leader Bligh
I’ll wait for daybreak
and we’ll figure out what to do
with all this sunshine
Harriet Anena
With skilful ease he piloted the plane,
Views zooming under albescent sky;
Thro’ patchwork carpet snakes the Bognor train,
‘Tween tenements of barley rusk & rye;
Swooping the Downs
Loops the stylish flyer,
Oercruising coastal towns, circling Chichester’s spire.
They heard his bi-plane’s buzzing speck,
Propellers eager spinning,
Wing him atop the field to check
If the Old Boys were winning;
He parks his steed, kisses Kate’s neck,
“Let me save the inning!”
“We need a six off the last ball to win!”
Giles Smythe-Tompkinson bowls a wicked spin;
With willow-flash the ball was sent
Beyond the bound’ry rims,
“Huzzahs!” are vent, into the tent
For sandwiches & pimms,
Says Nigel Bligh, “Back to the sky before the evening dims!”
Goodwood
1927
(AA) Canto 4: Fascist Dawn
**************************************
Though Mars himself, the angry god of arms,
& all the earthly potentates conspire
To dispossess me of this diadem,
Yet will I wear it in despite of them
Christopher Marlowe
First Waves
My heart is drowning in love for you
I am so proud of you
I pledge my life to you
Sayed Khalifa
Little white cloud-flake breaks a blue spring sky,
While below, in the glittering city,
Sit avant garde sipping martini dry,
The men looking good, the women pretty;
Beneath that cloud
Defeat did, drifting, fade;
The people laughing loud at this strange street parade.
Men joining hands, chests out-puffing,
Herr Hitler & disciples;
Hawk-ey’d Hess, gorbellied Goering,
Club-footed, dwarfish Goebells,
Himmler completes the inner-ring,
Lord of the Schutzstaffels;
Defended by the brown-shirted SA,
Sensing their time will come… but not this day…
That will end in disappointment –
Like condescending water,
The party sent just three percent
From the common voter –
Who on earth would ever let a Nazi date his daughter!?
Berlin
May
1928
Dionysia
Ladies & young men in love,
Long live Bacchus & long live Love!
Let every one make music, dance, & sing
Lorenzo De’ Medici
Excess in Weimar’s capital prevails!
This eldorado of exquisite chic
Cocaine contains – characters & cocktails!
Round Adlon’s rooms swan-headed trollies creak,
Where julep mint
& complex oyster dish
Spice every ducal stint with a royal relish.
From cocktails at the Jockey Club,
They flooded to the negro bars
The jumbl’d, thumping, huddl’d hub
Where saxophones & guitars
Muffl’d the bass’s double dub
Where decadents from Mars
Surround the Carolina cryin’ queen,
Freaks cheek-to-cheek her plaintive wails did preen.
In saunter’d Roehm, a transvestite
Busty, in bright blonde wig,
& gave a light to some young sprite
Naked but for a fig
& took him to a secret room, men grunting like a pig!
Berlin
July
1929
International Exchange
No mortal knows what he will earn tomorrow;
No mortal knows where he will breathe his last.
Allah alone is wise & all-knowing
Muhammad
Kuribayashi, dashing to the bone,
Fresh with his emperor-given gunto,
Swaps Washington for the immortal throne,
Whose meat & frolic beer of Buffalo,
Whose ladies fair
Flesh dancing to the band,
Brought naught he could compare to his own blinker’d land.
From coast to coast he tour’d it all
In a shiny chevrolet,
Absorbing every detail small,
Entrall’d by this great display
Of man & nature tow’ring tall
S.F., N.Y., L.A.,
Fort Bliss, D.C., Harvard, then quite adroit,
Touring the plants of factory detroit.
By vast machinery syurpris’d,
Felt godlike forces rush,
Whom mobilis’d & alterguis’d
With just one button push,
What rampancy all military enemies must crush.
Michigan
1929
Wall Street Crash
Tents of winds are my home
And stones are my furniture
The cycle of my days is one of curses and misery
Mustafa Seed Ahmed
Young land of a liquor-laced razzmatazz,
Grown richer from the Big War’s victory,
Home to the silver screen & jive-cat jazz,
Flag-waving for global prosperity;
Along Wall Street
Ford motorcades whizz by,
Whole Princeton, Yale compete for share-blocks rising high…
Whose dreams, in one black instant fell,
Auguring the global doom,
Strain’d faces yelling, “Sell! Sell! Sell!”
Burst the pink bubblegum boom,
‘Twas like some scene from Dante’s Hell
As chaos gript the room,
& thro it all one sharp sound to derange –
The staccato click of the Stock Exchange.
“All dem good times dey be over,”
Serfs cry from shore to shore,
How ruthless the great leveller,
Rich stoopeth with the Poor,
A wicked vortex currencies upsucking by the score.
New York
October 28th
1929
Nazi Fires
If I were fire, I would set the world aflame;
If I were wind, I would storm it;
If I were water, I would drown it
Cecco Angiolieri
The mountains seem’d in song, as fell the snow
On Oberstdorf; whose timber rooves did seem,
To all who gaz’d upon the streets below,
A darling face in a sensual dream;
Herr Dietrich lit
Saltpetre cigarette,
Continuing to sit, a hunter with a net.
The townsfolk all surpris’d to see
First physical swastika
On Dietrich’s arm, show sympathy
When, bullish as Boudicca,
He spews, “this world catastrophe
Jews of America
Have conjur’d – a dystopian nightmare,
With vermin infiltrating everywhere!”
With set of sun he rode the slopes
Up in a cable car,
By torchlight gropes around laid ropes
All smear’d with pitch & tar,
To light bewitching swastika – that flaming, far-seen star.
The Nebelhorn
November
1929
Der Fuhrer
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing
Where feeble hope could never have flown
Annamacharya
Max Stemmler took Kreuzberg’s mendicant streets,
Epiloguizing dejected fortune,
Each crashing bank long labour’s theft repeats,
Made money might as well be on the moon;
One grey stone wall
New poster burning bright,
Piercing his solemn soul as if ’twere holy light.
Max bought the party newspaper,
Absorb’d it over coffee,
The Voelkischer Beobachter,
Giddying philosophy,
Promises of doing better,
See… today… a rally!
He asks for the bill, “Danke, that was nice.”
“Since you’ve come in coffee doubl’d in price!”
A new Crusade to test the Jews,
None knows just what it is,
Pairs of worn shoes torn into twos,
Scuddle home in phrenzies,
Flogging that dogged gospel to bedraggl’d families.
Berlin
1930
Businessmen
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
From Immenstadt & Kempton went the boys,
Storm-trooper proud all sang for the SA,
A clank of jackboots, rhetoric & noise,
& cretins over-barging in their way;
Hurls crude Jew jibes
At holidaymakers,
As when astonish’d tribesmen first view’d the Quakers.
Hoteliers from round the town
Congather’d, handshakes, all smiling,
‘Til with a stern, mood-slicing frown,
“Those bastards unbeguiling
That prance about in shirts of brown,
Paradise defiling,
Are scaring off our customers, you know,
I mean… Ringelmann, he is a maestro!”
“Judge Neuberger, a whole floor takes
All summer – each carafe
With wine & steaks adds up, & makes
Good wages for my staff –
The Jews are good for business – while the Nazis just make me laugh!
Oberstdorf
1930
Festival of Rice
He was adorned in his very best,
he was oiled like a king,
with beads of silver in his hair
Ama Ata Aidoo
As Basho join’d the chanting how he cuts
A handsome figure in those robes of gold,
Among the drummers round the paddy huts
With Kagarume dancers, young & old;
As wood blocks flail
To clank of bamboo rods,
The Sumiyoshi hail the Shinto harvest gods.
With dip & swirl the girls releas’d
The whirl of a spinning top,
The fields are bless’d as begs a priest
The boon of a fruitful crop,
then villagers all flock to feast
& drank dry every drop,
As did ancestors centuries ago
Intently sentimental went Basho
& toasted all the emperors
“Their names grow with the trees,
Who fend for us, descend for us
On Heaven’s splendid breeze –
To these I am devoted, & to all we Japanese.”
Kansai
June 14th
1930
CIAM-II
You must be from my country
I see it by the tick
Of your soul around the eyelashes
Tchicaya U Tam’si
What lust & longing shoots thro’ German youth,
To fill one’s freshness with happiness health,
As sunlight splashes its eternal truth
On eager faces, open spaces’ wealth
Sets thoughts unbound,
While brutish past grows dim
The future tribe has found its vigour & its vim!
As garden cities, light & air,
Reforming infrastructure,
Brings education, medicare
& good folk all together,
Whose schools & clinics, some declare
Mere gimmicks, the culture
Of Bolshevik decadence, Nazis rage
Destroying German building heritage!
O ironies of ironies!
Who know not what we know,
Of vanities the bonfire is
When bombers churn’d, below,
Such ‘German building heritage’ made brickless blow-by-blow.
Frankfurt-am-Main
1932
(& 29-01-44)
(AA) Canto 5: Crescent & Cross
**************************************
“Now tell us what ’twas all about,”
Young Peterkin, he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
“Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for”
Robert Southey
Death of Gesu
Washed in the Saviour’s cleansing blood,
The white-robed saints in glory stand,
Hailing Earth’s lingerers o’er the flood
WJ Brock
Bound by the Jews’ Messianic cravings,
The Nazarene Essene gathers his voice,
By Rome dismiss’d, “Strange religious ravings!”
These teachings giving common man a choice;
“Heaven on Earth!”
Enfearful Sannhedrim
Deny his sacred birth, steer Pilate’s woesome whim.
This ‘imposter’ promptly taken
To the Hill of Calvary,
Where the sins of man awaken,
Crucified upon the tree,
“Father, why am I foresaken?”
Jesus weeps eerily;
First flickers of the Holy Roman guilt,
As spear-point ribward-driven to its hilt.
His followers proclaim a king,
Trumpet his history –
Sin-forgiving & storm-stilling
Miracle ministry,
The perishing ephemeron of Christianity.
Jerusalem
36 A.D.
Islamica
Even the flowers greet you as of old;
Then you may well divine in what degree
My heart has already welcome for my friend
Kokin Shu
In pagan Mecca was man-mountain born,
Thro’ meditations in the Hiran cave,
From Heaven’s will Qu’ranic verses shorn,
But shunn’d from town with condescending wave;
Still, Medina,
His righteousness perceiv’d,
”Those who pray to Allah by Paradise reciev’d.”
While Meccanese rode to rid
The deserts of this ‘prophet,’
Defensive actions made valid
By visions of Mahomet,
For bloody decade far outdid
All rivals threat-by-threat,
& with an empire flowing far & wide
Islam’s first Imam, cleans’d, at Khaibar died.
Those men who tasted the divine
Holler up a sandstorm,
Drive Byzantine from Palestine,
Damascus made a home,
Then from the holy city all the papists whip to Rome.
Jerusalem
638
Monjoie!
his patronage maintains every poet group:
in his palace drinking is no dream
for his great thronging generous troops
Niall Mor
Great Charlemagne has claim’d the Frankish throne,
The Seat of Christ is his to long sustain,
His blows prodigious yonder Rhine & Rhone,
Brings empire bustling to his sapphire train;
Firm by his side
Valiant Count Roland,
First lion of the pride, Durendal in his hand.
Great Charlemagne a palm’s breadth drew
His sword, Joyeux, for glory,
Nobles from Normandy, Poitou,
Maine, Gascony, Picardie,
Tourain, Flanders, Guyeme, Anjou,
& pretty Brittany,
Traverse the ancyent vales of Ronceveaux,
Spain’s delitescent leagues searing below.
Such a battle is upon us,
Twyx Christian & Moor,
When beauteous Spanish passes
Turn wretched scenes of war,
When fell’d knights, decomposing, food for slugs & nuzzling boar.
Pyrenees
778
Crusaders
This desert, to which you came
with two raised palms like an absurd hope,
no longer begets prophets
Amjad Nasser
From the Praetendarius of Llanfair,
To the old Thesaurarius of Lille,
It seems Pope Urban’s essence moves thro’ air,
Prospering thro’ keen priesthoods, steeling zeal;
Christ’s foremost knight
Tours Europe’s fidget thrones,
“Those Muslims we must fight!” rouses convictive tones.
Men march & capture Antioch,
Long siege of land & water,
Fights infidels, from rock-by-rock,
Apocalyptic slaughter
Depleting, daily, human stock –
War’s terminal quota;
Infernal, body-mangl’d battlefield,
Where hymns mingl’d as the moaning for mercy peel’d.
From miracle to miracle
The city stood no chance,
A gritty yell, the citadel
To libbards, fell, of France,
Lungs bellowing, “Avanti!” “Adelante!” & “Advance!”
Jerusalem
1099
Sa-Lah-Din
It is bitter
To walk among strangers
When the strangers are in one’s own land
Iain Crichton Smith
The Crescent League cries faith & sacred war;
Turban’d Berbers, pitch-black Afric captains,
Pristine Emirs, the shark-paced Almacor,
Sunburn’d Saracens, fervent Syrians;
Lord at the helm,
One man unites them all,
To raze Outremer’s realm & seize the Wailing Wall.
Damascus & Aleppo fall
To the dark Mujahaddin,
Crushing Christian armies small
At that slaughter at Hattin,
“Allah!” the cause, “Allah!” the call,
“Allah! & we shall win!”
At last, on Heaven’s city look’d he down,
Where man-on-man press’d forwards for renown.
The situation sacrosanct
Beneath a saffron sky,
The Templars thank’d their lord, outflank’d,
They set themselves to die,
Preserve their place in Paradise & Allah’s hordes defy .
Jerusalem
1187
Constantinople’s Fall
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’
Emma Lazarus
As panting deer outpace the panther’s claws,
Then sleep where wolves oft meet in company,
The Ottoman clamps down his drooling jaws
Upon outposted Christianity;
Eighty thousand
Gore-grizzl’d warriors,
Encamp upon the sand soft kissing Bosphorous.
As cannons swallow gunpowder,
To spit out destructive balls,
Devil clamour ripples louder
From the beaches ‘neath the walls,
Scenes of sorry death enshroud her,
Byzantium,who falls –
Janissaries slaying the last Ceasar,
Crescent flags commanding Kerkoporta.
Leaving the Sultan to his prize
The Genoese flee,
As local wise men realize
Passage to Italy,
They leave behind a changing name, shaming its history!
Istanbul
1453
Siege of Vienna
The bird in me awoke again
Its cry spread anguish
In the heart of my kingdom
Nimrod Bena Djangrang
Islamic spectres on Austria fell,
Vienna must, for Europe’s soul, stand firm,
Else Pasha & the Turkish infidel
Into the West & thro’ their wives shall worm;
Aim’d were their guns,
At Allah’s grand empire,
More bonfires than are suns, the Kahlenburg on fire.
As constant as those perfect waves
That roll into Biaritz,
The Sipahi slip to their graves
In the death-deep city pits,
Tho’ conquest human honour craves,
At these extreme limits,
Facing superior technology,
The apex fled of Turkish history.
The royal horses are preserv’d,
Churches Hosanna sing,
Islam unnerv’d, Europe preserv’d,
Her internecine spring,
When bleeding for one’s empire breeds purpose in existing.
Vienna
1688
Gallipoli
They seek to bring us under
But England lives, & still will live –
For we’ll crush the despot under
Alfred Tennyson
Kitchener’s Churchillian conjecture
Battle brings before Constantinople,
Champagne thrill of Achaean adventure,
The Gentle, savage; the Savage, gentle;
“Where are you from?”
“Melbourne…” “Why are you here?”
Senses of soldiers numb, led captive to the rear.
The soul of Rupert Brooke releas’d,
Packs poetry for the trip,
Byronic sortie to the East
But mosquito punctures lip,
By volumes his visions increas’d,
Death climbs aboard the ship,
For what seem’d a tayle, epic & Trojan,
Now slowly sluiced with tragical poison.
From sandy cliffs to hills jagged
Sloping from Chunuk Blair,
Up ridge ragged, long trail hagger’d,
Thro’ hot, wilderness air,
Bluce Slater from Australia spat bullets ev’rywhere.
Turkey
August
1915
Ottoman Winter
Now stoops the sun, & dies day’s cheerful light.
When stars stread forth, intone this two-tongued folk,
Standing with firebrands, hymns of sacrifice
C.M. Doughty
Empires are born as glass is born of sand,
Then turn to sand, scarlet sands Syrian
Are roam’d by one born of another land,
Laird of the head-dress’d horsemen of Hejan;
Fair Lawrence leads
King Feisal’s cavalry,
Upon fine, strong-thigh’d steeds, behind an enemy.
Thro’ olive grove & fields of grain
Wind the streets of Megiddo,
Blows bloody fall as stormswept rain,
White the hot-edged sabres glow
As dim-spawn’d devils deal in pain
Angels honours bestow,
As thro the battleground of the furies
Tread the Fates with JUSTICE & her juries.
As was murder’d Montezuma
& Visigoths did ford,
Em’rald Tiber, from Syria
By Lionhearted sword
The Turks are toss’d accosted from possessions lost abroad.
Arabia
October 1st
1918
(AA) Canto 6: Swastikas
**************************************
Surely it is not the poets
That are responsible for what happens
But Zeus himself, who deals with each of us
Toilers on earth as he sees fit
Homer
Omar al-Mukhtar
They are inevitably destroyed
Like plaster washed off in the rains
Like the sandy bank of a river
Lalitavistara
On Turkish carcass Italy doth gorge,
Only the true Senussi Rome withstood,
But tanks emitting from the Fiat forge
& gangs of fascists fill black pails with blood;
Closing a ring
Round Jebel Akhdar’s hills,
Where Muhktar’s rebel spring resistant moods instils.
As mustard gas, like falling snow,
Deals death & devastation
Il Duce on the radio
Thro’ camps of concentration,
the struggle crumbles blow-by-blow –
To ensure starvation,
At Egypt’s border wire divides the sand,
& every mosque as clos’d down out of hand.
At last the Desert Lion caught,
Treasonly convicted,
The noose grew taut, a life cut short,
Watchers on predicted
The Goddess KARMA could no let such acts go unafflicted.
Suluq
Libya
1931
A Sudden Engagement
A gentle wind fans the calm night:
A bright moon shines on the high tower.
A voice whispers, but no one answers when I call
Fu Hsuan
“Costanzo, Granduca di Livorno,
This nouveaux Fascistnoblesse has a son
Handsome enough, his name Galeazo…”
Whom Edda meets, tho’ neither is smitten
A film-date shar’d,
Topless girls pearl fishing
In Polynesia, staring silently, wishing
The bodyguards a row behind
Would vanish on their vespas,
This role she lived lived all undefin’d
Where suffocation prospers,
Her young man seems to read her mind,
Leans across & whispers,
“Do you want to marry me?” Edda smil’d
& said, “Why not?” – “My daughter, she is wild,”
Her mother said, “but one to tame,
A maschiaccio –
But, all the same, to her a game
This life – she shall not sew
Or cook – but be assur’d her love & loyalty will grow.”
Rome
January
1932
Deutschland Sings!
The two-voiced mouth of secrets shared,
We two make a single Sphinx.
The two arms of a single cross
Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov
From boist’rous lieder of the Alpine south
To bawdy ballads of the Baltic ports,
Teutonic spirit, drawn first as a thought,
Emerges as music from every mouth;
Orchestras play
In Cafes, without pause,
The stage hits of the day to sing-a-long applause.
As over wooden balconies
The housemaid hangs a mattress,
She fills the air with melodies –
Clad in well-iron’d hiker’s dress
Stroll the strumming mandolinnys
Along lanes litterless
Thro’ the old walls to the forest hills,
While to those women at the window sills
The boatman from his flowing throne
Waggles happy fingers –
The scratchy drone of gramophone
Cast the meistersingers
Around the square ’til overwhelm’d by the handbell ringers.
Heidelberg
1932
Fascist Nuptials
We think we know ourselves, but all we know
Is: love surprises us. It’s like when sunlight flings
A sudden shaft that lights up glamorous the rain
Liz Lochhead
Explosions of fragrant fecundity
From azaleas, roses, gardens fill,
Spill’d from Torlonian villa, pretty
Edda look’d, like a tower on a hill,
Or Dante’s muse,
The wedding party march’d
To San Guiseppe’s pews thro’ gladiusi arch’d.
As Papal Nuncio demands
The day to be religious,
Ambassadors from many lands
& editors prestigious,
With uniforms, bejewell’d hands,
Diamonds, furs, prodigious;
Surround the darling dance of vows & rings,
That consummates recurring terms of kings.
Choir singing Romagnolan hymns,
The bride & gloom set free
To lock lithe limbs, their fiat skims
The vias speedily
To Hotel Quisisana on the island of Capri.
Rome
April 30th
1932
Albert Einstein
Prisoners of hope, arise,
& see your Lord appear !
Lo ! on the wings of love He flies
C Wesley
This crazy prophet, this quantum guru,
Destroys Man’s mute concepts of time & space,
Whose mind alert enough to feel the Jew
Must face the fury of the Master Race;
If in their hands,
They had the bomb as well,
The world shall understand naught but ‘Gott in Himmel!’
Heart-skipping to the mercedes,
Arm-hugging his Yankee guest,
Mouth-speaking amidst garden trees
Of the e’er enticing West,
When wistfully Albert agrees
To leave the nuptual nest…
“When?” he furrows his Newtonian brow,
Kisses his darling wife & whispers, “now!”
With liquid eyes & drought-dry throat
One most emotive day,
Thoughts all afloat he boards a boat
Bound for the USA,
Those realms of milk & honeydew, three thousand miles away.
Antwerp
November
1932
Yin & Yang
My strength is the strength
Of ten young things: I am with you:
In that first moment of delight
Roethke
Oer Berchtesgaden Ribbentrop arriv’d,
Found Hitler waiting at the Wachenfeld,
In whom the simplest of solutions thriv’d
Express’d in simplest terms – the two just gell’d –
The Nouveaux Riche,
The Circus of the Brawls,
Stitch’d in a sick pastiche – &, as evening falls,
It ends with an invitation,
“Do visit us in Dahlem…”
‘Twas a mental liberation
When he left the ‘Us’ for ‘Them’,
Cultivated conversation
Off-syphon’d caustic phlegm,
As Ribbentrop did ably demonstrate
The table manners of a man of state.
Ammelies was quite delighted
To meet her husband’s guest;
Who converted, nay, devoted,
Upon his wife impress’d
Herr Hitler was the antidote to Deutschland dispossess’d!
Berlin
1932
Breath of Evil
I chewed all my dreams
In the fragile bowls
Of our independences
Charles Ngande
Freya Von Moltke ador’d her husband
As Germany his famous ancestor,
A soul conceptually enlighten’d,
Quite unlike this fright’ning man before her;
Wild animals
Surround him in a pack,
As cinematix swells, breath burns into her back.
Beside a sibbilantine blaze
Stood the district magistrate,
Helmuth onlisten’d with amaze
“Leave the Nazis to their fate
Let inefficience stem their craze,”
Splurts Helmuth, “they’ll create
Dystopian catastrophes of doom!”
In burst his wife, like panic, to the room.
“I saw him in the cinema,”
“Saw whom?” “Herr Hitler!” “Him!”
“Our eyes did spar, his dreadful tar
Did coat unquiet, grim,
Dim orbs as dull as stormclouds after sunset on the rim.”
Berlin
January
1933
Chancellor Hitler
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables the drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
Al Purdy
The old ones in the Reichstag share their fears,
Kabbalic nest of arch-intiguerie,
The Nazis know their day of glory nears,
But not quite yet, no clear majority;
Arms magnate meet,
“That man most warlike seems…”
“Aye, let us fund his feet, & permeate his dreams.”
Charming all the right-wing parties,
‘The front of the Harzburger,’
Plus money from the industries
& Mussolini’s lira,
All of Germany criss-crosses,
Rallying each burgher,
On every side the SA’s numbers swell,
‘Tis better than the jobless carousel.
Soon into power Hitler sworn,
His cause célèbre won,
Tho’ wintry morn chills to the bone,
He seems a shining sun,
Some prophet like Ezekiel, God with a gatling gun.
Berlin
January
1933
Unter Den Linten
The zealot’s flame deep in the hot brown eyes
That glowed with strange and holy whisperings,
And searched the stars, and caught angelic wings
Alan Sullivan
Hitler breakfasts by the Wilhemstrasse,
Freshly elected Chancellor to be,
When possessing Berlin controls Prussia,
& those controlling Prussia, Germany!
Beside the flag,
Luddendorf whispers, “This
Accursed man must drag us all down the abyss!“
Men drank until the sunset made
A berth for the Evening Star,
Forming a happy cavalcade
Beneath Brandenburger bar,
As if with Bismark to parade
The Kaiser’s spoils of war;
Into the city, under the lime trees,
Ribbons of torchflame flicker’d in the breeze.
“Seig heil! Seig heil! Seig heil! Seig heil!”
Der Fuhrer close to tears,
His stoneface veil torn by love’s gale,
Arms jerk up to the cheers,
“We must build up a Reichland to endure ten hundred years!”
Berlin
January
1933
(AA) Canto 7: Ravenswarm
**************************************
The new German university has only one law…
To serve the intentions & objectives
Of the Fuhrer & the German people
Hans Heyse
Imperial Hypocrisy
At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
William Stafford
The Japanese drop bombs upon Shanghai,
The flooding blood of innocence is shed,
The League see a glint in their slinty-eyed
Members, summon’d to answer for it’s dead;
The crux has come
When empires young & old
Shall totter up the sum of all their stolen gold.
The bespectacl’d Yosuke
Rails the Trans-Siberian
Thro’ Moscow’s hospitality
To the shores of Lake Lucerne,
Hectors crumbing fraternity,
“Who shall cast that first stone?
To civilise China good soldiers died
But condemn’d here as Christ was crucified!”
Cast was the ostracizing vote,
Yosuke disinclin’d
Donn’d his dark coat, & clear’d his coat
“We terminate this bind!”
Scrunch-scrapp’d up piece of paper, left the world bestunn’d behind.
Geneva
February
1933
Pilgrimage
Age & decrepitude can have no terrors for me
Loss & vicissitude cannot appal me
Not even death can dismay me
Elizabeth Hayson
A holiday to feel alive & free,
To visit the Communist templeground
Anatoly ushers his family
Onto the train for Moscow Central bound;
As Russia spread
Forever, seemingly,
Their borodinsky bread graz’d, gazing dreamingly.
In the wake of private enterprise,
Cos there aint no I in team,
Utopia the common prize,
As their statehood reigns supreme,
the towers of the kremlin rise,
Some magic mythomeme,
But, cold & bleak, the cobblestones speak drear
As like a winter’s mist, all sides, hangs fear.
“Is that him, father?” “Yes Sergei –
Dosia! Konstantin!
Come see…” some sigh, some groan, some cry,
Some let the angels in,
Gazing at the glorious immortal leader, Lenin.
Moscow
1933
Anti-Semitism
An unhappy, evil nation
Treats its victim’s self-oblation
In unworthy fashion
Adam of St. Victor
At the heart of European Jewry,
Fair city of the Rotheschilde’s high finance,
Miff’d Moses Grunfeld dismiss’d from duty,
His former friends purpling with arrogance;
A hiss, a jeer,
“Go scum, go spread the news,
Your kind will not work here, you & your filthy Jews.”
He walk’d (they forced him from the tram)
Into the Jewish boycott,
His heckles up, hands all a-clam,
Some cassirean gauntlet,
Trying to purchase bread & jam
Abuse was all he got;
Up oer orizon swept a storm of tears,
He went to sit with father & his fears.
Gone mournful thro’ the cemet’ry
Between the Jewish graves,
On bended knee, in misery,
Tears streaming down in waves,
His parents’ tomb some spiteful, scarlet hakenkreuz enslaves.
Frankfurt
1934
A New Dictator
with apologies for the inconvenience,
they carefully wrapped barbed wire
round the wrists of the political prisoners
Frank Chipasula
On the dreaded Sturmabteilung men point
Black pistols to their brains, the triggers pull
& spray their brains out wallwards to anoint
The National Revolution from the skull;
That list of doom
Was tick’d off name-by-name,
For these there was no room in Hitler’s grander game,
Where stands he all supreme, the lone
Arbitist of Germany,
Commanding legions from his throne
With a frantic fealty,
Right arms rais’d high they’ll set in stone
Most precious loyalty –
“We swear obedience by holy God,”
Der Fuhrer took each promise nod-by-nod
& christens himself ‘Grand Marshalle’
Lord of all the forces;
Of shot & shell, Alf Nobel’s gel,
Uniforms, field horses,
Tanks, planes, U-Boats, mine-fields, E-boats, fortresses & soldiers.
The Third Reich
August
1934
Death of Anatoly Stiltski
Va! meurs! la derniere heure est le dernier degre.
Pars, aigle, tu vas voir des gouffres a ton gre;
Tu vas sentir le vent sinsitre de la cime.
Victor Hugo
As Phoebus prick’d the dusty harvest haze,
Stalin’s lapdogs surrounded quaint Moshny,
Amid this bastion of the old ways,
Anatoly fear’d for his family;
Ring of cold steel
His wee home’s scape-proof mesh,
Machine-gun muzzles wheel & lacerate his flesh.
While wife & daughter wail & gnash,
His sons weep & thrash in vain,
All toss’d aside like filthy trash,
‘Brethren’ burning long-grown grain…
By slaughter’d cow, like human rash
They stagger’d thro Ukraine
To this city of cold, modern concrete,
Where hunch’d, hungry man-shadows stalk the street.
While pondering in pity’s square
Her kids beg with a song,
Old merchant’s stare soothes their despair,
“Your boys look fit & strong –
Come work for me!” her family timidly tag along.
Kiev
1934
Gleichschaltung
Doth someone say that there be gods above
there are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you
Euripedes
The scent of sweat & leather wets the air
Certain men stood silent; gazing sadly
At swastikas demanding everywhere
Mental attention glamourised madly;
Children shatter
Eardrums of all they meet,
Shrieking out, “Heil Hitler!” to narcotize the street.
In the grip of exultation,
From the forests’ ancient roots,
Watch the old gods reawaken
Thro’ crude staccato salutes;
Jesus Christ has been forsaken
& all his angels’ lutes –
The tribes are rising, formally reborn,
Whose supreme chief the dragonsteeth hath sewn.
“The Bolsheviks, Novgorod’s bear
Must by us halted be!”
Defending their primeval lair
A race collectively
Embracing Hitler’s righteous cause have set the wyvern free.
Germany
1934
Dictators
Hold me and hold by me, lest both should fall
(O in high escalade high companion!)
Even in the breach of Heaven’s assaulted wall
Francis Thompson
The Chancellor met his flashy idol,
Most dashing in medals, fez & dagger,
Together tour’d the stunning Grand Canal
Whose conversation in a gondola
Passes under
The famous Bridge of Sighs,
Where men watch with wonder & glory in their eyes!
Benito speaks, in Adolf’s tongue,
& spirit, of alliance;
“Let’s carve ourselves, before too long,
Spheres of Fascist influence
Together, then, & friends, & strong,
Great Britain test, & France –
& if the world would ever come to war
Let our bold Axis pierce the planet’s core!”
Der Fuhrer’s turn, Il Duce bored,
As monologuing long,
Hitler outpour’d, from spittle gourd,
A game of great Mahjong,
Fearless of steering gondoliers into a billabong!
Venice
June
1934
Prosperity
My thoughts are as a garden plot, that knows
No rain but of thy giving, & no rose
Except thy name. I dedicate it thine
Mu’Tamid
Herr Stemmler clock’d off from the factory,
Proud to collect another working wage,
By S-Bahn trundles thro’ this great city
Sunk deep into Mein Kampf’s numinous page;
Sacraliz’d tome
Of Germany reborn,
Preaching in town & home under a crown of thorn.
Max buys a clutch of books & toys,
Then sprints off home for dinner
Gives out the gifts to his glad boys
& pale autistic, daughter,
His wife turns up the wireless noise
Belching propaganda –
Stealthily increasing by decibels
Minds being poison’d slowly by Goebells.
They went out to the silver screen
To gaze on holy face,
Whose angel sheen, strong yet serene,
Shone blithe & full of grace
Preaching of German destiny, & they the master race!
Berlin
August
1934
Oaths of Loyalty
It grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind
Those ample virtues which it did inherit,
Has lost. Once thou didst loathe the multitude
Guido Cavalcanti
Heavenly Vale of Operatic Hearts,
Hemm’d in by behemoths huge, hewn from stone,
Those cool, majestic mountains of the Harz,
Witness a soldier of the Aesir born;
An eagle flings
His wings to airy dawn,
As ev’ry treetop sings for chandelier’d dawn.
On receiving the Reich leader
He dismiss’d der Fuhrergaurd,
Offers men of the Third Jager,
Lords of La Haye Saint’s courtyard,
“I have made my men a soldier
Enough to hold Asgard!”
Appeal made to militarizing creed,
Not hopeful gesture… but resolute deed.
Awe trembles as his soul’s captain
The Honour Guard inspects,
Hitler has won his devotion,
Aft’ solemn oath extracts,
His ear is pinch’d & in that instant Rommel’s all accepts.
Goslar
1934
(AA): Canto 8: Resurgences
**************************************
Mighty men of valour, men train’d for battle, who could handle shield & spear, whose faces were like the faces of lions, & were as swift as gazelles on the mountains
Chronicles
A Daring Stroke
Well done! You have conquered anger!
Well done! You have Vanquish’d pride
Well done! You have banished delusion
Uttaradhyana Sutra
Schact strode down the bustling Wilhelmstrasse,
Admires the grandiose Reichchancell’ry,
Usher’d to the office of his Fuhrer,
“Have you used your license to print money?
Across the land
We’ll re-arm clandenstine!
“This is what I want & this is what must be mine!
Spirit asserting hard as steel,
He silences the Reichstag,
“I have the honour to reveal,
Underneath the party flag
Our soldiers march with strength & zeal
To slay the scallywag
Of our Rhineland’s criminal occupation, –
Confident of global approbation
Stream across the Rhine tonight
Goosestepping with such pride,”
& he was right, no appetite
For conflict clarified
His keen assessment of the Entente Cordiale’s divide.
Cologne
March 7th
1936
The New Rome
He sins and drinks and gambles
and in a backwards twist of luck
she suffers, fights, and prays
Adela Zamudio
Clutching crude spears & shields of Rhino hide,
Brave tassle-beards defend these lands once free,
Tho’ overhead planes glide cross countryside
Spitting caustic droplets without mercy;
As lethal mist
Poisons their thirsty land,
The will to still resist erodes to sinking sand.
As shadows of Mount Antoto
Drew long over Ababba,
A last, hot flash of bullets flow
From their fearless Emporer,
Chok’d on the hopeless word to go…
Then hail the conqueror,
When Mussolini’s legions, triumphant,
Banish the anguish of late Rome’s lament.
“My good people are suffering!”
Tears stain’d Selasso’s eye,
Altho’ the king stands soul-weeping,
The League hangs idly by…
Men melting into mountains underneath a bomber sky.
Abyssinia
March
1935
Transformations
As a clear crystal assumes
The colour of another object
So the jewel of the mind is coloured
Aryadeva
The mutilation of the soul begins
From burning books the past is falsified,
For those who sway the mind the spirit wins,
& those who smite their protest must have died;
Such whispers swell
About the foul regime
When in the torture cell no-one can hear you screanm
Goebells insists a wireless set
Like the cross hung in all homes
As when the Christian was yet
Untouch’d by the serpents tongue,
As propaganda cast its net
On minds of old & young,
Grasping at Hitler’s visionary bliss
All of life’s aspects lick’d by lizards kiss.
Society dissolves, reform
By swastikan twin snakes
That grip & swarm – the tannenbaum
Fair angel tip forsakes,
For this is Earth & alters things thro’ tectonic earthquakes!
Germany
April
1935
Hitler Youth
I have thrown way the veil,
I have taken refuge in the great guru
& snapped my fingers at the consequences
Mirabai
Max Stemmler roars along the autobahn,
Palingenetic tribute to contree,
Musing upon the Battle of the Marne,
So close to Paris, & to victory!
He parks the car,
Bear-hugs his eldest son,
“My boy if we must war, with you our battles won.”
Khan dined with peers clever & couth
As his malleable mind
Bombarded was with Nazi truth,
The majesty of their kind,
Carefree below the starry roof
Boys talk’d & laugh’d & dined,
Singing proud songs, so strong & beautiful,
Of Lebensraum & of love of battle!
They run, they swim, they fight, they share
The life of Herr Soldier,
As mountain air rang with fanfare,
They planted Swastika
On summits for the glorious Fatherland & Fuhrer.
Harz Mountains
1935
Fascist March
Crumbled I die
Tortured I die
In innocence
Albert Kalimbakatha
Sensing a most depress’d & restless Rome,
If Rome, of course, the whole of Italy,
Turning the focus from his forehead’s dome
T’wards paths of hypnagogical glory;
Enseismic shift
Rumbles athwart Mankind,
His anchor rais’d as drift the lamarckians, blind.
From Erit & Somalia
Marches facinorous creed,
Oer ancyent Abyssinia
Like some martial millipede,
All the churches rang in Pisa
To celebrate the deed,
Of conquerors, their brave & bouyant band,
Gone marching, all, into the promis’d land.
Men thee hail, Haile Selassie!
As Emperor, as King,
The grand Gabbi sends Italy
A message, as they sing,
“Repulse, resist, punish, persist, them from our farmsteads fling!”
Addis Abbaba
October
1935
Nazifizierung
They will soar on wings like eagles
They will run & not grow weary
They will walk & not be faint
Isaiah
The Battle of the Jobs Front has begun,
Infused the words, “work sacrifice” thro’ all,
While conscripts for rural conservation
Cry ‘blut & boden’ as their warring call;
Militariz’d,
The language of the state
Hath deftly appetis’d the Holy Knights innate.
As blue-ey’d girls in bows & rows
Learn vigour thro’ gymnastics,
& pirouette on tippy-ties
Or flex like stretch elastic,
Group leader peers along her nose,
Scribbling beside neat ticks
When itemizing all the better wombs
A visionary dynasty illumes.
The classroom fills, the leiter stands,
None dare there to tarry,
Question demands a show of hands,
Answers wee Hemirih,
“Miss, fifteen hundred kilogrammes can a bomber carry!”
Michelstadt
November
1935
An Evening with the SS
Tell, Muse, how such treasure came to be at
Wewelsburg & how Himmler kept his Knights
Loyal with blood rituals of genocide
Nicholas Hagger
Oer the Prussian fief of Westphalia
Uprose a gothic, speartipp’d citadel,
Home for an Order, its strange Grandmaster –
Himmler & his infamous Shutstaffel;
Unbridl’d lord,
Far from the chicken farm,
Sharp’ning the Fowler’s sword to conquer Lebensraum.
Young Gerhart Buscher – blonde, blue-eyed –
Deem’d widely the blood ideal,
To long day’s lessons hard applied
His cool, fanatical zeal,
On one fine night, heart thumping pride,
Sat haught at Heydrich’s meal;
An invitation follow’d the supper,
“Come show us your skills with the rapier!”
Baron Von Grolsch made the first play,
Set on him in a flash,
Blades race away, graceful ballet,
Til with an uncheck’d slash,
Stormblasting pain stings Buscher’s brain, cheek splits with spilly gash.
Wewelsberg
1936
Spitfire
The chief head honcho of Supermarine
Departs Southampton, feeling gay & strange,
Today might be the day to contravene
The growing threat of Germany in range;
Matt Summers met,
Dismissing threat of rain,
Who, rubbing hands, loose set that metal monoplane.
Thro’ poet-ravish’d heaven-light
Lone spitfire vrooms thro’ the air,
Upon first, vernal maidensflight
Whose pilot grew soon aware
To handle her was sheer delight,
All Hugh could do was stare –
Dowding, that is, who with Lord Swinton stood,
“Not bad at all!” “Yes, she looks very good…”
As when the South Welsh at Rorke’s Drift
With firmer fibre fill’d,
Mens’ spirits lift, mens’ spinebones stiff’d,
“At last we’re set to build
A plane to match the Germans’ best!” “Well Churchill will be thrill’d!”
Eastleigh
May
1936
Zeppelin
The Sumners took a walk down Accy Road,
From Rosegrove rail’d the train to Padiham,
Finding the lanes round Fence always restor’d
Health better than Pasteur’s bacterium;
Charlie & Rose,
Pat, Tommy, Maggie, Jack,
Huff’d on their tippy-toes up Pendle’s steep whaleback.
Nigh nine hours from Friedrickschafen
Over Trawden’s trees it flew
Like a dolphin up in Heaven
Gliding thro’ the velvet blue,
But, like to a silent coffin,
The shadow t’ward them drew
Of this strange, stunny airship of the skies
That slowly dissapear’d beyond the rise
Of ever-splendid Pendle Hill,
To startle Clitheroe;
Then render thrill or send a chill
Wherever next t’would go
Photographing tractor fields & factories below.
Lancashire
May
1936
(AA) Canto 9: Olympiad
**************************************
The harder match’d, the greater victory
William Shakespeare
Olympia Transported
There’s a silver lining to the dark clouds shining
So turn your dark clouds inside out
Till the girls come home
Comfort Borden
The world shall flourish with immortal youth,
Pre-eminence & all the large effects
Of surging majesty – but, cursing truth,
From where the Nazi demonpulse projects,
Such masquerade,
Berlin’s been beautified
Crude slogans undisplay’d while anti-semites hide!
This capital, in spotless dress,
A living poem felt like,
All to impress the foreign press
Of the virtues of the Reich,
Ekecheirians of Elis
Warmongers set on strike,
Envelop’d by Olympic bubble-groove,
Only a lunatic might trouble prove.
As sporting globals come in floods
The thoughtful won’t relax,
“Why, thro’ the woods, do brotherhoods,
With uniforms & packs
Go crawling, clutching rifles like some college of attacks?”
Berlin
July 26th
1936
Hidden Rooms
Look out inhabitants of earth,
Beware ! from the words of the Great Ones
Comes a landslide of lies, they babble
Antonio Porta
What a voyage! From Brooklyn to Berlin
Goes Goldburg, baseball player, but a Jew!
One of the few the Nazis had let in,
A show of beneficence, ’til renew
Those maggots vile
Chweing the human thought,
When reason steer’d servile by bigotry contort.
The Athletes’ Village was a dream
Of Germany back-dated,
When every member, every team
For every detail cater’d,
Now Goldburg, with a head of steam
Cautiously awaited
The diners to disperse, then slid aside
The chair that block’d the door that open’d wide…
Down-slipping steps, oer-scrambling planks,
Gloom-sunk eyes adjusted
To gaze on ranks of Panzer tanks –
Goldburg froze, disgusted –
“Raus! Raus!” the shout, “Get out! Get out!” some flusterfart inbluster’d.
Elstal in Wustermark
July 28th
1936
Spectacularists
Where are they all, the men,
The old mates & the new,
Who crouched panting here beside me then?
Harley Matthews
Alooferie plebianness transcends,
The follies of the Nazi dandizette,
Where, amorous as nightingales, descends
Europa’s courtiers; from crystal set,
Wine of the Rhine,
While from the glassy roof
Watching th’ensemble dine, Goering reclines aloof.
From livery of footmen pink,
To Berlin’s sold-out orchids,
From luscious cushions coated mink,
To silver, ivory lids
Of sumptuous dishes, enough drink
To drown the pyramids –
On brandy, vodka, rum, gin & whiskey
Randy prince & plisky princess frisky.
Tune-humming Goering took the stair,
Into the scrum did drop
So debonair – in deep despair
Goebbels & Ribbentrop
Outclass’d, outstyl’d & outpanach’d, evanish’d in a strop.
Berlin Opera House
July 29th
1936
Opening Ceremony
O Lord, our father,
Our young patriots, idols of our hearts,
Go forth to battle – be Thou near them!
Mark Twain
As dowries add delight to darling brides,
Effacious statecraft showcases regimes –
A stadium with steep & earthsunk sides
Awaits progressions of Olympic teams;
As when brute slaves
Died for the populi,
Ten times ten thousand waves laud Hitler driving by.
His was the prayer, his the place,
As when Pindar’s epodes sung
For victors of the running race,
Like Orsippus lithe & young,
With Richard Strauss waving with grace
His flowing baton flung,
Roaring Deutschland Uber Alles, his band
A thousand strong, & putty in his hand.
The eleventh Olympiad
Commences, as the world
Has never had, such myriad
Of banners spread unfurl’d,
Aside monstrous pomposity, precocity unchurl’d.
Olympiastadion
August 1st
1936
Track & Field
I am no common woman.
My brave men shine in story:
they earned what cannot fade
Lórentsos Mavílis
As nations touch upon summits of stone,
From clashing heads do heavens sparks elope
To realms of dreams where bells of temples tone
One hundred thousand faces fresh with soap
Follow the curves
Of Fleischer’s javelin…
Twas all the girl deserves, a German set to win!
Da Vinci’s dazzling designs,
To Homers lyric marbles,
When beholden to humankinds’
Propensity for marvels,
Applaud, on plinths, our gods, our times,
As when farmer’s star bulls
Swart planets in the universe of breeds,
Let’s verify great titles with great deeds!
She rose to heed her Fuhrer’s call,
Upon her breast the gold
Did rise & fall – for him, for all
His people, young & old;
For Germany, whose victories shall prosper manifold.
Olympiastadion
August 2nd
1936
Jesse Owens
I know that I might pull the tendon bands
That hold my soul together—ay, might bend
Each nerve and muscle spirit fain would keep
Fenton Johnson
The rest were reading, writing or abed
But one young man, under a cold, white moon,
Spurr’d on by destiny, outside instead,
Perfecting paces, body parts in tune
With nature’s chime
Like shamen with a drum,
For athletes in their prime know when their time has come.
Asleep… awake! A busy day,
News crews clamour all-a-fuss
“Has Germany treat Blacks OK?”
“Well, they’ve sure been nice to us!
Who’ve never here been made to stay
Silent at backs of bus!”
All further questioning he refuses,
After all, one must seduce one’s muses.
His muscles felt like mohair strings
Upon a Phyrric bow,
His heartbeat springs, his feet sprout wings,
The others seem’d so slow –
When Jesse Owens won four golds he was the first to know
Elstal in Wustermark
August 2nd
1936
Supremacists
Peace on this planet
Or guns glowing hot,
We lay there together
Jericho Brown
The cavalcade of old Olympia
Settles its sacred flame upon Berlin,
Oer Hindenburg trails an Orphic banner,
Below, even allow’d are Juden in;
Majestic roar,
O scale Wagnerian!
Of modern man at war in his coliseum.
As Jesse Owen took the track
All eyes focus upon him,
Racism hating skinsheen black
Quadruples his vigour’s vim,
A leaping cheetah from the CRACK,
The stadium grew dim;
A whirl of pounding thighs & bursting lung…
How soon, how proud, ‘Star Spangl’d Banner‘ sung.
Quite disgusted grows Der Fuhrer,
The White Supremacist –
Some dog-runner, some dumb nigger,
Wins medals white men miss’d –
Glanc’d at his wrist, hiss’d “I must leave…” blood glist’ning ‘neath clench’d fist.
Olympiastadion
August 4th
1936
Rassenfurschung
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise
Maya Angelou
With twenty-six & five sixteenth inches,
Jesse Owens triumphs in the Long Jump,
Half-stadium dash easily clinches,
Again Hitler off-hurries with a hump;
Force not yet spent,
The relay team joins he,
Like finches confluent they’ll swoop to victory!
To see such splendid, Spartan star,
Competing to perfection,
Spread theoretic doors ajar,
Forc’d racist circumspection,
To analyze just what they are,
Raising right objections,
Is it fair descendants of jungle apes
Should be the first to burst the sprinters’ tape.
Lither, stronger, faster, fitter…
Despite the public mood,
Bile & bitter, cast the spitter,
“Such negroids will exclude
From Tokyo’s Olympiad with all that turpitude.
Reich Chancellery
August 16th
1936
Hidden Truths
Stygian waters sometimes riot
And Fafnir spills out his blood
You escape from the spray of the horrible paint
Bartolo Cattafi
About the smoke of the Olympic torch,
The ghosts of ancient victors spool & swirl,
A child of Nippon smiles behind the scorch,
Her nation next into the games shall hurl
Munificience,
Arenas shall be built
To serve, four summer’s hence, swerves of the lances’ tilt,
& other sporting metaphors
From Anchorage to Alice –
But back to Berlin’s shops & stores
Returns the modern malice,
“Juden Verboten!” Nurnberg’s laws
Vambrac’d, clutch the chalice
Which poison pours, enriching whores & spies,
For Frank J Lubin fall scales from his eyes.
It seems the world has been deceiv’d
By Hitler, after all,
The world receiv’d, the world beleiv’d,
The world was in his thrall,
Who did not see these poster evils shrieking from a wall.
Berlin
August 20th
1936
(AA) Gl’Immortali I
I suddenly saw that directly to the North, over Onkoul’s Tunguska road, the sky split in two & fire appeared high and wide over the forest. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, & when the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways
Semenov
Balrog
The atom is the smallest puppet spinning
in the smallest slot machine. And children love
the tale of the genii in the tiny flask
Dilys Laing
Across the wormy gyres of ceaseless time,
By Dogstar’s sister, wee Sirius B,
A soldier’s table spreads with scrolls of rhyme,
Those sacred fables of the Sah-Pu-Qi;
Epic, yet terse,
Legends of ancyent past,
Of how a Universe was born for us at last!
He read how Genesis & crew
Flew far in Star-Vimana,
How Mugulu & Mukulu,
Seriel & Semyaza,
Would populate a world so blue,
Naming it Zahara;
Dreamtrance disturb’d by Gen’ral Balthazeer,
“A chance, Captain, to further your career.
The Usgoth dance a dastard jig,
Hot words of harsh war made!”
Donning a wig, mounting Tehpig,
Rode Balrog to parade;
O gallant host, drumrolls & roars, rais’d rows of plasma-blade!
Dadghabbi
Ambush
Consider how they move, the galaxies
Through the ocean of night like drift nets
Dragging deep space, though nothing we know is there
David Sutton
Follow faint traces of light & lazar
Along great lanes of space innum’rable,
To twinsewn systems of a distant star,
In mortal combat lock’d incurable;
As Usgoth hordes
Embattle Dadghabbi,
Wide-wave electric swords in awesome chivalry.
Upon the fringes of the fray
Our graceful lieutenant rides,
His strong & stately steed of grey
By the jet-black vortex strides,
Tehpig splits skies with startling neigh,
Assaulted on all sides,
Balrog hauls reigns & gallops into space –
Trailing green vapours Gaargants three gave chase.
Upon a tapestry of stars
Hooves of quartz-crystal pound,
The Usgoth Gaars, all fangs & scars,
Gain steadily in ground,
Tripping the light fantastic at the searing speed of sound.
Outer Space
The Chase Ends
All about me
Is heaven in all directions,
I love you, bright infinite space
JA Schade
Just a wee spot on the dimple of time,
A billion galaxies around us,
& them a wee spot, mere provincial clime,
The Universe spread always prepond’rous;
Fleshlife, starlight,
Swarms over airy rocks,
Some mastering space-flight, some shepherds & their flocks.
Amid amazing Milky Way
Balrog faced his pursuers,
As tho’ a Roman in the day
Of Tullus Hostilius –
When triplet sets made fierce affray
For their populaces –
Now like the last unwounded Roman son,
Our Knight faced three ‘Quirini,’ one-by-one.
Combat is join’d, fierce flash of blades,
Two toss’d into the void,
Last Usgoth fades, in Balrog wades,
Some speeding asteroid,
To slay his foe… Tehpig, alas, by Usgoth spear annoy’d.
Outer Space
The Approach
On the world a thousand curses!
like the fickle elements its deceit,
we get a thing we would not ask for
Murchadh MacMhathain
On the flaming hoof rode the vorpal steed,
Out of the sapphire regions between stars,
Past Sol’s slumb’rous giants, to scythe at speed,
Yon the rocky ring, yon roseate Mars;
Full into view
Appears a peopl’d world,
A pearl of green & blue where whisp-white cloud-swirls curl’d.
Godhead senses an approaching,
From the Aesir of Asgard,
To Allah’s temples glimmering,
& Jove’s spacious milliard –
Sad-faced inside a floral ring
Mab thought it all ill-starr’d,
“We must discover an enclave serene,
For life is changing,” sighs this Faerie Queen.
Above all this our Dadghabbi
Approaches, by degrees,
Planetary menagerie
Of oceans, peaks & trees,
Neath mega-lightning dancing on the tips of shipless seas.
Earth
The Visitor
Consider how they move, the galaxies
Through the ocean of life like drift nets
Dragging deep space, though nothing we know is there
David Sutton
Tho’ Balrog’s shaken off that fierce pursuit,
His Grey Tepig still bleeding from the chase,
But ever capable, of paths astute,
He steers his steed to this resource of space;
Their course complete
With such a shrieking sound
Plunge thro white-glowing heat toward the growing ground.
Wings shredded so they could not steer,
Talon-slash trailing crimson,
All thro’ the scorching stratosphere
Plunges Vampyre Stallion,
No wince, no flinch, nor cry of fear,
Then, at the collision,
Marsh forests fly & land in piny piles,
The shatter’d tundra of a hundred miles.
All thro’ primeval Tunguska
Would devastation flood,
At the crater’s smoking centre
No beast of Eden stood;
Hail Alien! Bulbous, Bewing’d, Fangs thirsting Manling blood.
Siberia
Sorceress
Winter mornings with suns of ice
& white worlds. Time of crows
They rule over the snowy fir forests
Alf Larsen
Long-Horn leads sickly steed thro’ Tulgey wood,
On ev’ry side bewitching whispering,
A phantom cry to curdle human blood,
A fence of ghoulish eyes ever-learing;
Tooth gate gnarl-grown,
Fang’d entrance to her lair,
O gaunt, dishevell’d crone! O jaundic’d, hellsent stare!
He steps thro’ arms a-frame a door,
Enters gloom as black as tar,
“I have not seen thy like before!”
“I am from another star…”
“Welcome… sup flesh… this putrid sore…”
Cackles Baba Yaga,
Passing her guest a leg of leprosie –
He drank & thank’d for help, her only fee
A draught of blood, he slit his wrist,
Her beastly thirst to slake,
Mad mystic tryst! At witch-door hiss’d
Gigantic scarlet snake,
“This is sharp maw’d Zmei Gorynich, ye to the Beast shall take…”
Asia
The Bargain
Though the rasp of his flesh was so sore,
Faith, that had yearnings far keener than these,
Saw the soft sheen of the Thitherward Shore
MJ Preston
In the Necropolis’ most deepest tomb,
Far from the prying eyes of Seraphim,
Balrog swept down the shit-clad catacomb
Unto the Anti-Heaven’s inner rim;
Wide halls of bone,
Waulcaters amplified,
Unto the Serpent Throne beat leather-sails a-glide.
“O suave, majestic demagogue
I humbly stand before thee,
The cosmos knows me as Balrog,
Lieutenant of Dadghabbi,
In these claws see I clutch a cog,
Heights of Technology –
With it you could defeat thine ancyent foes…”
Chrome circlet with deep sparkling azure glows.
“What is the price? ” “A war!” “Indeed,
I can arrange the course –
But why?” “My steed may only feed
Upon a certain sauce…”
Low whinnies of encouragement wept from his wounded horse.
Pandemonium
Rousing the Aesir
Your mighty host set sail,
With valour in each longing heart
And vigour in the gale
Leigh Hunt
Loki canter’d the clammy tracts of Hell,
Strange presences witnessing wyrd meeting,
At first it seem’d their talk was flowing well,
But demons grant comforts only fleeting;
Be-elzebub
Sets his sharp scythe aspin…
Leaving a grubby stub, donning the bloody skin.
‘Loki’ rose to halls of glory,
Acknowledging each table
Serv’d by a busty Valkyrie
With meat & mead & fable,
Then entering a fine city
Carv’d from marv’lous marble,
His mission hidden by a face of stone,
Kneeling before, beneath auld Odin’s throne.
“Hullo!” chimes Frigg, “Why cometh here!”
“Satanus calls for War!”
A goblet cheer, all the Aesir
Applauded from the floor,
A vogue & gory battle cry to rouse the rage of Thor.
Valhalla
Indifference of Jove
In human works, though labour’d on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God’s, one single can its end produce
Alexander Pope
Saint Peter hoodah’d cross the skiey plains
Upon a silver, tuskless Elephant,
His cherub-captain rhythmic with the reigns;
Resplendent with immortal amorant,
All sides lustr’d
Roses celestial,
Chasm-clinging cluster’d oer clear terrestrial.
He rode thro’ Paradise Mountains
To a voice more like a dream,
Echoing amidst the fountains
Where the holy rivers stream,
“Since I offer’d Man redemptions,
Souls would I once redeem,
He errs more than the sinful sons of Eve,
If men rejoice in killing why then grieve?”
“My Lord, Life & Sweet Sacrament,”
Saint Peter kiss’d the floor,
“This seems diff’rent, your sons invent
Strange terrors by the score…”
“Silence!” urged Jove, “& let them be, tis just another war.”
Divinnia
Mumble Words 