(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
(AA) Canto 10: Polarizations
**************************************
There is now once more a Germany with which England must reckon as an important member of the European family of nations
Freiherr von Reheinbaben
Jewish Wedding
Throttled before
they got the word out,
it must break through
Theodore Weiss
A carriage trundles thro’ soft ribbon fog,
As tho’ a cushion of romantic myst,
The Grunfelds gather’d in their synagogue,
Speechless ’til Heidi & her husband kiss’d;
A tearsplash floor,
Anna weeps happily,
Joyously crying for yofiful family.
The Rabbi’s household welcomes them,
Full-feasted celebration,
Moses toasts, “Shalom Alachem!”
Franz faithful keeps tradition,
Stamping on glasses, cries, “Lechaim!”
To the Hebrew nation…
As into this sacred ceremony
Brashly bursts & brawling brown-shirt bully.
Worm-filthy mouth spew’d forth abuse,
Breath-stench of bottl’d beer,
“You heard the news, you filthy Jews,
No longer welcome here!”
Scatter platters, romance shatters, batter’d by rattl’d fear.
Frankfurt
1936
Guerra Civil
The wind blows across the tombs
Freedom will come
& we shall be forgotten
Emmanuel de la Vigerie
As flickers wind at coalflame’s quickening,
Francisco Franco forms a violent breeze
Dichotomizes private bickering,
Sets complex quarrels climbing the trapeze;
When all our sight
Sees victory ahead –
One mis-step left or right we’ll topple down & dead.
The International Brigade
Embrac’d by Antifascist,
Whom, common causing, on parade
Left hand raises in a fist,
Man’s noblest consciences obey’d,
Poet, author, artist,
Attend to what is right, & that’s the left,
For Fascist thugees morally bereft.
As Germany & Italy
Operate together,
Admittedly (& wittily)
“Duce, en Espagna,
Na pas de troupes – ensuite, il neles rapellera pas!”
Spain
March
1937
The Raven
Your task, O man, is not to carp & cavil
At God’s achievements, but with purpose strong
To cling to good, & turn away from evil
EW Wilcox
From Nurnburg’s grand old Palace of Justice
To notices pinn’d at Hamburg stations,
Hitlerean antisemitismus
Forbids Jewish-Aryan relations;
In deep disgust
Jack Foley boards the train,
Such dirty devil’s dust ingrinds his native grain.
Inside the capital’s bright glow
Jack slides thro’ his embassy,
Plugs in his secret radio,
London warns about Graf Spree,
Contacting corrupt Gestapo,
Mix’d charm with bribery,
Obtaining visa-clutches for these Jews
Waiting outside his room all night in queues.
Onto a pillar by them flies
A bird to perch its flight,
With moonbright eyes, lampooning cries,
He fills them all with fright,
Who watch & wonder what it brings, this thing as black as night?
Berlin
April
1937
Skymurder
Nixt efter him come Mars the God of Ire,
Of strife, debate, & all dessensioun,
To chide & fecht, als feirs as only fyre
Robert Henryson
Sun tingles the lingering drudge of dusk,
Drowning a sleeping market town, rever’d,
The centre-culture of the ancient Basque,
Who, since the Empire of the Hyksos, steer’d
A private past,
Outwithing France & Spain,
Spanspun from San Sebastian to Aquitaine.
The streets full jamm’d for market day,
As over the hills appears
An airborne fleet of beige & grey
Whose droning un-nerving nears,
When black bombs drop on prams & play,
The one bridge disappears
In dust & rubbleflop onto water –
Up in town incendiary slaughter!
As faceless venatorians
Entomb abyss alive,
Those story reels of gory wheels
Of bomber steel survive
To tell this sordid poster-tale where ghosts of condors dive.
Guernica
April 26th
1937
Internal Tyranny
The mystical ladder of prayer
Is set for our use everywhere
Our thoughts, weary angels, ascend
Julia Ward Howe
Joe Stalin hail’d more than an Emperor
What powers emanate from single source
A second Nero & Caligula
Combin’d, deified like Little Boots’ horse,
A simple nod
Of th’omnipotent head,
Obey thy demi-god, obey, or, well, you’re dead!
As paranoid, delusional,
Fray’d nerve ends ever fretting,
The Boss demands the removal
Of traitorhood, each getting
Sham justice, then a funeral,
Desperate bloodletting
An army swamp’d by wild & rampant urge
Lost half its officers in this Great Purge.
As colonel knocks his vodka back,
Tough rapping slaps the door,
A cul-de-sac panic attack,
Took pistol from the drawer,
& blew his brains against the wall, his pain free warrantor.
Moscow
April 30th
1937
Pablo
That bull which flew into a fury
Because of a dark stain at the market
So much blood spilled at the borders
Nelo Risi
Admiring women, smoking tobacco,
Reading L’Humanitie, his street cafe
Lit by sprites of Persia, Picasso
Compares the Parisian First of May
To God’s domain;
Forgetting to inhale,
What is this news from Spain – cigar-tip burns his nail.
Wholly consum’d by mystery,
Disgusted by destruction
Of perfected humanity
In women & their children;
Amalgamates, pastorally,
Sheer pre-occupation
For personal pictorial express
Thro’ mural of monochromatic dress.
Dynamism’s immolation
Splurges into being –
Deformation, fragmentation,
Agonies agreeing,
From Harlequins & Minotaurs are spinal chords sent fleeing.
Paris
May 1st
1937
Cinematica
The armaments will start their devastations,
And though we’re for it, though we’re all convinced
Some fool will press the button soon or late
John Lehmann
To moving pictures Rita treats her son,
Laughs with the Marx boys, peers upon Pathay –
Smiles straighten with increas’d trepidation,
Her country choak’d on trouble-cloak’d Cathay;
Whoop-whoops & cheers!
Appears their President,
Easing most furtive fears with rhoticless accent.
Sitting beside his homely fire,
He panic play’d down calmly,
“Unto the Japanese Empire
A friendly hand extend we,
Peace ranks beyond War’s thankless mire,
Breathe Peace, breed Liberty;
For all our childrens’ sake Men must forgive,
& build a world where they would want to live”
The Hindenburg lit up the screen,
Cauterized by plasma,
Strange ghostly sheen, strange portents glean
About that swastika….
Like Carlton playing soldiers as they left the cinema.
Jerkwater
May 6
1937
Pierre & Veronique
Oh ! for some honest Lovers ghost
Some kind unbodied post
Sent from the shades below
Sir John Suckling
Loiret’s perfect city, rose-fair & sweet,
Deliver’d from the English by the Maid,
Two perfectly-lustred, loving lips meet,
The drudge of harsh realities allay’d;
Wearing life’s youth,
Our spirit’s velvet glove,
They share but one bold truth… to love is to know love!
Pierre carreses Veronique,
Whispers, “Je t’adore ma chere!”
Hands stroking slender, quatchless cheek,
Hers insliding thro’ soft hair,
Watching Communist comrades speak,
Jacquerie fills the square,
Sporting pitchforks & the sickle banner…
“Vite!” gasps Pierre, “We’re late for lit’rature!”
They rush’d into the lecture hall,
Took their shushing places,
The floral roll of Verlaine’s soul
Wove its vernal graces,
While finger-tips touch tingling at poesy’s pretty places.
Orleans
1937
Exposition
Our essence is not bound to any place
The vigor of our wine is not contained
In any bowl
Muhammad Iqba
The world flocks to itself, a splendid fair
Of cultural pavilions, of which
The Germans built the most flamboyant there,
Tho’ Moscow’s canvas claims a larger pitch;
While them both grand
Small Spanish tent attracts;
Thousand-upon-thousand to face the Fascist facts.
Audacious painting pris’d aghast
Responses spawn’d electric
To Franco’s kshatriyan caste
In chaos geometric;
Dismemberment’s iconoclast,
Cubism’s eccentric
Masterbrush composes, in triangles
A madness of horses, light bulbs & bulls.
The Nazis swift to discommend
Such vomit strokes enslav’d
Whose dregs distending reprehend
Fine taste, fresh-fac’d & shav’d,
Not this unkempt degenerate development deprav’d.
Paris
June 1st
1937
(AA) Canto 11: Appeasement
**************************************
There is now once more a Germany with which England must reckon as an important member of the European family of nations. This historical fact was achieved between the years 1933 & 1938 by rapid action accompanied by far-reaching transformation in Europe & the world… as yet the future is still open. No momentous decision has been made… let us march together, not against each other, into this new future for the benefit of our two great countries, for the benefit of Europe, for the benefit of the world
Freiherr von Reheinbaben
Fascist Knot
Surely the wings that hold,
Dark-clasp’d, the mystery of Fate
This moment will unfold
Harold Monro
Hitler receiv’d his conquering idol,
A dazzle of banners & manoeuvres!
Impresses his ‘hero’ with mock battle,
“How like those Spartans march your fine soldiers!”
“My friend please speak
Beneath the Glockenturm,”
The Mai-feld’s bound’ries creak e’en in a Donnersturm.
Wooed Mussolini’s mood unique
Thro’ supper conversation,
“The British Empire has grown weak,
Wrote off the Tscheschienne nation,
Together we shall climb the peak
Of our proper station,
Forcing the pen of history’s censor,
Steal victory thro’ all the pomp of war.”
Two sister nations buck & rise
To ride the wylde warhorse;
First centralize, then march to prise
Thy neighbour’s realms by force,
Then sail in search of empire, letting conquest forge a course.
Berlin
November
1937
Anschluss
What is it that stirs the heart & mind,
Quietly & insidiously biting deep
Until it is a part of self
Rennie McOwan
Stately & silent mile-high Alpine peaks,
Stand oer the Obersalzburg, far below
By Berchtesgaden’s fairytale antiques,
Goes, snicking, Doctor Schuschnigg’s car, thro’ snow ;
The Berghof looms,
& the Doctor trembles,
As moody light illumes Hitler & his gen’rals.
As tyrants try their tyranny
& fly thro’ the high-stakes game;
Alone in Der Fuhrer’s study,
His land in the window frame,
“Austria must join Germany,
The same in all but name,
My destiny forg’d to reunite us,
Oppose us & spill the blood of brothers.”
The Heldenplatz sang joyously,
Their conquerer arose
In victory, “Thro’ you & me
The German Nation grows,
Thou hast a holy mission… guard the Reich from Eastern foes.”
Ostmark
March
1938
The Question of Versaille
Alone with God, where no wind blows,
And Death, his shadow – doom’d, he goes :
That God is there the shadows shows
Ebenezer Elliott
Churchill lurch’d from his back-bench wilderness,
Round thickset neck dangl’d the Dardanelles,
Projecting deep resonance to impress
On Parliament of the Fascist perils;
“I prophesise
This Berlin maniac
Has fool’d us to the wise, that wolf must soon attack!
Let us urge the world to rally
Against this cruel dictator,
How potent the deterency
If we should pool with Russia,
So let us rouse our old country,
Raise historic vigour,
Germany is re-arming at a pace,
We must build air fleets to stay in the race!”
The House laugh’d an indignant laugh,
Chamberlain sat him down,
A telegraph from the Berghof
Pluck’d from his stately gown,
“Mister Hitler is all for peace!” cheers drown the single frown.
London
March
1938
Referendum
What he does in necessary
Whatever he does in necessary
Whatever he does in successful
Rudolf Hess
Chewing on a käsekrainer sausage,
The young, pre-vegan Fuhrer once preferr’d –
As Germany seeks Austria’s spousage
Into the pot his hidden poison stirr’d;
Dissention quell’d
A conquest this can’t be
As referendum held bitter as chicory!
Propaganda unremitting,
Radiance in eager eyes,
For a leader them befitting,
Austrian in German guise,
With none of them admitting
Him just a knave of lies,
So easy is a sacred saviour seen,
“Yes” votes on ninety-nine percent convene.
In Burgenland, with gumptive gall,
“No” voted sixty-four,
Outside the hall a gallows pole,
With nooses hung three score,
Glares out a public warning full devotion to restore.
Eisenstadt
April 10th
1938
Death Dreams
Subservient to another, full of fears & care;
Responsible for manifold affairs of state,
How can officials know the joys of love
Kumarapulapratibodha
‘How beautiful are roses in the spring!’
Thought Chamberlain to raise his weary head,
That gruelling, solemn parley with the King
Had left him wasted, wanton for his bed;
As stars complete
Their glittering display
Inside Ten Downing Street, to dream the break of day…
..the Grinning ghosts of Guernica
Danc’d madly upon his grave,
Overhead each gruesome bomber
Belching death wave-after-wave,
Now marches jack-boot soldier
Good people to enslave;
A pig-tail girl nears with an outstretch’d plalm,
Mouse nibbling at her pretty little palm…
…jag-lightning wrenches night apart
Deep thunder in it’s train,
He, with a start, awoke, his heart-
Beat drumming to the rain,
As thro’ his cramping abdomen shoots dull & thumping pain.
London
May 1938
Nazi Party Rally
The German people slumber on
In dull, stupid sleep & encourage
The Fascist criminals
The White Rose
The second Max Stemmler stept from the train
Saw him thrust into echoistic sea,
Religious fervour proscribing his brain,
His heart leapt up to greet the pageantry;
Great church bells cheer,
“O Lord, ’tis glorious!
Der Fuhrer, he it here! He has come among us!”
Neath nympholepsic fawn fanfare
& eagle-mantl’d banner,
This dreamy, acolytic stare
Of uniform’d stormtrooper,
Paces fulgurant, flament, flair,
Figure-heads together;
Pass by Kongressbau: pulsing; hypnotic;
Enter Zepp’linfeld: writhing; erotic…
…Where oratory masterful
Draws the crowd to climax,
His beautiful, triumphant will
Spits venom at the Czechs,
“Justice for the Sudetenland!” Max faints, a heart’s reflex.
Nuremburg
June
1938
Hitler’s Will
He regards even his tantrums as a sign of strength
He would prefer us to be as water,
To see us stagnating as the bottom of the cup
Mourid Barghouti
Fresh from Rome, with Mussolini’s consent
To begin, ‘gainst Czechoslovakia
His tacit conquest of the continent,
Removing that thorn, that threat to the rear;
He’ll need reasons
To show aggressive hand…
“Blood of the Aryans floods the Sudetenland!”
Touring the regions of the Rhine,
Fawning entourage in tow,
In every heart his star did shine,
To Hades they would follow,
Strolling along the Seigfried line
Musing on Maginot –
Amidst sycophants one precocious youth,
Dares challenge his captain with starkling truth;
“We lack the men to firmly man
The whole of this West Wall!”
“Schiesser, we can, we’re stronger than
Both Albion & Gaul,
Their treaty is a sham they have no spine to fight at all.”
The Saar
August
1938
On the Brink
My tender friends are all put to flicht;
For policy is fled agane in France
My sister, Justice, almaist hath tint her sicht
Sir David Lyndsay
Upon the flesh of the Tschechien nation
The hungry wolf all set to snap its jaws,
With France a-dither with their obligation,
Britannia sends a leader from her shores;
H’d never been
Into the air before,
Tho’ lofty & serene, his thoughts are screaming war!
High oer the North Europa plain
That stretches to the Urals,
Ahead, like spreading clouds of rain,
Uprise Alpine sentinels,
To Munich drops that aeroplane,
Whose good folk flock the sills,
To witness the British Prime Minister
Avert something trickily sinister.
The roads were lined with cheering crowds
Of kids & mountain men,
Gloom-rolling clouds each peak enshrouds,
Chamberlain chews his pen –
Inside those misty mountains, somewhere, lies a lion’s den.
Bad Aibling
September 15th
1938
Peace In Our Time
If few their wants, their pleasures are but few :
For every want that stimulates the breast
Becomes a source of pleasure when redress’d
Oliver Goldsmith
Distant peals of thunderdrones draw closer,
About the Kehlsteinhaus tough Zephyrs swirl’d,
No wonder, here, delusions of grandeur,
An eagle’s nest perch’d high above the world;
Hitler commands
They’ll drive below the snow,
Wringing his clammy hands, singing, ‘Bring on the foe!’
His villa was the field agreed,
By the piny, mountain wood,
“Sudetenland must be full freed
From spillage of German blood,
It must be NOW! if I must lead
In full stride of manhood,
For never! never! never! shall I yield
Even if Earth becometh battlefield!”
“If you want war why let us come,
Our time wasted I see!”
Adolf struck dumb, a softer drum,
“Will the Allies agree
To the secession?” “Si!” such was that easy victory.
The Berghof
September 15th
1938
(AA) Canto 12: Rubicon
**************************************
I was absolutely convinced that the Jews were the opposite pole from the German peoples, & sooner or later there would have to be a clash between National Socialism & World Jewry… But everybody was convinced of this; that was all you could hear or read
Rudolf Hoess
A Game of Chess
In the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
Charles Bukowski
At the heart of Red Empire in the east,
Two pals play the ancyent game of statesmen,
Molotov persists with the Spanish priest,
Stalin moves his knight back to Queen’s Knight One;
Satiated
Of that Ivanic urge,
Content to shuffle wood, pleas’d with appeasing purge.
Molotov puzzl’d oer the board,
Puffing on a fat cigar
As Stalin’s icy silence thaw’d;
“If tomorrow brings a war,
Tho’ we prefer sickle to sword,
We must prepare to spar :
Tis not long now until Berlin’s advance –
I mistrust Britain but we must court France.
Mother Russia must be ready,
Re-arm our brave young sons,
Transfom each key tractor fact’ry,
Build airplanes, tanks & guns…”
Moves Molotov, “& if they march we’ll slay a million Huns.”
Moscow
January
1939
Conquest of Czechoslovakia
No more, O my spirit,
are we flawless,
we have seen evil undreamt
Hippolytus
The famous Ides of March, der Fuhrer acts,
Imperial intentioning reveal’d,
Tastebuds whetted for better Tscheschienne trachts
He summons Hascha to the battlefield;
“Your poor country
Stands friendless & alone,
You MUST sign this decree lest we attack at dawn!”
Von Ribbentrop shaking his pen,
& Goering, bluff for the pot,
Hound Hascha, puffing, round the den,
His temp’rament tired & hot,
Who figgles, faints, revives again
By Morrel’s morphine shot…
Thus half adream in the first flush of day
Soulcrushman signs his poor contree away.
Hitler climbs the Mala Strana,
O sea of swastikas!
Bohemia, Moravia,
His newest provinces,
Gladly kingleading Germany’s rejuvenescenses.
Prague
March
1939
Guernica
Everything is Buddha without exception
Here is that immaculate & final stage
Where thought is pure in its true nature
Saraha
For every day Franco festers in Spain
Picasso stays away , as Dante dwelt
Aside from Guelph & Ghibelline, when pain
Of exile on their souls doth whip & welt;
His art, meanwhile,
Across the seas did sail,
These times are put on trial, one side must soon prevail.
Upon wide canvas has congeal’d
Our human tearducts dripping,
Where chaos was by Somber seal’d
In composition gripping,
All to it’s banshee phantoms yield
Caught in postures tripping
Awkward, as that apocalyptic day
When Mount Vesuvo blew away Pompeii.
‘Mid museo of modern art
& zeitgeist-surfing taste,
Call’d to a part within the heart
Where empathy lies chaste,
For first times future’s truthful visceralities are fac’d.
New York
May
1939
War’s Reality
At times, God, for his own good will,
Gives hell, o’er men and nations, rule;
But Right, though crushed, I hold Right still
PJ Bailey
The scales are falling from Chamberlain’s eyes,
Deceitfulness & ridicule runs clear,
Childish to swallow Hitler’s streams of lies
His regime’s misbeseeming dreams deem near;
“Bright shines hindsight,
‘Tis inevitable,
That man was born to fight, that man yearns for battle.”
As he rose before the members
Certain sections boo’d & hiss’d,
“The world is turning serious,
For the German jingoist
Had thought he could deceive us!
But now we must resist,
For only a fool would think, come the hour,
Rise up, would we not, with all our power!”
Von Ribbentrop & Ciano stroll
Thro’ gardens blushing Spring,
Teutonic drawl, “The Poles shall fall
Beneath our battering!”
“You crave Danzig?” “No, we crave war!”… Ciano’s awakening.
Berlin
May
1939
Kulturzerstorica
I walk, I turn, sleep may I nocht
I vexit am with heavy thocht
This world all owre I cast about
William Dunbar
With Sudetenland comes all the Skoda
Factories, whose orders made to focus
On armour’d trucks, while over the border
In Poland, the energy is raucous;
Versailles’s biscuit
Has broken, crumbl’d small –
Warsaw wants to risk it, risk seizing Tschechien coal.
The sentiment of Herrenvolk,
Puffs up the Polish quota,
Of German-blooded biofolk
That, distensive, thro’ slaughter
& conquest civic, spirits broke;
Carriers of water
& hewers of wood, slave-slated, accords
The primal needs of German overlords.
Abandon’d by their ‘friends’ abroad,
Betray’d & left naked
Before the sword of Hitler’s horde,
A simple sentence said,
“Today ’tis us, tomorrow you, we live to count the dead!”
Czechoslovakia
June
1939
Zionism
I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly loved,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime
George Linley
Lord Balfour’s declaration always seem’d
The cell precancerous that suddenly
Into action sprouts, a home long dream’d,
For Israel; Mediterranean Sea
To Tigris bank,
Now, settl’d in the soil
Of Palestine, they thank Jehova Arabs toil
To drive them off by shot & shout
From the colonies & farms
So Chamberlain sends Monty out
To deal with these stern alarms,
A man whose proven, without doubt,
In mettle-tests of arms
His mental vigor, his capability,
For swift-spear tactics swoops to victory
Ensuring, soon, the uprising,
Put down in short order,
“A wondrous thing!” the gentiles sing
In New York, who board a
Boat for Jaffa like a Nordic, nautical marauder.
Palestine
July
1939
Defeatism
The man who pains his body & calls it penance
In the hope of continuing to satisfy desire
Does not perceive the evils of rebirth
Asvaghosha
As ignorami burlesquing as French
Are into pacifism whimpering
With poverty of vision, & the stench
Of parafascist dry-rot lingering;
The common man
Far from his schoolboy stance
Another set of cannon-fodder fool’d – no chance!
For ‘peace at any price’ Bonnet
Sews seeds of doubt about him
Convinc’d Monsieur Daladier
Gallic prospects fluter dim,
An ineffective counterstay
‘Gainst Germany, grown grim,
While festering, sequester’d in it’s sins
The last of England lingers in the inns.
Venetians, Romans, Persians, Turks,
One time & another
With wars & works & laws & smirks
Other countries smother
‘Til come the days when sons abus’d outgrow, outblow the mother.
France
August 22nd
1939
War’s Promise
And so, Good-bye, grim ‘Thirties. These your closing days
Have shown a new light, motionless & far
And clear as ice, to our sore riddled eyes
David Gascoyne
While Britain rode the slow boat to Russia,
Von Ribbentrop touch’d down in his Condor,
Playing perfectly the embassador,
Keeping The Boss out of Der Fuhrer’s war,
The Great Bear rose
Full ready to release,
From its ferocious claws, the keys to War & Peace.
“I reckon world needs sortin out!”
Says good ol’ Charlie Sumner,
Sipping a thick, black pint of stout,
Sat in ‘tat room o’ Mitre,
“Gerrys fer feyting, ‘ave no doubt,
It sez so in paper…”
We must finish off Nazis fer them Jews.”
“Aye!” sniff’d the barman, “& we’d best not lose!”
Pierre embraced his sweetheart’s glow,
Kissing her salty cheek,
“Alas, I go to Maginot,
Shed no tears Veronique,
Ah! Partir c’est mourir un peu…” she wept but would not speak.
Paris
August 24th
1939
Megalomania
The trumpet blows its shrill & final blast !
Prepared for war & battle here we stand
Soon Hitler’s banners wave uncheck’d at last
Horst Wessel
From Cairnhall’s mawkish church with lavish lurch,
Left Goering for his higher destiny,
The ones that lie beyond the days we search
For life’s true meaning – Reich Chancellery,
Goose-stepping quite
Mechanical, change guards –
Beyond, & thro’ the night, Der Fuehrer queues his cards.
“As ruthless hunted Genghis Khan
All enemies & their seed
With brutal truth & burning barn
Uprooting the Polish breed,
For settlement by autobahn
That throttles forth at speed
The permanence of Greater Germany,”
From firm assertions squirm his generalrie,
“& everywhere our soldiers fall
A temple there we’ll build!”
In vampyre thrall, into the hall
Those generals stall,’d & spill’d,
While DEATH among them glamour’d noting all whom to be kill’d.
Berlin
August 29th
1939
(AA) Canto 13: The Great War
**************************************
We are made wiser by the age
Erasmus
Hakenkruz
The day’s last sun-rays burn wonderfully
On the evening sand,
At the beginning of the unknown night
Farrukh Ahmad
As little boys listen to their mothers
With dewdrop eyes, an Austrian sat down
Above his home, “Quite unlike the others,”
Schoolmasters said, as now, far from the town,
Mind-implings soar,
Flame-licking phantasie,
What momentary awe, when on the monast’ry
Rose Benedictine coat of arms,
O salient swastika!
Draping an artist in its charms,
Such enigmatic aura…
Alarum wildfires thro’ the farms,
“Alois needs a doctor!”
His son runs home… stunn’d & numb from crying,
Adolf Hitler watch’d his father’s dying.
The haemorrhage was flowing fast,
The doctors did no good,
Breathing its last a body cast
Its soul to fiery flood,
The daddy of a daemon-child besotted by fresh blood.
Linz
1903
Entente Uncordiale
Be war and vengeance fled:
That Europe, wrapt in lasting peace,
May rest her laurell’d head!
Louisa Stuart Costello
With all the varied vestments of her fame,
In splendid isolation London stands
Spectator of the continental game,
A global empire in her gentle hands;
The French envoy
Driven from Waterloo,
For Whitehall to enjoy high-level interview.
“Our problem here is Germany…
Her imperial intent
Could win her the hegemony
Over our old continent,
Threatening our stability,
This course we must prevent!
If war must come then Paris is prepared!”
Sentiment Britain’s delegation shared.
Meanwhile the Kaiser screams, “Be strong,
For struggle surely near!”
A marching song, for right or wrong
The white doves disappear,
As Prussian milit’rism strides into a higher gear.
Potsdam
September
Death of Innocence
Out of harmless indolence, the Greece of books,
& the Jerusalem of memory there suddenly appears
the island of a poem, unpeopl’d
Adam Zagajewski
A century of blood-stench drags the breeze,
Annals of Empire quiver to a close
Like some rogue priest bent double with disease,
Still quaking from those cataclysmic throes;
One hundred years
My tempers train shall delve,
Thro’ all the blood & tears… Nineteen Hundred & Twelve.
The Kasier calls a konferenz,
Large maps besprawling table,
“As Russia, with the funds of France,
Shall soon become full stable,
I wish the borders to advance
As prompt as is able –
Dark clouds have gather’d yon the Vistula,
It must be war… & sooner the better.”
Faint rumbles on a stormy night,
Harsh whispers in the trees,
As grainy light illumes the fight,
INNOCENCE slumps on knees,
Her hump-back’d murderer administ’ring the final squeeze.
Europe
1912
Hitler
Day & night before the dreary portal
Phantom shapes, the guards of Hades, lie :
None of heavenly kind, nor yet of mortal
W.E Aytoun
Elfin painter took leave of Vienna,
Fair jewel of the dual monarchy,
By officers branded, ‘Herr Deserter’,
Rejected by the Arts Academie;
Some quarter-Jew
Pluck’d from obscurity,
Enslaved by the milieu’s intrigues of destiny.
Dawn lit the surging Salzburg heights,
An Alp in his stout heart grew,
His memories of bitter sleights
Cleans’d by Bavarian dew,
Upon the winds young mountain kites
In eagle fashion flew…
“So fate has brought me here to Germany!”
Thought swept upon the wing & flutter’d free.
From wooded lake, to street agleam,
Here seem’d a blither Rome,
As beggars dream to taste ice-cream
He deem’d this place his home,
Where pure-blood Aryans & the anti-semitic roam.
Munich
1913
Assassin!
Onto my boisterous pathway
Falls the invisible flash
Of the secluded black hole
Istok Ulchar
The Crown Prince peers out from the motorcade,
His House of Hapsburg gorging on conquest,
Whose tall, broad-chested soldiers on parade,
Hold back the Slavic peasantry oppress’d;
Soft eyelids close,
Flora fills his vision,
Song-maiden sniffs her rose in her secret garden…
…She laughs & they laugh together,
Rows of roses grow & bud,
Redd’ning fields stretching forever
In a wave transform to wood,
Flaming crosses in the heather,
Names crudely ink’d in blood –
An orphan girl chokes on her rose & dies,
Snakes slithing from the sockets of her eyes…
Stagling slips from silent shadows,
His stern lips firmly curl’d,
The hammer blows, the bullet glows,
A blast of black doom hurl’d,
A shot to slay an Arch Duke, heard in echoes round the world!
Sarajevo
June 28th
1914
Imperial Decree
Strike, Europe, with half the coming world allied,
For those ideals for which, since Homer sang,
The hosts of thirty centuries have died
G.E. Woodward
There was a sense of something in the air,
Of great events & him stood at their heart,
Aye, he could feel the fever everywhere,
Tho’ from that spirit stood his soul apart,
Was this the stage?
When long-felt destiny
Could burst upon the age in perfect clarity?
The Odeonsplatz, glorious,
Cheers at the declaration,
“Upon all sides the envious
Surround our precious nation,
But we shall be victorious!”
Roaring congregation
Sway’d with sheer bliss, up went a thousand hats
As if the daytime sky flew thick with bats.
Young Adolf Hitler, dour-faced, short,
Falls gloating to his knees
In spacious thought, this day long-sought,
“The world has heard my pleas,”
Beside him stood a woman gazing on him with unease.
Munich
August 1st
1914
Outbreak
Man’s life is like the morning dew:
In this world he has misfortune in plenty.
Griefs & hardships oft come early
Ch’in Chia
From sylvan pool uprose the brooding Tsar,
Old gen’rals waiting silent on the rise –
Trusting his cousins not to start a war,
How casual the call to ‘Mobilise!’
“Paddy don’t go!
I’ve an ache in mi bones!”
The carriages start slow, shrill hoots drown Freda’s moans.
As a moment’ry decision
The world with War’s rug smothers,
Epic duel of heave & vision,
Cruel dread of doting mothers,
Crude destroyer of religion,
& bandsman of brothers,
Shambles of glory, honour, passion, pride,
But days of shame as Hell’s highway grows wide.
Born of the bed-soil of Jena,
Fed on the dirt & blood,
Maxy Stemmler aims his Mauser
At movements in the wood…
A shot! A scream! A murd’rous gleam, War’s truth now understood.
Europa
August 20th
1914
Seizure of the Seas
We have come home
From the bloodless wars
With sunken hearts
Lenrie Peters
Hostilities commence upon the waves,
Hochsenflotte christening the contest,
But, afore Coronel could claim her graves,
The fleet is order’d South by South-Sou’ West;
Dolphins in train
Yon dusky Spain they blow,
Aim’d at the sailor’s bane… Tierra del Fuego.
Grey wolves round Cape Horn near & Norse,
Helmsman the gallant Von Spee,
Lying in wait a vengeant force
Rais’d anchor at Port Stanley
& sights the foe! sets fighting course!
The battle-scarr’d foe flee,
Scatter’d amid grey-beards wide & rolling,
Stern, Starboard, Port & Bow shellfire falling.
The Gneisenau, Von Spee’s Scharnhost,
The Nurnburg & Leipzig
The bubbling toast of Churchill’s boast,
His sailors dance a jig…
While England free to roam the waves the foe is forced to dig.
The British Ocean
December 8th
1914
First Christmas
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve –
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
Herman Melville
Wars of manoeuvre on their last legs stand,
Warm maxims smoking by a mass graveside,
Stalemate from the North Sea to Switzerland,
Swathes of trench-works sundering countryside;
One freezing night
Der Wehrmacht think of home,
O blaze of lantern light! O twinkling tannenbaum!
Sweet sung, “Stille nacht, heilige nacht…”
Was the Hun’s opening shell,
“Lads! Lads! we’re not being attack’d!”
Tommy hums The First Noel,
Before too long the truce had track’d
All thro the trenches hell,
Over the top & into No Mans Land
Men went to shake another human hand.
As dawn broke over ghastly ground
The love of life outpour’d,
A football found, quick kickaround,
A goal or six are scored…
Shrill whistles drift the soldiers back – where they’d play’d snow had thaw’d.
The Western Front
December 25th
1914
Mumble Words 