(SR) 14: Nostoi
NOSTOI
A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment
Jane Austen
INDIA
Everyone has his own idea of India
JM Haynes
Nation of nations, hot & happy land!
With spicy dishes morsell’d by the hand,
Being a valourous & graceful race,
The universal mullet firm in place,
Despite taking three men to stamp a form
& creative corruption Laksmi’s norm,
A fanatacism for the rupee
Cements this secular society
Of power-cuts & cripples & bazaars
Neath a pristine panapoly of stars,
Of swastikas & cricket in the streets,
Bounteous crops & oversugar’d sweets,
Ashrams soothing riot-torn religion
As always blaze the rays of Asia’s sun.
DEPARTING INDIA
Many days have pass’d since that piazza
Where first I flirted with the myrtle muse,
Now knoweth I a new peninsula,
Whose galaxy of monuments enthuse
The spiritus, where all earth’s wide aspects
Have form’d a microcosm of the sphere,
Firm foundation for when I travel next,
Days of endeavor drawing ever near.
I spend a moment musing on the wing,
As o’er the leagues of Araby we sail’d;
Around the Raj was flung a faerie ring
& all it’s best poesis have regal’d,
Having succeeded in my soldiering
Where Ghengiz Khan & Alexander fail’d.
MADE IT !
At last my gaze is cast oer English skies,
The thrills of one’s homecoming multiply,
Bursting through cloud we claim a poet’s prize;
Big Ben…Tower Bridge… & the London Eye.
I’m back at last, back from my epic tour,
Ten rupees all that furnishes my purse;
Scraggly & tann’d I call upon the door
Of compassion & an NHS nurse.
“It weren’t easy… I gush´d out dysentry,
Wee mozzy bites became massive bags of puss,
Salmonella, concussion, entwisted knee,
Neuropraxia… love, just look at us!”
“It’s lucky you survived”… I smil’d a smile,
“Dying,” said I, “It’s never been my style.”
KARMA SUTRA
The city streets were alive with neon,
I knock’d… Rosie answer’d there delighted,
My favourite more-than-friend down London,
Her stairs were excitedly alighted.
I cook’d up a couple of samosas,
Chappathis, biriyani & paneer,
Making out under stars & the Roses
Over charas & charlie & cold beer.
I show’d her books I’d bought in Madurai,
The Scented Sutra’s esoteric scene,
“So babe, do you wanna give it a try?”
We did, & at a later hour serene
My lover sleeping on my naked chest,
I felt that special bliss when East meets West.
MAJOR, FUCKING, TOP-LEVEL ART
im fucking rockin it mate – im having it
Back from mi travels with a reyt second epic
without a doubt im on the same level as homer
theres no denying it, im that fucking good
im also the best historian this planet’s ever seen
beacause homer didnt even write them two epics
theyre the work of many hands over many centuries,
as for me, bruv, ive even got a third one coming,
poetica britannica’s lord ollamh ballad cycle
turns out, in the end, i’m a massive, fucking genius
never rushing, indiff’rent to luxury or praise
never really push’d for publication, no need
i were too busy, there’s always work to be done,
but now, the silver rose is alive, better believe it
HUMANOLOGY DAWN
Meandering along the canal tow
To Gannow Tunnel, where the path departs,
Pontificating what the world should know
Of love, of health, of wealth, of war, of arts.
Pendle obscured by fog, toes & fingers numbing
Tranquil parkland hiking, Tamil texts in Towneley,
Baynan & Margosa, lamps lighting up mortality
Converting kural-quatrains, many miles from Madurai!
What ancyent texts my knapsack now contains!
The teachings of Saint Thiruvalluvar
& those collated by the ancyent Jains,
Then swath’d in fame, & named Nalatiyar,
Shall frame a grand sequanza, did you see
My centre-piece, my ‘Humanology?’
WEST YORKSHIRE
Ower t’ills up Northways,
Stormclouds thump on drain,
Trundling thro’ Todmorden’s
Narrow cobbl’d villages,
Totta’s ancient boundary
Between Red Rose & White;
Adore the hippy haven hills,
& mills of Hebden Bridge!
Heart of a rosehip valley!
Mytholmroyd: birthplace of laureate Hughes,
Halifax: catching busses for ‘Dirty’ Leeds;
Leaves scatter’d on the road at Odsal Top,
Oer Bradford’s wide bowl passing, conjuring
Conflicting reminiscences of squander’d days.
RYDAL MOUNT
There comes a time for mental reflection,
When a man enters his maturity,
Burning brazen youth to circumspection.
I wander’d as a cloud with wee Daisy,
Thro’ Grasmere, on a January morn,
Just me, my dog, & Dawn’s first fell-tops hazy.
Those moments saw a memory reborn
Of Wordsworth strolling gaily to Townend,
Dreaming of Mary & the Matterhorn.
As goes with time they would one day, ascend
Up steep-slop’d Rydal Mount, one heart enshrin’d,
Above the waters, soul-mates to the end.
Such love & loyalties I’ll hope to find
With Sally, dear, implanted in my mind!
NOW THAT I AM THIRTY-THREE
Upon an evening’s ride I rode beside the Forth’s firth-spray
& glanc’d back on a time-lapse t’when I last made verse this way
Since then I’ve loved an angel & I loved her many years
But left her… for the bard inside still yearn’d to join the seers.
I have roam’d the rock at Afyon, haul’d my staff up Homer’s height
Had a naked, thermal bath upon a Samothracian night;
Along the way I transcreated Tamil Nad’s first saint,
& learn’d enough of woman’s ways to woo without complaint.
I have compos’d in Italian round Aegadian seas,
Broke bread with smart, young Indians – beers by Kadevi’s breeze,
I’ve ascended Mount Parnassas, like a Bacchus, with my lyre
& swapp’d my native terrace for a palace in the Shire,
Where I find the hearth still burning, where my woman waits for me,
& the world just keeps turning, now that I am thirty-three!
AN APOLOGY FOR LOVE
“No longer must I roam this planet wide,
Searching for perfect springs of nature’s art,
Thou art to me my fearless, nearly bride,
In whom shines all those things which charm my heart;
Babe, we fancy each other quite clearly,
Needing places, but never a reason,
To converse with eloquence freely,
To make love like wild foxes in season.
I miss’d you so, a vacant shade did haunt
Each moment of my half-life; when asleep
I dreamt of nothing, vapid, fail’d to vaunt
For anything, my heart a crumpl’d heap
Of sorrows… I’m so sorry… I love you…”
Smiles she, don’t worry babe, I love you too!”
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF LOVE
We talk’d last night
& after we made love
I read to you the Lao-Tse Tung;
In my voice rose ancyent chimes,
Funell’d thro’ the Jiayuguan Pass
In elegant simplicity –
Lass, after we made love, I cherish’d thee!
Night falls again,
The drift of day deserts us,
The dusk is all that matters now, my love,
The light is dimming, but thine eyes are bright,
As cradl’d in these arms
You smile to me once more,
Love, let us talk again.
THE BOYFRIEND’S ALPHABET
One should always give one’s woman;
Art, Adoration, Art, Bravery, Bliss
Caress, Conversation, Destiny, Desire,
Equality, Everything, Fidelity, Faith
Gratitude, Goodness, Happiness, Honesty
Illumination, Impeccability, Jewelry, Jaunts,
Kisses, Kindredship, Loyalty, Lust
Money, Magic, Novelty, Nobilty,
Orgasms, Obmutescence, Playfulness, Poetry
Quality, Quiescence, Reassurance, Romance
Security, Sensuality, Tenderness, Trust
Unity, Understanding, Variety, Voice
Wonderment, Wisdom, Xysti, Xanadu
Yearning, Yourself, Zygosis & Zest!
FOREVER CALLS
She came to me upon a wynge of fire,
The greatest creature I had ever known,
Who, with one, look would fill me with desire
Who, with one kiss, would set me on a throne.
Rare rugs of damask spreading at my feet,
How days of love & music fleeting fly.
But in out bed my world is made complete
& in her arms I can but swoon & sigh!
These sonnets are for her… Aye! Sally, thee!
& all those lovers yet to breath Earth’s air,
& most of all, these sonnets are for me
To read when I am old & in my chair!
When in you’d walk; with cakes, a cup of tea,
& silver splashing thro’ your messy hair.
DENOUMENT
As now I’ve make that tender step in time
Back to this heather’d hearth of happiness,
She stands, the essence of my will to rhyme,
Aloof, alone, in all her loveliness.
“My love,” I said, “back then I buck’d so blind,
But now I see you, Sally, soft & pure,
You are the only star that moves my mind,
For heart’s dull sickness are it’s only cure
Let us adore, once more, the white lily,
Those rows of dark-eyed poppies in the corn,
Let’s climb the long Lammermuirs, all hilly,
‘Gan hand-in-hand, love’s clemency reborn.”
Then… some mad magic, spontaneous, inside,
Demands, I Sally ask to be my bride.
THE PROPOSAL
Underneath this purple blossom,
The day on which we met the greatest of my life,
Since then the better man am I,
One of those rare & lucky souls
Who realises love & the nature of true love.
Our lovemakings are symphonies,
Our conversations art,
Therefore, my only darling,
It would become my immortal honour
If you could consent to be my wife.
We are two white swans, you & I,
‘Gan gliding in the skyways,
Above this mortal lullaby,
‘Til Heaven ends our days.
ADIEU
Well, its been such a hectic adventure,
Yet creamy with moments of calm;
Reconstruct them with poems I’ve sent ya,
From notebooks I’d perch’d on a palm.
From where, under silvery starlight
These verses I’ll serve up for thee,
These wee, inky squiggles on snow-white,
Notating my life symphony!
So, I’ll leave you an Odyssey’s odes’ worth,
& sonnets Shakespearean par,
With Milton, with Byron, with Wordsworth,
English epic shall prosper & spar,
For here, in this cursus of pages,
Lies a Grand Sequanza, for the ages.
(SR) FINALE: The Honeymoon
Overture
THE HONEYMOON
“Song is existence!” Rilke said, & so
Upon these anvil verses I shall pour
The trekkings of lovers to the Arno
Via the Salish Sea, to hear the roar
Of heaving Pacific; beyond the Po
To Paris, as a perfumed pompadour –
I’ll find a spot to finally repose
The compositions of my Silver Rose.
Thro’ all the Lothians by night we drive,
Parking at Cammo Hill; sparkling below,
In glittering Newyorkiness, alive,
An airport hums; as with an orange glow
The moon ascends, queen of the starry hive,
Distilling beams of silver – see them flow
Like warm mist over loch-face -, as we slept,
Dawn’s early glow-worms into spaces crept.
By sunrise we were up & soaring west,
When Sally went off a little psycho,
Grabbing my palms she press’d them to her breast,
& moist love-mound, whispering, ‘it’s my go!’
A minute later, rush’d, & half-undress’d,
We made the ‘Mile High Club’ over Sligo,
Then settl’d down, post-coitally sincere,
In snoozy, huggy, snugland, with a beer.
To travel foreign scenes, & there to write!
The best exhilaration of a heart,
Drawn like a mating insect to the light,
Seattle soon, as thro’ her skies we dart;
Raineir rises to surprising height,
Lord of this fresh frontier-post of mine art,
Like Ginsburg touring ‘Howl!’ in ‘fifty-five,
My visit, here, like scripture, might survive.
Red sun sets in the navel of the sky,
America! Feet touch thy soil at last,
Where Sally’s father waits with his wise eye
Intentions penetrating, holds me fast,
Where him brought up on whiskey, beefsteak, rye,
Fr me, Tetleys & Hotpots’ unsurpass’d,
Our hands interlock’d like docks take a ship,
‘Your daughter is my soul-mate,’ in the grip.
Ye Cinnamons of tranquil Snoqualmie,
Thy lineage with famous blood entwines,
From Kirkcaldy’s Reverend Gillespie,
To Colonel Daniel on the Rebel lines,
Whose daughter – Thankful – married happily
John William, then Cinnamon combines –
Unbroken branch of fathers’ sons, whose fate
In Sally’s father, here, did culminate.
O Puget Sound! Our long haul’s patient prize,
A Stillaguamish paradise, where on
Its silver strands, under changeable skies,
Warp-logs drift thro’ water-boiling salmon,
& birds by the bazillion share cries
In evergreen communion; blue heron
Like pterodactyls, patter into place
Upon those pastel waters’ perfect lace.
As mostly modern marriages divide
Sally’s mother is now a Waddington,
Into Snoqualmie’s river-vale we ride,
To read awhile in Duvall, Washington,
Thro’ North-West poets; Snyder by my side,
With Stafford, Markham, Kirzer & Skelton;
Then breaking, stroll the Valley of the Moon,
Where Sally’s folks once ruled the Silver Spoon
Out to Seattle, Sally, at first light,
Drives us thro’ wild, high woods, where birds rehearse
Songs ev’ry morn, where treetops launch a flight
Of plovers oer Si’ahl’s herbiverse,
Who soar & swoop oer skyscrapers upright
Above pre-morning’s sleepy streets of commerce;
Beyond them, unrestricted & immense –
Sea, sky, & mountains round us, like a fence!
‘Goodbye, my family, goodbye new friends,
Domani we take our love to Roma!
The first leg of this wed-adventure ends,
Me & Sally sitting in Tacoma,
Watching footy in Doyle’s Bar, as suspends
Our chronic distance, yon Oklahoma,
New York, Atlantic, Ireland & that sea
Where Ribble empties west of Bur-ne-lee!
A meteoric bolt in me instils
A city’s jazz, its booze, its free-from-care,
Soaring above Seattle’s seven hills,
A ptarmigant, unladen, in the air;
As little portals of an airplane fills
With blue-sky brilliance, Rainier rare,
Below us fronds of maidenwoods uncoil,
Planting our stalk of love in native soil.
Fanning the clouds, fresh from our visiting,
I felt as trav’lers do between the ports,
With past & future days inspiriting,
From molten rock we eke a living quartz,
When just to breathe in airfeels riveting,
& every soul, but ours,, seems out of sorts,
O! what thing it is to sing in rhymes
& be a poet, vital, to his times!
‘We choose to live, dear Sally, you & I,
From fateful meeting let us forge a tribe!’
She smil’d, across her glass-reflected eyes
Cloud-visions in the Heavens would enscribe
A memory of something, with a sigh,
Sh reais’d her glass, to delicate imbibe
Her glass of wine, as down her throat it swept,
From happiness within she wept & wept.
A thundercrack when poets meet their Muse,
When art & heartscape held in protection
By those fair willing never to confuse
Dreamy abstraction for disconnection;
To share a bed, to vivisect the news,
To lead life fully, & without dejection,
Are sacred to we poets, who settle
Like butterflies on a cherry petal.
Adventurous, voluptuous, my heart
With such excitement blazes, a lazer’s burn,
Affections of mine pulmonary art
Exploding at Italia’s return;
Too long my vision from thee set apart,
& many are thy fruits I’m yet to learn,
To tend those darker days where northern climes
With mists & moods dost ruminate my rhymes.
We meet again, dear Roma, let us flow
Thro’ galleons of streets, this time a gown
Of glories treading lightly in my tow;
I lead us to a pleasant part of town
Under the Piramide, a place I know,
Temple of ancient death, to gaze us down
Upon the sod which bones & ash enclose
Of Keats & Shelley, in a belle repose.
We spend an hour in Rome among the vaults
Of Papal saints & secrets never told,
Said Sally, ‘let’s avoid this crypt of faults
& fallacies, when faith just earns men gold;’
Together, as the evening star exalts,
We trip into the Termini, there hold
Each other’s hands, we step onto the train,
There find our seats, then tender-touch again.
Tipsy from our happy grappa tipples,
Sliding up the rail-glide to Grosetto,
All-at-a-once rain-drops burst in ripples,
Some jagged arrow-storm of inverno;
Chinks of blue; raincease; dear Sally’s nipples
Appear distinct, hair slick like water flow
Down canyon tract, when crags drink deep the flood,
Enough to rouse the wild dogs in my blood!
Castellammare della Pescaia
Was where we saw our first Italic night,
From the penthouse of the Casa Rosa,
A veritable temple of delight,
Slicing salami sulla terrazza,
Watching a lip-gloss sunset wash with light
The western skies, as underneath the waves
A perfect path to paradise impaves.
As pleasure is a pleasurable thing,
& love between two lovers yon reproach,
As into evening crickets sit & sing,
Our lips are warm, two moths about the torch,
With passions flashing on a febrile wing,
Her blushes fiery flushes in the scorch,
She yields that look, tho’ words were never said,
‘My Love, let us get naked, & abed!’
From wondrous lust to slumbers would we ease,
Woke with the sun up-thrilling from the hills;
On hitting twenty-seven sweet degrees
We pedal townwards on fine bicycles,
Thick cappuccinos quaff by yachtsman’s breeze
While shuffling thro’ our daily facebook stills,
Then looking up two pairs eyes of did meet
The stunning circlet of a soul complete.
The beach at last! A spot of sunshine sought,
Where the happy couples all befriend us,
& I prefer the sea to swim & float,
Unhassl’d by Rajasthani vendors,
We lay all day in luxury, then bought
Our wedding rings, like two young Eastenders
Shopping down Bow Market, post-engagement,
Before their inev’table estrangement.
For marriage, thought we, is a mere food dish
Looks good at first, tastes nice, then empty plate!
& renders lovers circling like goldfish
In a bowl of rancour, spite, & hate
Far better just to vow ‘I do’ & wish
The best of love without the stamp of state –
So we’ve decided, in the end, to be
Not married, but happy naturally!
She had said “yes,” but then she suggested
A better road, perhaps, was common law,
A bond of love by many tried & tested,
For in the end what is a marriage for,
But to keep in the guts food digested –
Now, with lush seawaves lapping at the shore
Up Sally stands, & skipping off to swim
Connects with me so sexily… so slim!
Sundrunk & tipsy, sky beryl with lace,
Waves mulberry porcelain, with a twirl
Emerges Sally; body, legs & face
Dripping with sea-droplets, each a pearl;
Love forg’d us as one, we kiss, & with grace,
A breathless moment as I seize my girl
& squeeze her tight, with one more kiss demand,
Lets move to silken bedsheets, from this sand.
Sally, fashionista of the Bon Ton,
Undresses like a Duchess by the sedge
Of some brook’s forest bank; ‘Until Heaven
Finds a better sky,’ say I, ‘my love’s pledge
Is yours,’ with a sultanas’ devotion
She smiles, sits down upon the quilted edge,
Pats down a level space for us to be
Flesh unified in breathless ecstasy.
My Pisan streets, how I return to thee,
This time a wife fix’d sweetly by my side,
That like a muse comes merrily to me,
Or is she you, who gaylie deified
My youthful verse, turning to poetry,
Ye urged me on the world to wander wide,
From Tuscan marriage; Muse I sense ye still
About my mind, my woman & my will.
From morning bag-packings, very frantic,
We dash to catch the train up to Pisa,
Sitting in sweet relief while romantic
Scenes flash’d either side, spear-point chiasa
Thrust from hill-towns, sounds of Sally’s fan-click
Expanding conscious thought… O, how these are
Days of dreams, copses on a barren plain,
Full flourishing with fruit in summer rain.
With married life one wins a daily fix
Of druggy love-rush; a fish in a net
Of rarefied deportment, what a mix
Of sex & sophistication, & yet
What an alluring, lascivious threat
To restful mind; but, when I get my kicks
No vision of saint, nor an angel smile,
Could out-shine her Sally Cinnamon style.
My Pisan streets, see, I’ve return’d to thee,
This time a wife fix’d sweetly by my side,
That like the muse came merrily to me,
Or is she her whom gaylie deified
Our youthful verse, & turn to poetry
The urge I’d won the world to wander wide,
Now back in Tuscany I sense ye still
About my mind, my woman & my will.
As step-by-step, thro’ memories, we trace,
A tour thro’ paragon, yet bygone, scenes,
My woman round my neck like fresh-cut lace,
We paid a train-fare, hills of Tuscan green,
Us pass’d thro’Lucca, at a carriage pace,
Then into Pistoia drew serene,
To mould new memories from molten gold
& thro’ my verses live them when we’re old.
Within a rolling ring of rising green
A city stands upright, the sunlit plain,
Where once conspiratoral Cataline
Did shake a spear at Rome’s eternal reign;
Into a weekend’s evening, with my Queen,
Walk’d on a gentle footstep, to obtain
Ambience, as Pushkin did thro’ Moscow –
Warm moments wash’d down with Casalbosco.
Thro’ shabby-chic, electric hub-hub wheel,
Our feet to some fallen Contessa’s suite,
This casa all so antiquated feels,
With books & art & beds above the street;
This is the shrine where all past heartache heals,
In all this blissful happiness & heat,
Where dressing well we, hand-in-hand, go out –
Pure love has bless’d us Sally, there’s no doubt.
We dine in narrow streets, old market cart
Goes clunking thro’ pack’d tables’, rosiness,
Of tender hand-strokes rarely far apart,
We savour flavours with a shared finesse,
‘Thou votary of Venus that thou art,’
Sang I, ‘let us commence our coziness…’
Sally’s eyes, with candour unremitting,
Agree to leave the seats where we were sitting.
With ribbons pink I hook’d her to the mesh
Of iron at the bedcrown; scarlet silk
Sheets aswathe naked skin, a Marakesh
Of tingling tongue-tips, spirits springing milk,
Her arching back, her tightenings of flesh,
Breathing freedom; & I, strong-antler’d elk
Above the glen her smooth, moist body made,
Where glisten’d sweatdrops in a faerie glade.
We slept tight-lock’d like gorse bush, limbs in limbs,
Then awoke in that contented glory
Which true love breeds; ‘like cucumber with pimms,
We just work, dear Sally, mia amore;
Here in this land of artistry & hymns,
Where love & heart rhyme – heart is cuore –
& poets; minds must focus on one thing…
His Muse who taught the Goddess Moon to sing!’
With vocab well-rehearsed I testify
‘Mia moglie e imbarazzato,’
I noticed Giovanni’s narrowed eye,
‘L’ultima notte ha commenciato
Sua mestruazione,’ paused I
For effect, a timely ‘inatesso,’
&, ‘adesso c’e sonno macchia
Sulla lenzuale,’ all said calm & clear.
Footfall in France, whose famous three-tone’d flag
Did hover oer the border, as we queued,
‘That guy’s got style!’ ‘How classy is her bag!’
We whisper’d, so as not to come off rude;
The coach embark’d along the concrete drag
Twyx high-rise environs, with joy we view’d
The city; as it swallow’d us entire
Wirhin us well’d the fountains of desire.
Paris, we love you, we do already,
More kudos than any earthly city,
Intoxicating wafts, ever-heady,
Of melting, ethnic electricity,
Creating a certain soft & steady
Rapture for living life’s felicity;
& just so classy, sense I, as we march
Under the Arc de Triumph’s varnish’d arch.
Along the Champs-Elysees, further down
Spreads, vibrant, the Tuileries, where strolls
Ms Baker, with a cheetah, into town,
& Catherine de Medici look’d at scrolls
In which De L’Orme would consecrate her crown;
The perfect palace beautiful, which sprawls
Beside the Seine, where ‘les bouqinistes’ trade
These tat-like antiques trinketly array’d.
Thou busted land of sweet Lutetian airs,
Of charming boulevards & barges trim,
Of cinemas & parks, where on green chairs,
Parisians thro’ poet’s pages skim,
Thy searing beauty caught us unawares,
Like infants hearing first a holy hymn,
When most of all we loved the way plann’d we
To spend a future holiday with thee.
Somewhere in the Fifth Arrondissement
Our hotel stands, with one of Longchamps’ maps
Guiding our steps, we found the logement –
Hotel le Clos de Notre Dame – whose taps
Shone like seraphs; ‘neath timber beams, sat on
The windowsill we peer’d between the gaps
Of blinds & curtains – faces, fabric, feet,
Of people live from Paris, ‘cross the street.
That night, an opera without the plot,
Without a doubt the best that I’d ever had,
With Sally looking oh so fucking hot!
We wander’d golden, voyeuristic, glad,
Where poet Antoine Houdart de la Motte
Once cast, in French, an early Iliad,
& Scotland’s Bonnie Prince did love to stroll
In exile, with his mistress, in the Fall.
This is a place where people give a shit
About how looks their home, a fine antique
Reeking of stories,’ ‘Sally let us sit
Awhile by Notre Dame,’ there, cheek-to-cheek,
We cuddl’d, kissing in a perfect fit,
Souls sensing ‘c’est fluide et c’est complique,’
When every single second comes too soon,
The joy & sadness of our honeymoon.
Back in our chamber, touching skin, I find
Sally’s panties’ paradise, with a slant
I slip my hands between, a gentle grind,
‘Til thrusting finger pays the gold bezant
& lust delays no longer, in a bind
Of bodies, breaking silence with a pant,
A moan, a squeak, or both the sunken gasp
Of climax, when we tight as magnets clasp.
Her form is as the morning’s blithesome sun,
Capp’d by a lustrous canopy of beams,
Her face a summer cloud the heat has won,
Round which the bright glow of her daylight gleams,
Her smile the cloud that drifts a little on
& sheds a breath of beauty by the streams,
Where whispers, still, this ceaseless love for she
Who reels my heart from solace, royally.
I am the Silver Rose this purple morn
That clambers over roofpeaks with set poise,
This Seine, this celebration, seems reborn
In me, a poet feeling first her joys,
But amplified to grandeur by the horn
Of mankind’s pearl’d advancement, what a noise!
Shaking tremendous force thro’ vaults below –
No! that clatter was in fact the metro.
I took a seat upon the Pont Neuf Bridge
& paus’d there like a panting cicerone,
Sat in a semi-circle, on a ridge
Above the river, I lay on the stone,
The emblem of this epic pilgrimage,
Whose petal-like philosophies have grown
Into this verbose effigy of me;
Mine immortality’s ain nominee!
For future bards & artists who have felt,
Deep passions & my poetry entwine,
Who’ve find themselves in Paris; as I’ve knelt
By Shelley’s tomb, with pencils, & with wine;
Into this seated moment let them melt
& place a pair of roses as a sign
To passing people, centuries apart –
A poet’s quill still thrills the human heart!
I’ve liv’d before, but now I’ll live real life,
As pleasant as a summer morning’s stroll,
She’s destiny, she’s perfect, she’s my wife,
The one thing that I can & can’t control,
Sometimes seems she as sharp as shark-tooth knife,
Sometimes as tender as a suckling foal,
With Sal, the need to roam the world withstood,
Her heart my home, her happiness my blood.
(SR) L’ALTOPARNASSO: The Garland of the Silver Rose
L’Altoparnasso
THE GARLAND OF THE SILVER ROSE
Bhikkus, what have I taught you is comparable to the leaves in my hand, what I have not taught you, to the leaves in the forest
Buddha
STROPHE
I felt in a way like I had a duty
Owen Sheers
One World! One Planet! One People!
Ten thousand splinter’d tongues
Sing existence songs
But I sing the Song of Man
You can hear it in the dog-days of summer
The giggling flutes of children’s voices
Pianos smashing angrily down the stairs
No wonder ancient pagans
Depicted Paradise a place of Angel Song
Their song is our song
Feel it flourish everywhere
Better halt so we can hear it
Hear the flowers grow
We are here
This is our song
This is the Song of Ma
I was sat by my tent
Half-dreaming, playing with my hair,
Staring at the air
& there, legs crossed,
I found Homer,
Or rather, he found me,
“Close your eyes,” he said, “& see…”
ANTISTROPHE
Striding up to try & catch a glimpse of dolphins
Michael Mullen
I AM A POET!
Yes I know it
Why do I do it?
I don’t know,
But feel it, though!
When you’re in the zone
Every second turns to poesy
Those tramps sat in the park
Were they discussing Plato?
If you could see the hills of northern Spain
Again & again
Would you never want to die
Embracing immortalitie
What is it about life?
She seems to twist & turn
In the shadows, out for sun
Without a pause, relentless…
Let me turn the world to words
Capture that thought you thought you thought
Money come, money go,
Where it comes from I don’t know,
Where it goes to just the same,
Everybody on the game!
EPODE
Above us, souls are wandering in space
John Burnside
Little of life is truly in our power!
Beyond the blizzard, yon my wizard tower!
Dawn tickles rustling treetops
Ten thousand blended melodies
Harmonize delighted
“Awake, awake, O poet within me,
& let us try a line or two of rhyme
Clear words conforming in authentic song,
Some metaphysic symphony among
The global sagas of my time!”
Intellects exemplary of an age
Listen to my rage!
No longer vent your ineffective pen
At rafts of incidental, rakish men
Crumple thy page!
Affront, instead, the snow white smocks of nuns
With scandalous puns
& holy, then, with all that God affords
Rough’d up stages of musical awards
Fear loaded guns!
For, as stones hold the sun’s heat
Long after it is gone,
My poesis here forever shall remain…
(SR): Translations from the Italian
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ITALIAN
Casalino
Vagabondo
Marettimo
The Falcon Princess
COAST OF GODS
Arrival
Reggio
The Quest
Trisolina
The Ruins
Cappucino
The Beauty
VAGABONDO
Alone, I went wandering,
From complexities without life,
From village to village,
Panoramas from view to view –
O! sighs of Viareggio,
O! skeletal cats of Calcata,
Alone, I went wandering,
From complexities without life.
Stars when I am camping,
Thoughts upon the path,
O! whale-island of Ponza,
O! comfortable city-squares,
O! beauty of Portovenere,
O! uncomplicated half-life!
CASALINO
More tranquil than the murmour of a rose,
The piazzas of Pratovecchia,
Bethlehem-twinned, harbour a sweet repose,
Calm cluster shepherds call Casalino –
Here Dante mused upon his fifth canto,
For Paulo & Francesca tears did pour,
Mixing with the streamlings of the Arno,
Flowing to ev’ry Italian shore –
A place to set poesia in store,
Where sacred sisters break the ancyent bread,
There, summoned by the grunting of wild boar
Into a place where feet have seldom tread,
Not life nor history shall help mine art,
Just fragrant music of the valley-heart.
MARETTIMO
The lofty and rugged island of Marettimo did duty in the writer’s mind for Ithaca, though, as I have said, when details are wanted they are taken from Trapani and Mt. Eryx.
Samuel Butler
One
Sublime Sicily
Heart of an ancient ocean
Kitchen of culture
Animated Trapani
Mediterranean emerald
Fisherman’s delight
Waves reflect the sun
Marettimo extends splendidly
People approach the port
Smell of baked bread
Warm panini fill my bag
Pizza for breakfast
In a gallery of trees
Birds sing sweetly
Stony landscape rises steeply
Among irregular rock
Punta Bassano
Crucifix of dead fisherman
Two
Dragon steps rise
Snake zigzags across the landscape
Pines crowd the Carcaredda
I go to the beach
Skipping boulder after boulder
Down to an arcing bay
Pink & marble rock
Amateur geology
Deep time etching
I climb the Spalmatore
Above, another planet,
Oh! When our world was young?
Sound breaks the silence
Italian jet aircraft
Curve crosses the scenes
Peace, since my soul,
This moment purifies,
Sing for Sicily
THREE
Descending with the day
From this ivy ridge
Creating tiny avalanches
Pink horizon
Sea swallows the red sun
Evening star rising
Dangerous walk
The seagulls are annoying
A fishing boat on the sea
Old Spanish Castle
Saddles the back of a turtle
Moans echo from his prison
Stars begin their reign
Goats flee as I pass
I escort the boat to the town
In the lively piazza,
I read my poem aloud
This tour of a beautiful island
THE FALCON PRINCESS
Being an account of a contest, wherein the princes of five countries attempt to win the affections of the princess of the king of Sicily’s falcons. The tournament is held upon Monte Falcano that towers over the island of Marretimo & one-by-one they are whittled down, first thro’ their personality, then speed, then ability to hunt game. Finally, the princes of Portugal & Cyprus duel, wherein the Portuguese falcon is triumphant, wins the princess & plants his national flower on the island for posterity – or how lavender arriv’d on the island of Marettimo
There is an island you should know,
Of sun & sea & showers,
Call’d marvelous Marettimo,
Where Homer mused so long ago,
& all God’s creatures grow to know
The Language of the Flowers.
Upon this island lives the king
Of Sicily’s fair Falcons,
The Guelder Roses grow each spring
About his Ash Tree, in a ring,
But still the Eagles fear his wing
From Scotland to the Balkans.
As more beautiful than Orchis
Grows his beloved daughter;
When she had pluck’d the Clematis,
To all the young Falcon princes,
He sent out royal messengers,
Inviting them to court her.
A handsome prince flew to propose
Bearing tri-petal’d Iris;
Then came on others, one with Rose,
One, Lavender, clutch’d in his claws,
One brought Bear’s Breech in spiky pose,
The last: Egyptian Lotus!
Each kiss’d the princess with soft peck
& shower’d admiration;
One gave her Mint, & one Angrec,
One Cherry Blossom, one Garlic,
But to the one with Hollyshock
She toss’d a Striped Carnation.
The king announced a tournament
Up where the island towers;
The goats broke up their government
Assinos braved the steep ascent
While local seagulls squawk’d consent
& scatter’d Zephyr Flowers.
The crowds had gather’d on a slope,
Over sea that swam to space;
The Princes hover’d at the rope,
The King took out a telescope,
Salvaged from shipwrack shorn of hope,
Then settled to watch the race.
Four Falcons flew down lightning fast
From clouds to the low sea-mist;
Touching the lone fuggazi mast,
Then Imperial Lily pass’d,
The princess cheer’d, gave to the last
The colourful Amethyst.
Three Princes hunted thro’ the day,
Swoop’d down upon ev’ry kill;
Each filling up a silver tray,
Then when the sun shed last red ray,
The princess on the least did spray
The blossom of Sweet Basil.
The King announced ’twas time to dine,
The day’s hunt put in a pile,
Wash’d down with wash’d up Tuscan wine,
The finalists both found a sign,
One pluck’d the Purple Columbine
& his rival, Cammomile.
Two Falcons face the final fray,
From Portugal & Cyprus;
The evening gloom consumes the day
Up, to the moon, assinos bray,
The Princess keeps the cold at bay,
Wrapp’d with warm Indian Cress.
Thro’ Belladonna-scented sky
Princes fought with wing & peck;
As talons lock they fall from high,
One slams on water with shock’d cry,
Returns, receiving, with a sigh,
A Bay Wreath around his neck.
The Prince of Portugal had won
His Princess’s Carnation;
As is the law of High Falcon,
The King embrac’d his future son,
Whose flower, planted with talon,
Shall join the vegetation.
So, if you ever take the time
To view Monte Falcano,
& venture on its verdant climb,
‘Tween sea & Sicily sublime,
More fragrant than a poet’s rhyme,
Does Lavender, lushly, grow.
COAST OF GODS
ARRIVAL
Calliope! Calabria!
Today I am the arch enemy of insipid verses
The chief bard of the Hyperboreans
Elected curator of Saturn’s frozen tomb
When, at the peak of my abilities as a poet
I am Italy and Italy is me
Italy! I come to you!
Let me tame your wildest muses
Illuminate the pagan catacombs
Let me revel in your lyrical tongue
For the Italian language is the most poetic language
From the mouth of Dante himself
But if only Dante had met Demosthenes
Then how much more glorious would the Italian language be!
REGGIO
I awoke at dawn on a ledge of hillside scrubland
& I was correct about that faint smell of dog shit
Thro’ morning vapors a shadowy vista
The straits of Messina & Sicily uprising
While beautiful women of Italy still sleeping
I descend along the Contrado Sarasinello
To enter the set of a film-star barista
To guzzle down that first obligatory cappuccino
Like when the standard bearer of the eleventh legion
Leaping into British waves, calling on the gods
I splash myself with cornucopias of Calabrian delicacies
Delight and amaze me with rustic elegance
I’ve only heard rumors about it in old books
You were a dream to me and now you are real;
THE QUEST
In the exquisite sweetness of stillness
Wine’s silent instruction sinking into psyche
Throwing thoughts onto the fickle winds of dreams
Snuggl’d in my tent I drift to sleep
Warm’d by this wonderful Calabrian wine;
Later in the day I find I do not like Tropea
Too many tourists, too many red onions
I decide immediately to leave for the hinterland;
Observing the similarities between two texts
An obscure sacred tragedy from the region
Serafino de Salandra’s only production
& the famous English epic by John Milton
Adam Fallen, Paradise Lost,
Whatever the truth, I hope this tour to find it!
TRISOLINA
I begin my day imagining Trisolina’s slaves
From all parts of empire, pottering about me!
Bread, salami piccante & a local red wine
My blood is fine but blood is finer still
When mixed with heavy wine! A momentous moment
Tent is up, spectacular scenery sprouts
From dolorous heave of tectonic terrain
Ancient terraces line the valley slopes
Stood upon the tectonic fault line
Between Africa & Europe, when savage groans
Form’d breathtaking gouges of gorges
Where broken homes were crack’d & abandon’d
Left to scavengers all across Calabria
Pentedattilo, Papasidero & Papilglionti.
THE RUINS
Here is a semblance of silence
Apart from bees & flies & chirping song birds
& breezes carrying dreams of Petrarch & Mazzoni
I startle a woman collecting branches
Explain I’d been camping, she is annoy’d
Tells me I should have told her last night
& I could have joined her family at the farm;
At the ruin’d town the fountain still works
Refresh’d inside & out, a small dog rushes out
Snarling, to the old woman next door
I say there is no problem, she says there is
That the dog drives her crazy with its barking
Entering timeless whistles & rustles of nature
I leave those neighbors to their endless dispute!
CAPPUCINO
I enter the bar at breakfast
Brawny men clutching thimbles of thick coffee
Turn in unison, stunn’d into instinct
A man of dark complexion, Arabic perhaps
The ritual begins, the rite of self-assertion
Of inducing calmness into prosperity
Hospitality perhaps, & say, not quite in these words
I am a horse from the deserts of north africa
Rear’d in an english stable
Chasing victory in the Palio of Siena
& above all things I am a poet
& I would like to continue my journey in peace
& can I have a cappuccino, please
& can I charge my phone here, thank you very much
THE BEAUTY
Nightingales sang before Buddha spoke
& I awoke in Italy one morn
The sound of birds & the smell of lavender
On the site of a Roman villa, smiling.
Now waiting for the bus due at midday
I buy bananas from the fruit van
A Calabrian woman stares at me
Voluptuous eyes, long curly hair
Minoan tresses, kissable lips
Unattainable today – long slalom to the coast
Suddenly emerge miles above those plains
I’d climbed from yesterday, uphill all the way,
Orange rooves covering the rich green earth
Like Autumn leaves, gyring downwards we go
(AA) AXIS & ALLIES: Introduction
Serializing
Damo Bullen’s
Epic poem
AXIS & ALLIES
Throughout
2024 & 2025
in
91 Cantos
Being
An Account
of the
Reign of Mars
in the
Kali Yuga
********************
Time is the master of the universe. Time is the root of history. No one can prevent the march of Time or what it brings. I will now tell you what Time is going to bring in the future – the evils of the Kali Age
Vyasa
********************
Epic poetry is a gateway to the most highest & excellent truths of human experience. To convey such a thing, its authors must elevate their language while educating its hearers, all the while adding to the prestige of a nation.
My own epic poem, Axis & Allies has been the work of my life. Beginning in Brighton, 1999, it has both escorted & driven me across the planet in the pursuit of its creation. Four years ago, on the Greek island of Samothraki, I thought I’d formally completed the poem, as I saw it then, & as this video attests;
An Olympiad later, or so, I resum’d my task, focusing this year on the central cantica, concerning the build up to, & the actualisation of, the Second World War. This video shows me at the very start of the poem’s latest composition period;
This next video was filmed January 18th, 2024, & shows me adding flavour to the stanza notes from events 1930-36.
The next video was film’d just a few days before the start of the Chinese new year (I’m a Fire Dragon)
The next video was film’d in Arran on the day I finalised the poem’s architectronics
The next video was film’d in Calabria, with about 50 tryptychs to go
The next video was film’d in Edinburgh within touching distance of completing the poem
The next video was filmed in Glen Rosa, Arran, August 30th 2024, moments after completing the pen & ink version of the poem
After editing Axis & Allies, I’d realised I was 3 stanzas short – so I set off one bright winter’s morning to (finally) complete my epic, not far from my residence in Brodick, on Arran
With the poem finally finish’d, it was time to move house…
…But then there was one more stanza to compose, somewhere near the bones of Dante
& then, at last, Dante’s Tomb
There will be 91 cantos in total
Uploaded onto Mumble Words
Enjoy !!
x
Damo
(AA) L’Amfiparnasso
**************************************
So arose the practice of celebration in exalted verse the battles & other notable deeds of men, together with those of the gods.
Boccaccio
Invocation
Something has broken in the mouths
of the young men on earth
Our thoughts fail us, we are made poor
Arthur Yap
There is a glade in an ancyent forest,
Where glittering pools of dewy azure
Assail ripe sense… insliding, moonbeam-bless’d,
Soul bathes in blissful dreamtime gleaming pure;
Attended by
My nine naked maidens,
Vulvaean lullaby lilting thro’ lovegardens.
She harps a song, she summons stars,
She waltzes round the waters,
She treats these sainted battlescars,
She paints a floating lotus,
She strums her summergold guitars;
Loxianic daughters!
How lovely & how livid floods thy light,
What ever-living wonders must I write?
They wing & weave thro’ tryptych tones,
Sing rich enchanted chime,
Soft music hones their mystic moans,
& so… my all must rhyme…
With hopes of flashing heroes up Parnassus slopes we’ll climb!
To My Readers
he had worn out his teeth
on the locks of ancient gates.
On the most out-of-the way paths
Ahmad Shamlu
I know these words rest heavy in the hands,
When reading them should heap a little while,
But think of me alone in distant lands,
With heavy load, abroad an extra mile;
Thro’ thorn, up steep,
In search of awesome views,
Where I would sit in deep communion with the Muse.
Gadswounds! My global chronicle
Will preserve the violent show
Of our planet’s lust for battle,
Men panting for Megiddo;
Friends! Be ready for to Google
All words ye do not know,
When mining into human history,
This is a kind of University!
Prepare a bath, pour out your wines,
Light up a candle’s flame,
Unlace your minds, embrace these lines,
Enlightenment our aim,
War’s business is but terrible – not glory, nor a game.
Impulses
Unleash a poem slow enough,
Fie with vigilance & care
& you’ll discover lots of stuff
Don Paterson
I sing of Mars, whose blood-besplatter’d reign
Lived long among the secret brotherhoods,
& if these verses vast mine aim deem plain:
To elevate auld lives before the Floods;
When to the stars,
Or in our upmost caves,
This exile song of Mars an epic epoch saves.
As the vestige Villanovan
Found in Verruchian tombs,
As golden-thron’d Glasgerion
Immortalis’d ladies looms,
Ready, my lithe young mind…. Open!
When poetry resumes,
I’ll pay the World its histrionic dues,
Quite polyamorous to every Muse.
Non sono nazifaschisti,
Fair freedoms forged in blood,
The mystery of history
Spreads thro’ me like a wood,
In which I’ll twist unfettered feet as only Clio could.
Valedictions
I should invent my own speech
and leave others empty and afraid
that they did not know it, could not ask
Ricardo Pau-Llosa
I am no pickpurse of another’s wit,
Yet understand tradition is a tool,
When mostly I’m the Muses’ conduit
& sing to them, prostrately, as a fool,
“Je suis rien,
Per je ne suis pas dieu,
Vous etes tout mon bien, le lustre de mon cieux!”
As when old Thales’ Iliad
By princely rhapsodes utter’d,
The ghosts behind these lines glow glad
Whenever they’ll be mutter’d,
As if some new Upanishad
Down the Deccan flutter’d,
Containing all the epos of an age,
Far from the sterile tombstone of the page.
As when elders Albanian
Sang legends kith & kin,
Or the herdsmen born Suqatran
Release word hoards within…
Verse-vestibules in history unleash Cruachan’s Djinn!
Arcadia
A beggar at the crack of dawn comes with
an empty cup, just as a line of monks
serenely with their bowls set out for alms
Saksiri Meesomsueb
Always preparing, always reparing,
The new ensemble of a Danaan song;
No single impulse, but many sharing,
A swirl of verse, a whirl of words among
Eternal heights
Of endless mountenance:
Criss-crossing cloudless nights wild woodland swans advance!
With Saint John & the Patmos vine,
The Bard of the Scyldingas,
Dante’s Commedia Divine,
Tasso’s inspired Crusaders,
With Spenser’s store of faerie wine
& Milton’s masterclass,
I made my bed – from patchwork eiderdown,
I pluck’d my quills & ink’d them up in town!
From erudition constancy
To genius applies;
Consistency, coherency,
Watch phaerie wonders rise
From paranormal mutterings… them given golden guise.
Astrophel
into a world
waiting like
a quiet lover
Max Reif
I stretch to grasp the gross Orphean lyre,
These fingers on the fringe with fuga fraught,
When en-plein-air whisp’ring perfumes transpire,
Hyblean murmors of prophetic thought;
Beside Mankind
I find my social niche,
Reflective & refined; the poesy of pastiche.
Along the road I drank my wine,
While others gave it gladly,
Good souls were they, old friends of mine,
Such thanks to all who’ve had me,
Some tickl’d by this soul-sunshine,
Others flummox’d madly,
For poets & their strangely ancyent ways
Are meant to men affix… affront… amaze.
As from the Wealth of Nations rise
A pleasure-loving soul,
Invested ties friendship supplies
Up puff me proud & tall,
To conjure something rich & queer to steer us, each & all.
Testamundi Poeticus
And if there’s something that remains
Through sounds of horn and lyre,
It too will disappear into the maw of time
Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin
I am a man, many have gone before
& will come yet; to thee I trust this song,
Pray let her fly to every foreign shore,
Shewing the World how once the World went wrong;
Such manic times
Have ended, only just,
Whose freshness fills my rhymes far from the bookish dust.
I would the World should hear this song
& sing her down the ages,
So, when the epic, proud & long,
Renaissance ever stages,
Let poets ply their trade among
Polytechnic pages,
Finding a thing or two that they could use
In future conversations with their Muse.
Namore shall Homers chaunt War’s praise
Or Owens curse it’s game;
Some psychic craze, unbridl’d days,
Crude torture, quelling shame,
This is my long-wrought testament to what Mankind became.
Avanti!
I am not a mirage, but a being in flesh
Born of a sea that has neither
Waves nor shore, nor moon, nor star
Horace Gregory
When two traditions meet in epic song,
There history & poetry converge
Upon a point called nexus, whence among
Man’s consciousness progressive senses merge;
Tilling the soil,
Planting these sapling shoots,
Which over time uncoil as fields of figs & fruits.
So grow, ye lotus-burnish’d gold,
Ye zest-infested lemon,
Go store these tales of glories old
For future to look back on,
Five thousand years must now unfold
Before this age is run;
Half-way, of course, some Homer might arise
& half-an-age in poesy realize.
Asoka’s edicts I have seen
War’s monuments may you,
Days pass’d have been disturb’d, obscene,
But from the gore their grew
This peaceful pearl, this precious planetary parvenu!
Aquarians
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons,
And the war-cry was forgotten
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We’ll all look back on Us with pure disgust,
How on Earth did we let Hitler happen?
Lest we forget his deeds, with thee I trust
These tryptychs prim’d on a cryptic pattern;
Homeric horn,
Of perpetuity,
To thrill, to teach, to warn, through all futurity!
Beyond the threshfold of warfare
As fought by brave Achaean,
To atom-splitting solar flare
Flung from the North Korean,
The threat of death the World would share;
Bodies block the Scaean –
Unnumber’d, multitudinous, immense –,
How many lives are robb’d of innocence?
Like amaranth anemones
This book of rumbling words,
Mnemones & melodies,
Midst lines of waltzing thirds,
Must shimmer ever phosphorous as if t’were sufi birds.
(AA) Canto 1: Broken Peace
**************************************
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
**************************************
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)
Mumble Words 