(AA) Canto 14: Boiling Points
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Floating on the surface of the flooded trench was the mask of a human face which had detached itself from the skull.
Siegfried Sassoon
American Incunabula
Now you are one of us, you know our tears,
Those tears of pride & pain so fast to flow;
You too have sipped the first strange draught of woe
EM Walker
“Deutschland ganzlich einzukeisen!” throats wail,
Submerging terrors reverse the blockade,
Lusitania… Old Head of Kinsale…
Torpedoes… hopes of peace noyantly fade;
One explosion
Back-echoes to New York –
Ship lists, hiss-slips, is gone… the World’s press flock to Cork.
To Jerkwater the news soon spread,
Hank hock’d a hooch with Harry,
Shocking ink columns shaking read,
“I have German ancestry,
But those poor American dead
Have rais’d the beast in me!”
“It is was it is, Hank, don’t get involv’d!”
“But Buddy, how else could this be resolv’d?”
“Call off your wolves!” Kaiserwards went,
Wise, by Woodrow Wilson,
Threat keenly meant, the President
Frets at word from London.;
“Zepp’lins have bomb’d our capital…” sacred causal fusion.
Washington
May 10th
1915
The Last Grenadier
The corn was turnin’, hairst was near,
But lang afore the scythes could start
A sough o’ war gaed through the land
Charles Murray
An old man hobbl’d with his great-grandsons,
Breath’d in the dust of a past century,
The growls & the howls of the young Hun’s guns
Awakening his vivid memory;
Tho’ barely sane,
Half driven blind by age,
He shuffl’d his frail frame onto that famous stage.
Tween Hougoumont & La Haye-Saint
His raging nostalgia veer’d,
Tward a panoramic lion
All his stumbling footsteps veer’d,
Fifty thousand phantoms upon
Hades horison reer’d,
Dogs braying fearfully from nearby farms,
All round resounds the mighty clash of arms.
He saw his father hard impal’d
Upon the scarlet square,
& as he wail’d the Gaurdsmen fail’d,
His Grand Pa-Pa led there,
Shielding his cowering grand-child whilst bayoneted bare.
Waterloo
June 18th
1915
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
East Lancashire’s War
I saw him stab
& stab again
a well-killed Boche
Herbert Read
“Give some fella a gun, ‘ees an ‘ero,
Give ‘im a conscience, ‘ee gets thrown in jail!”
“Charlie,” said Rose, “I wunt want yer to go!”
“Now why would I wanna leave you?” a wail
Strays down the street,
With his next door neighbour,
“Put summat on yer feet & go get yer mother!”
Beneath the rugged Hamildon,
Marching by a brown canal,
Pass morosely top o’ Hapton
As at some dour funeral,
Reeling, at length, thro’ Accrington,
To hear of their own Pal…
Upon the Town Hall notice boards they’ll see,
‘Patrick Sumner has died for his country.’
Freda broke down, felt in her heart
An ache to never die,
Charlie’s thoughts dart, world wrench’d apart,
“Revenge! Revenge!” he’ll cry
Racing to add his signature to Gen’ral Haig’s supply.
Lancashire
October
1915
Deserter
I want to go home. I want to go home.
The whizzbangs they rattle, the cannon they roar,
I don’t want to go to the Front any more!
Anonymous
There is a madness in the mind of man,
The water torture of a constant war,
Always up fighting, always in the van,
Frank phantasizes of his native shore
Scarpers his trench,
This war for him’s over,
Pretending to be French all the way to Dover.
He ran home to his early life
From man’s terrors travels far
& ravages his pretty wife,
Trousers mingle with her bra,
But then there comes the cruel knife
To open up the scar,
Cold knock-knock at door, two stone-faced Sergeants
Have come to fetch this white feather to France.
His family’s tearful farewell
Still haunting all the while
He paced the cell, a living hell
& barely legal trial,
Shot at the wall… some sprawl’d ‘deserter’ sporting insane smile..
France
March
1916
All Quiet on the Western Front
The candle stumps stand there staring solemnly.
Across the nocturnal vault of the church
Moans go drifting & choking words
Wilhelm Klemm
T’was just another day in the trenches,
The ‘stand to’ bugler blew before the dawn,
From this heatless zee-catching he wrenches;
Slugs, frogs, bats, rats & beetles flee the yawn;
Breakfast before
Shelling begins at eight,
Less murder, more the bore men call the ‘Morning Hate.’
Those walking with the Lord worship’d,
Others played or talk’d instead,
The gaunt are by despair oft gripp’d,
Some stand up & lost their head,
The ‘stand-to’ call’d as sunshine slipp’d
In bed of rosy red;
The ‘Evening Hate’ has cool’d as fades the light,
Both sides prepare patrols to pass the night.
Some flick thro’ books, some capture mice,
Some requisition rest,
Some pick at lice, some lose at dice,
Some gaze out to the West,
Watching a crimson streak that might have issued from Christ’s breast.
France
April
1916
Verdun
Does it matter? Losing your sight?…
There’s such splendid work for the blind:
& people will always be kind
Siegfried Sassoon
There is a glory in the call to arms,
Marshall Petain bestrode the sacred route,
All galvanised by strong & simple charms,
“The city must be held here coute que coute!”
Firm-fisted hands
Charcoal maps with action.
“Monsieurs, les Allemands sont toujours a Noyon!”
“The nation’s first emergency,
France with faith & fire… ATTAQUE!”
Jean Francois treads the Route Sacree,
Two columns pass on the track,
His marching up to Calvary,
The other slouching back…
& heeding an old soldiers wise advice
Fought well & waiv’d the supreme sacrifice.
With Douamont another Metz,
The war within a war,
Recalling debts the Marshall nets
The ruin’d Fort de Vaux,
Scanty reward for non-stop days of death-craz’d blood & gore.
France
June 7th
1916
Battle of the Somme
Rivers are brim-full of blood by fall of night.
Legion are the bodies laid out in the reeds,
Covered white with the strong birds of death.
George Heym
The Top Brass dined in rich bigwigerie,
“An effort must be made to win the war!
For now we face a weaker Germany,
The hell pits at Verdun her running sore!”
Over the top,
Footballs leading the way,
Thinking nothing could stop them on the Berlin way.
Brave captains, blades melded to hand,
Lead the calm, steel-hatted rows
Cross tangl’d miles of No Mans Land…
“Here they come!” squawk sentry crows,
From deep redoubts burnt soldiers stand
Singe-tingling heads to toes;
‘Das Trommelfeur’ offers a rare respite,
“At last the bastards have come out to fight…”
The chatter of the Maxim gun
Some violent thunderclap,
“No man shall run toward the Hun!”
(Thought absent from the map),
Officers thinning on the field, “Well cheerio old chap!”
Blighty Valley
July 1st
1916
Catalytic Conversion
I have a rendezvous with Death
at some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
Alan Seeger
As Siegessauler soldiery faded,
Der Kaiser holds his heavy head in hands,
His crumbling empire… hungry, blockaded,
The curse of scurvy scourging thro’ his lands;
There but remains
One way to win the War,
To sink the shipping lanes that lap the western shore,
& sunk enough to soon impress
A modicum of urgency
Upon America’s Congress,
Their precious democracy
Should Europe’s problems readdress,
& forge all people free
From tyranny, and threats of violence made:
The President calls for a great crusade,
Then took tea at the Pentagon,
“What clothes our forces wear?”
“The fleet rusts on, arms next to none,
A few planes in the air!”
“We’d better get a move on, then, we’re needed over there.”
Washington
April 6th
1917
(AA) Canto 15: Slaughter’s End
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The battles may last for a long time, perhaps even years. There are powerful forces on both sides, & the war is important to both armies. It’s not a battle of good against evil. It’s a war between forces that are fighting for the balance of power, & , when that type of battle begins, it lasts longer than others – because Allah is on both sides
Paulo Coelho
Of War & Men
And here’s to the Blue & Gray as one,
When we meet on the fields of France;
May the spirit of God be with us all
G.M. Mayo
There is a scented season men name Spring,
Air slowly perfumed by a floral spray,
Laburnam, Rhododendrum, blossoming
By little lambs so sylph like in their play;
O pleasant clime,
Days of the Daffodil,
But also times of crime, the urge returns to kill.
Death comes in droves, in droves I say,
Imagine the Bernabau
When Barcelona come to play
& each fan slain… tell me how
Men can allow mankind to slay
His own as tho some cow…
Now to the stadia the Yanks advance,
Their targets are the painted dames of France,
Where Dillinger don’t give a damn
For his young wife Rita,
A quick wham-bam, & “Thank ye mam!”
Five francs ring the meter,
All while his son was born that morn out home in Jerkwater.
Paris
May
1917
Poetry of War
You must be from my country
I see it by the tick
Of your soul around the eyelashes
Tchicaya U Tam’si
Seigfreid heard soften’d knocking at the door,
Young Wilfred Owen stood there rather shy,
Clutching his poems, not one book but four!
Sass caught a special ‘something’ in his eye;
How they show it,
That special sympathy,
“I-I am a poet…” “Why, would you care for tea?”
With Graves they form’d a company
Of literary lions,
Baring the torch of Poetry
Thro this dark day’s dalliance,
Channelling sacred energy
Thro’ most artful science,
Rose milk & honey springing from within,
“These terrible times, times worth living in!”
Lost on a stroll thro’ the garden,
Life seem’d a better age,
Brave deeds now done how Keatsean
Men carved marvellous page,
Ants, players, friends & stars performing on the greatest stage.
Craiglockhart
September
1917
Passcheandale
ulcers of mustard gas, a rivet in the lung
from scrappy shrapnel,
frostbite, trench-fever, shell-shock
Basil Bunting
Sallow soldiers splash thro’ boot-sucking mud,
Clinging like poor relations, twice as fast
It breeds, each shell-hole nauseate with blood,
Swollen black lads bolt upright in repast;
Still falls the rain –
An English Pioneer,
Slow-walks the wooden vein, two German scouts appear…
…One blasted dead, aim switch’d sharp right,
Max dodg’d the angry bullet,
Thick slipping into slime & shite,
Duckboard tilts Charlie in it,
Both surging in a mucky fight,
Gasps, grappling, grasping, grit;
KARMA appears, the convertite goddess,
To part the duel, men break in weariness,
Two warriors from fight withdrew,
Exhausted breaths extrude,
Soak’d thro’ & thro’ & filthy too,
Both stalk’d off unpursued,
Waking from death’s dalliances wrack’d with disquietude.
Flanders
November
1917
Cambrai
It is more than the odor of this core of earth
& water. It is that which is distill’d
In the prolific ellipses that we know
Wallace Stevens
The summer turns to Autumn, turns to mud,
Despite the shite the ‘Big Push’ pushes on,
The German sentries frozen where they stood,
What is this ‘thing?’ this king phenomenon;
This iron-clad
Slow rumbling to their lines,
The World is going mad, the World & its designs!
More lethal than the brazen bull,
O miraculous machines!
Attack the military squall
Carrying brushwood facines
To plug the trenchs, on they roll,
The Germans rout in scenes
Of panic over tussocky grassland –
The British have no cards left in the hand,
No reserves to exploit the gap,
& the crews exhausted,
Counter attack, the ground aon back,
A captain scratch’d his head,
Cursing the moments wasted as he pasted up the dead.
Marcoing
November 27th
1917
Death of the Red Baron
Flesh moans: ‘It is the trough of darkest night.
I see no stars. I see no way. Winds gnaw
The roots of dreams. My body blesses earth.’
Lazarus Aaronson
Young Nigel Bligh, bestriding flying horse,
Fresh from the Cam & now a fledgeling part
Of the recently form’d Royal Air Force,
Sits chomping at the bit for it to start;
Propellor whirls,
Up-up, up & away!
The glory & the girls must court him from this day.
He saw a duel oer Morlaincourt,
An Albatross & Camel,
The British plane drops with a roar,
So in Bligh sped to battle,
His spits out bullets by the score,
With a murd’rous rattle,
A bullet in his lungs the Baron drown’d
In blood, his triplane spiralling to ground.
“I hope he roasted all the way,
That bastard of the sky!”
“O frabjous day, Calloo, callay!”
Three cheers for Nigel Bligh,
A gorgeous gladiator with elation in his eye.
Vaux-sur-Somme
April 21st
1918
German Offensive
Wavering over the sun
Their arms are still greeting a king,
Holding out hands for a gun
Roger Roughton
Reading Nietzsche, muse-immured in Homer,
Herr Hitler huddles in his solitude,
“An alright sort of chap, but a loner,”
His comrades say, “Tho with spirit imbued!”
One fitful dream,
One lord over it all,
Released with banshee scream Satanus caught his soul!
Herr Goering flies above the ground
Where stormtrooper religions
With one desire to kill & wound
Like diabolique engines
Roll thro’ stunn’d trenches, hard boots pound
Cats among the pigeons,
With camouflage & special torpedo
A surge of strength wherever they may go.
Max Stemmler’s unit must advance
He kiss’d Aimee goodbye,
“Our sweet Constance best left in France,”
Their babe began to cry –
As off he rush’d up to the front their fragile love did die.
Flanders
June
1918
Ottoman Winter
Now stoops the sun, & dies day’s cheerful light.
When stars tread 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 honoours bestow,
As thro the battleground of the furies
Tread the Fates with JUSTICE & her juries…
As Visigoths view’d the Tiber,
Life left Alexander,
Fat Emperor of Helena,
& died Montezuma…
The Turks are toss’d from Syria with all their vile terror.
Arabia
October 1st
1918
New Directions
And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower
D.H. Lawrence
Max Stemmler bid a last farewell to France,
His mistress & the babe wrapt in her arms,
That sweet, little cherub she call’d Constance,
A better name to hear round Flander’s farms;
One final kiss
To evermore lament,
Leaving his love a ‘miss,’ leaves with his regiment.
Two Juden breakfast in Berlin,
A city dispirited,
From sure, so sure, they had to win,
To totally defeated,
While Jakob takes it on the chin,
Moses felt quite cheated,
“Brother, for us see this through together,
You take Frankfurt & I’ll take Vienna.”
Charlie sat in the Old Nag’s Head
With his beloved Rose,
“Love, let’s get wed” “Alright,” she said,
As giddy guiness flows,
“Time,” roars the landlord… “Its turn’d eleven,” “Aye, them’s new laws!”
Burnley
October
1918
Death of Owen
All is over & done :
Render thanks to the Giver,
England, for thy son
Lord Tennyson
The choice & master spirits of an age
Spread piety, think deep, & deal in gore,
Or lay soft-spoken thoughts upon the page…
A poet knocks upon a poet’s door;
“Goodbye Seigfreid,
My service is required,
But thanks to you my mead of poetry inspired.”
With vitesse vigour freshly found
He surged back to the battle,
Back to the brawl, back to the sound
Of teeth gnashing eternal,
It seem’d for him the world had found
A finer crucible,
For here amid the bloodshed & the rage
One could sense the poesis of an age.
He paced along the slowboat boards,
Urging men as they fell,
Damocles swords & twanging cords,
The Captain hears his knell
As the old lie sounds, “To die in battle is to die well!”
Ois-Sambre Canal
November 4th
1918
(AA) Canto 16: Outbreak!
**************************************
Providence is always on the side of the strongest battalions
Napoleon
Old Fibres
Truth is the voice of Nature & of Time –
Truth is the startling monitor within us –
Nought is without it, it comes from the stars
William Thomas Bacon
The Poets of the Grand Cataclysm
Express’d, for brasshat politics, contempt
Engendering gen’ral pacifism
Before the Hell-witch on his evil bent;
The Gods implore,
“How could you let this be,
A second major war in a demi-century!”
But now it’s here Britannia must,
With every ounce go fighting,
In she the free world put’s its trust,
Prevent Hitler alighting
The pinnacle from where the Just
Administer, citing
Those long-wrought laws of wizen’d precedent,
Not tyrant crimes of whimming president.
A generation combs its hair,
Tie-fixes, irons suits,
Prepares to share the ‘god knows where?’
The bullets & the boots,
For love of battle rumbles wild inside their tribal roots.
Britain
September 1st
1939
…& Wars Begin
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth
WH Auden
Dawn’s grey warning creeps cross the Baltic Sea,
A silhouette slow forming on the line,
Rough broadsides disturb the serenity,
Belching from Krupps of the Schleswig-Holstein;
Each solemn thud,
Peppers the Polish shore,
Earth shatters, scatters mud – the first shots of the war!
The Reichstag sat, silent, subdued,
Observing their leader jeer,
“The Polish race, backward & crude,
Violates our dear frontier!
Bombs shall meet bombs in bitter feud,
Your first captain stands here –
In ‘fourteen I offer’d my dying breath,
I don my coat ‘til victory or death!
If England dares to test our might
In battle once again,
Then let us fight, our Eagle’s flight
Surpass’d her fatten’d hen,
We, all the way, shall war, be it a single year or ten!”
Berlin
Sept 1st
1939
Captured!
The fears on the flanks of wind are ripening,
I pray for heaven
To protect your life from all suffering
Kama Sywor Kamanda
Unlit, Europa’s lamps, unlit once more!
Damageous death an enemy becomes;
This low, dishonest decade’s ending roar
Burns like the Devil churning djembe drums;
Condemn’d by dread,
Perplexity, we are
Compell’d to bang our head against the barb’d wire bar.
‘Neath many-headed monster swarm
The Polish frontier crushes,
Vladek ‘kpoks’ a human form,
Drops Gertman in the bushes,
Then caught – “What’s this! Your gun is warm!
You were shooting at us!”
“I just shot in the air, I promise you!”
The soldier slowly on his ciggie drew
“I did it for my kapitan,
But honestly, my friends,
I know I cannot kill a man…”
Love on such thread suspends,
“You will be made a prisoner…” deep sighs as breath extends.
Pomerania
September 1st
1939
Diplomatic Formalities
Now it is time for the hands grasping the rifle
to harden, & death is at the ready,
even tho’ you have lived only a third of your time
Vsevolod Loboda
A telegram left the lap of London,
Bound for a distant British embassy,
Whose ambassador; cool, suave Henderson,
Deliver’d to the Reich-chancellery;
At daggers drawn
With sly Von Ribbentrop,
Voice rugged as the stone found on the Spion Kop,
“I have the honour to relate
A note from his Majesty’s
Court… if Germany acts too late
In giving assurances
To withdraw from Poland, War’s state
Exists twixt our contrees…
You have until eleven to decide!”
Von Ribbentrop slithers to Hitler’s side,
Transferring the ultimatum
With hands that dug the hole,
Hitler struck dumb, “Then war hast come,
England hath serv’d the ball!”
Goering whispers, “If we lose this War, Lord God help us all!”
Berlin
September 3rd
1939
England Expects
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face
Edwin Markham
As Chamberlain gulp’d down a nervous wine,
Around his rosy garden footsteps pace,
Passing leaden seconds to the deadline,
From Berlin silence grave settles the case;
With patience spent,
His politics outclass’d,
Dripping disappointment he starts his heart’s broadcast;
“I am this land’s Prime Minister,
We already are at war,”
Whipping stern words from his chamber
To the trannies on the shore,
“Let us stand once more together,
Yes, let our Lion roar!”
While Winston Churchill, lonely & aloof
Observ’d the city from his little roof,
Watching those silver elephants
Rise up amidst the spires,
Felt present sense benevolence
Inspire his warring fires,
He burn’d for Britain’s glory & the fates of old empires.
London
September 3rd
1939
A New War
I have seen much to hate here – much to forgive,
But in a world where England is finished & dead,
I do not whish to live
Alice Duer Miller
The Sumner clan gathers round a wireless,
Rose fiddles nervous with ‘er wedding ring,
“Kids shhhhh!” sez Charlie, “This is serious!”
The crackling voice of their stammering king
Grave parley spoke,
An old sensation grew,
The bane of common folk, their worst fears turning true.
Freda strokes Gem, her jet black cat,
Gazed up at Hargher Chimney,
Saw ‘er grandson in an ‘ard hat
Motoring across the sea,
“Y’know ah Pat’ll be in that…”
“Don’t bi daft!” sez Charlie,
“It’ll all bi over bi Christmas grub!”
He took ‘is eldest down ter Rosegrove Club;
As cue-ball crack sank winning black,
“Well son, what will it be?”
“I think…” voice slack, “Speak up our Jack.”
“…Mebbe Merchant Navy.”
“Good choice lad, nah sup up, gotta get gas mask
fer baby.”
Burnley
September 3rd
1939
Beyond the Brink
Hear, you midnight phantoms, hear,
You who pale & wan appear,
And fill the wretch, who wakes, with fear
Nicholas Rowe
No singing crowds cheer’d on his cavalcade,
‘Quite unlike Nineteen Hundred & Fourteen,’
Thinks Hitler, lying in the bed he made,
Quite downcast in his classic limosine;
His gamble fails,
Finding himself at war,
For those who play the scales oft tip the weight too far.
Upon his train ‘Amerika,’
Disgrace replac’d elation,
‘My treaty with Stalin’s Russia
Seems gross miscalculation,
War’s darkling wastes we all enter –
England! What a nation!
Why does she fight? Naught has she here to gain?’
Swirl’d round his thoughts as eastwards plough’d the train.
A little message made him freeze,
Morell prescribes a pill,
In icy seas by Hebrides
A U-Boat claims a kill,
This war turns real, a taste of highest fruits of human thrill.
Germany
September 4th
1939
The Agony of Poland
Do not tell her about my suffering,
Let her ignore the bite of pain,
that is tearing up my being
Georges Andriamanantena
As febricant, mechaniz’d juggernaut
Pours in an endless torrent from the West,
Seizing maladroit forces by the throat –
Passes the Blitzkrieg theorum’s first test;
All Warsaw prays,
Surrounded by the foe,
Still proud her anthem plays on ev’ry radio.
Hitler steers his half-track rumble
Thro’ the war-torn countryside,
Brandishing a single pistol,
& a whip of hard oxhide,
His finest aide-de-camp, Rommel,
Made studies by his side –
But stumbling on that first hospital train,
Refused to fondle soldiers suff’ring pain.
They drove on thro’ the ghostly fog
Raking that rathole town,
By pining dog, a synagogue
Charr’d black from burning down,
Perch for a crow, it’s wretched yellow eyes beflecking brown.
Sosnowiec
September 8th
1939
Evacuees
Come away, away children:
Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly
Matthew Arnold
Sue caught the child-pack’d coach out of Poplar,
Such sadnesses sends tear-tracts swelling up,
Now the high-pitch’ d crowds at Victoria
Heaving like when the Arsenal won the cup;
She joined the rest,
Sobbing sweet maternals,
Prised from the suckling breast, both her little angels.
Onto a squealing train they hop,
Press noses to the windows,
Bursting young lungs at every stop,
Giggles as the whistle blows,
Down gulping sandwiches & pop,
Come Buxton’s fun repose
They saw a fresian real the first fun time,
“Moo-moo?” Mavis cuts short her nurs’ry rhyme.
As tall tower lights up faces,
As sea-gulls squawk thro’ air,
Wee suitcases claimed by strangers,
“We’ll take the young lass there,”
Yelps Kenny; “No, mi mummy meant us two come as a pair!”
Blackpool
September 5th
1939
(AA) Canto 17: Sitzkreig
**************************************
With the same spirit which governs our actions at home, we wish to establish our relations abroad
Adolf Hitler
The Agony of Poland
Do not tell her about my suffering,
Let her ignore the bite of pain,
that is tearing up my being
Georges Andriamanantena
As febricant, mechaniz’d juggernaut
Pours in an endless torrent from the West,
Seizing maladroit forces by the throat –
The Blitzkrieg theorum passes first test;
All Warsaw prays,
Surrounded by the foe,
Still proud her anthem plays on ev’ry radio.
Hitler steers his half-track rumble
Thro’ the war-torn countryside,
Brandishing a single pistol,
& whip of harden’d oxhide,
His finest aide-de-camp, Rommel,
Makes studies by his side –
But coming on that first hospital train,
Refused to see his soldiers suff’ring pain.
They drove on thro’ the ghostly fog
Raking that rathole town,
A pining dog, a synagogue
Charr’d black from burning down,
Where perch’d a crow, it’s beady, yellow eyes now fleck’d with brown.
Sosnowiec
September 8th
1939
B.E.F.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
Henry Reed
What happy breed of men cheer’d off to war;
Geordie, Scouser, Taffy, Scot & Cockney –
Shepherded yon the Cornubian shore
By Captains of His Highnesses Navy;
Unfit to fight
First-class modern conflict,
Like Agricola’s might stormdashing naked Pict.
They sail’d around Amorica,
Dodging periscopic glare,
“We’ll hang out our washing on the
Siegfried line!” flits thro’ the air,
Human paraphernalia
Landing at Saint Nazaire –
Where vital lines of communication
Criss-cross precious strings afloss a nation.
Tommy Sumner fingers the dust
Coating the farmhouse grey,
Bland ketchup must, bayonet rust,
Hand grenades & Nestle
Spoke volumes while invoking occupants of yesterday.
France
September 13th
1939
Vae Victis
With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh
Louise Bogan
Festival terms charming to exstasi
The breathless followers of his visions,
Hitler’s vast voice soars over victory,
“The Almighty Lord has bless’d our weapons,
Surrenders wrung,
We suffer sleights no more!”
Poland – the very young victims of ‘Total War,’
Whose citizens now garden-weeds,
Their modern-age conqueror,
Now rules, he says, subhuman breeds,
Whose anthem plays no longer,
“In these fields we shall plant the seeds
Of our German future,
But first we must defeat the Western foes!”
He orders an attack before the snows.
Towards the front the Russians race,
Usurping spoils of war,
Vast empires face in that same place
Where they had met before…
Hands shaking ever warily like when men meet their whore.
Brest Litovsk
September 17th
1939
Russia’s Greed
they took the West, and they took the North,
they took the beehive, and took the haystack,
they took the South from us, and the East
Marina Tsvetaeva
As thugs unruly truly know no side
But that of bullying belligerence
Thro’ tradimental spheres of influence
Russia commits Slavic sorroricide;
The Poles defy
Their fate, as ev’ry man
Gives battle but to die, to kill all that he can.
With battle-hearts in stoic chest,
Poles held the lines at Wilno,
The Vauban Terespol at Brest,
Slung Turpentine at Grodno –
Tho’ sixteen days Modlin supress’d
The Wehrmacht – pincer’d, Oh!
As, one-by-one, each eastern fortress falls
Red soldiers wave red banners on the walls.
The conquerors gave way to beasts,
Murderous repression
KVD feasts on policemen, priests,
Siberia’s oppression
Awaiting true soul Polski at their country’s fourth partition.
Poland
October 6th
1939
Stalag VIIIB
Know that they all seek happiness
In hurting them men hurt themselves
& will be born again among them
Sutrakrtanga
‘This is defeat,’ thought Vladek Speigelman,
Acamp for Polish soldiers & theirsighs,
Unseasonably freezing, when even
The strongest birds were falling from the skies;
Him set apart
From fellow Poles, a Jew
Already, ghettos start, already ‘them’ & ‘you’.
While Vladek shiver’d in tents thin
The Poles slept in warm cabins,
Soup watery splash’d in his tin,
Plus crust of bed, for din-dins;
Puss, lice & frostbite clamour’d in
Thro’ weather shepherd shuns –
there is a line when fac’d with such despair,
the ones who’ll die are those ones over there.
In icy river Vladek preens
His flesh like morning prayer,
Whose madness means the cold day seems
Tropical to compare,
For life might be a game of chance but winners well prepare.
Lamsdorf
October 13th
1939
Aktion T4
Am I a beast, a murderous dog?
Men violated
Murdered
Ernst Toller
“As death a cure for all disease & strife,
As notes discordant spoil the sacred song,
The incurable raff & chaff of life,”
Insidiously pleads the tallow tongue,
“A mercy death
Physicians must bestow
Unto the wasted breath those useless ghostlings owe.”
Jaws of Doctor Karl Brandt grinded,
As he sipp’d the rich vermouth,
By his Fuhrer’s speeches blinded,
“Must the flower of our youth
Lose their lives, so feeble-minded
Might lead theirs – most uncouth!
Anybody unable for labour
Are valueless…” “So?” said the Reichsleiter,
How to effect transformations
Of lives unliveable,
The creations of foundations
Seeming charitable
Will euthanasia minister to lives incurable.
Tiergarten
October 19th
1939
Dogged Finns
Men’s strength
soldier’s courage
poet’s cries
Agostinho Neto
Stalin shades in East Poland pencil black,
Studies the subtleties of the buffer,
Senses good well the Nazis could attack
Thro’ the passes of Scandinavia;
Thus to the Finns
He offers ‘fair’ treaty
Six small airbases wins friendship with Muscovy.
At Helsinki’s curt rejection
The blood of the Russians rise,
Dismissing the Jus Gentium
Leningrad fills with supplies
For one brief march Karelian,
A splendid exercise,
As light of hearts to battle strong men go
Up to those husky regions busk’d in snow.
As columns press the border posts
A dog-fierce enemy
Like vengeful ghosts rake Russian hosts
With bear-hug enmity
& bullets glaz’d in freezing haze, all sides the foemen flee.
Finland
November 30th
1939
Graf Spree
It aint no place for a Christian
Below there – under sea.
For its all blown sand & shipwrecks
John Masefield
Albatross scythes thro the furrowing sea,
Nine helpless British merchantmen her pray,
Sinking each ship with a broadside fury,
The Altmark streams the survivors away;
In full steam haste
The English warships sped,’
Amidst the tackless waste hunter becomes hunted.
Three fast cruisers catch up with her
Off the prize-rich River Plate,
Kruppsides cripple the Exeter
But to duel at this rate
Could see the others destroy her
She flees, but is too late,
A shell from the Ajax blows the bridge sky high,
Panic! Mayhem! “Shnell! Schnell! To Uruguay!”
She sails form the harbour’s haven,
The English lie in wait,
An explosion, the scuttle done
Herr Lansdorff shares her fate,
In time honour’d tradition, for a captains shame is great
Montevideo
December 17th
1939
Winter War
You and I do not have songs of woe
When the feet is pricked with thorns, eyes turn moist,
We do not bear those stones of despair
Kamini Roy
Christmas leaves the isthmus with no victor,
The warring nations weld this strangest truce,
The only battles broker’d by Russia,
Slipping a violent neck thro’ Finland’s noose;
Her Red Army
Check’d long the whole frontier,
Foe fighting stubbornly, belief relieving fear.
“Be strong & quit yourselves like men,
Make Death proud, proud to take you,”
Finns cry as Russians push again,
The many against the few,
Trying to gouge the front open
Against their heart’s sisu,
Dancing the dance of death between the trees,
‘Schwip-Schwip’ they went, ‘Schwip-Schwip,’ snow-skimming trees.
Stalin sends in the Betka tanks
Along the forest trails,
Onto whose flanks these furclad ranks
Unleash a lethal hail,
Of victory brew’d in the flames of molotov cocktails.
Finland
January 12th
1940
(AA) Canto 18: Battlelines
**************************************
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient & dangerous of human illusions
Robert Lynd
Stalemate in the West
My lord, do not go forth to a combat so giant!
Do not raise your arm where weapons clash,
in the festival of young men, the dance of Inanna!
The Lugale
The Phoney War is raging at its height,
Both sides conduct a fierce leaflet campaign,
Sometimes patrols skirmish into the night,
Sometimes a ship slips neath the Spanish Main;
What tensions rise
Each time Hitler aborts!
Unheterlan Allies content to man the forts.
Twisted steps are swiftly taken,
Thro’ Nazi racial doctrine,
A Pole told she is now German
As her Ahnenpass stamp’d clean,
Resisting pacification
Leads to but one mean scene –
Rotting husbands rocking at the gallows,
Bandsmen drowning bays of wailing widows.
Gallant little Belgium proclaims
Her arm’d neutrality,
Sidestepping games, chief of her aims,
Avoid hostility!
But selfishness breeds weakness says the court of history.
Europe
January 15th
1940
Boarding Party
Go thou to England, rest awhile thy brow
Upon her breathing bosom, cool & free
& she shall lay her arms around thee now
Basil Fry
Where running water drains a paradise
Of saw-tooth’d fjords, glacier-goug’d, deep time
In ev’ry crevice, despite the advice
Of neutral countries, a volitive crime
Plays out today
With revirescent haste,
Thro’ rains & icy spray two naval nations fac’d.
Altmark’s bows the Cossack barges –
On running its prey aground,
Tough Marines & tougher Sarges
Leap like elks to eager pound
Metal decks, all whom emerges
Were cut down where them found –
Quite the professional cutlass attack
Went hell for leather & snickety-snack.
Their haubergeons ripp’d up, a row
Of matrosen slain-sneer
As down below, voice loud & slow,
“Any Englishmen here?”
“Yes we’re all British!” “So are we!” uprioted wild cheer.
Jøssingfjord
February 7
1940
Finland’s Fall
Weapons, weapons, weapons
And poets on duty, pulling the trigger
Ready to set the last cigarettes on fire
Léo Ferré
As Russia floods the Reich with oil & grain,
The Reich returns full train-loads right on time;
Munitions, tanks & the modern warplane,
To help them pierce the stalwart Mannerheim;
One million men
Launch a grand offensive –
Tis now not if but when that bastard front must give.
Thick furs fire at fifty paces,
But for ev’ry man they slay,
Five more Ivan took fresh places,
Five fresh men to hold at bay,
Sheer exhaustion etch’d drain’d faces,
Working both night & day…
Desperate Sisu holding grimly on,
But in the end, the brave end, War’s are won.
Yes War! the ancyent arbiter
Of disputing nations,
Whose proud victor may cast censure,
Politic’s extensions,
For battlefield diplomacy drowns converse with it’s guns.
Helsinki
February
1940
Swing Youth
In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about
Taylor Mali
Not every German struts about like Geese,
Some still prefer to swing the jinx away,
That unencumber’d, evergreen release
Teenagers feel when real musicians play;
Eurythmical,
Each gramaphonic scratch
Comblendeth mystical new music without match.
Young Xaver Stemmler caught the drug,
Grew his hair an awfa’ long,
Goes wiggling thro’ the jitterbug
In good English sang along,
When puffing like a paddletug,
Settling himself among
The girls, he curls a cigarette, or two,
Sits back & swoons, impassion’d, at the view.
“In here there is no Nazi yoke,
In here feel liberty,”
He lit a smoke, he bit a toke,
He blew the white rings free,
Facing the floor, lush fraulines laughing with frivolity.
Berlin
March
1940
Lights of Freedom
Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked
Kahlil Gibran
Aghast of life, this living suicide
Of odorous companionship bleeds out,
“As tears by aching patience must be dried,”
The rabbis plead, “you’ll be releas’d, no doubt!”
Hatches the wish,
For one the dark hath ceas’d,
Pretending, “I’m Polish!” Spiegelman’s time releas’d.
On Parsha’s Trauma stepp’d he out
To world of dazzling brightness,
No more the angry clanging shout
Of Nazis in their spiteness,
While all bucolical about
Spring sprung in its spriteness
& now a train to take him homewards bound
An open’d door, a house alive with sound.
His son could not stop hugging him,
& his wife so happy,
Then losing vim her voice grew dim,
“Vladek, the factory,
Was seiz’d & taken off us!” “But at least, my love, we’re free!”
Sosonoweiz
April
1940
Conquest of Norway
Trains clattering coastwards out of sight
along the valley floor in this textbook
twilight provide all the metaphor you need
Steve Xerri
Their native rock gript, from the Skagerak
To the Arctic Circle, by German hands,
Their soldiers withering neath the attack,
Their King harras’d by bombers thro his lands;
Norwegian sires,
Hardiest of races,
Enslaved – Hitler desires all their coastal bases.
Millennial neutrality
Sever’d by Teutonic sword,
Sad King Haakon quits his contree,
Crosses oer the Romsdalsfiord,
At Tromso’s bomb’d-out harbour quay
Hustl’d quickly aboard…
Surrounded by London’s fail’d strategum,
Troops cold & damp who lost him a kingdom.
An eagle dis across the day
Watching destroyers lurch
Beyond the bay, subdued & grey,
The skies became a perch,
A lofty throne from which all Norway felt it’s keen gaze search.
Galdho Peak
May 3rd
1940
Lancashire’s Finest
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
Alun Lewis
On Belgium’s border barrack’d the East Lancs,
The one word whisper’d in the mess was, “when?”
Amidst the chassis of Matilda tanks,
Captain Andrews reviews his tawny men;
Such hardy bunch
From Pendle’s rugged vale,
When coming to the crunch he knew his lads wunt fail.
Picking their spades up after tea,
Some small subsidence to mend,
Tom Sumner swivels to Billy,
His baby-faced schoolboy friend,
“All this diggin’ is plain silly,
These lines we shan’t defend,
As soon as Gerry turns himself hostile
We’ll leave these bloody trenches for the Dyle!”
They dug awhile & watch’d the sun
Conclude ephemeral,
The digging done, jigging his gun,
Tommy foresaw battle,
“There’s summat funny goin’ on… t’night… I sense trouble.”
St Amand-les-Eux
May 9th
1940
Teutonica
The moon’s rays shiver in the branches.
Forest dark. Silence. Dug-outs.
How wonderful May nights are !
Georgii Suvorov
Racist nations face the decadent West!
Spermatic as the coming of the Spring,
When leafy woods are at their loveliest,
& bowers vibrate with the blossoming,
When golden streams
Sol sends set on the scene,
When gorgeous glinting beams rebound off each machine.
Hitler boards the Amerika,
Under stars he trundles west,
Stirring strains of his dear Wagner
Lull him to a good hours rest,
Whirrs time by… train reaches bunker,
His bomb-proof Felsennest…
Praying before purpuric bloodshed starts,
“O God of Battles steel my soldier’s hearts!”
Facing the tranquil occident,
Rommel reclines with wines,
Cool, calm, content; his regiment
Should thunder thro’ the lines,
Flicking thro’ Sun Tzu, Von Clauswic & Charles DeGaulle’s opines.
Germany
May 9th
1940
Edge of War
This age her whole loveliness maul’d
batter’d & barren from a six year’s bout
so trod & torn, grossness itself defiled
RP Blackmur
Herr Hitler glances nervous at his wrist,
He counted only two hours ’til sunrise,
Ushers in his meteorologist,
“I promise you a week of clear blue skies!”
O happy plan!
The gods smil’d on his plot,
He gives the weatherman a medal on the spot!
Syphilitic abhorrancy
Of imperial desires,
Fuell’d constant by fate’s buoyancy
Oer dreams of epic empires,
Guided by strange clairvoyancy
A single man inspires
World history; its res gestae, whose thought
As truth or falsehood, over now, fierce fought.
Stepping out to view the passage
Of all-auroral dawn,
Sky-blue blank page, a brand new age
Was born this coming morn –
Forever & eternally this day shall be his own.
Bad Münstereifel
May 10th
1940
(AA) Gl’Immortali II
What is a society without a heroic dimension
Jean Baudrillard
Prometheus
My voice is raised, the truth to tell,
And o’er his exiled urn will try
To pour a strain that shall not die
Alessandro Manzoni
Wide-eyed inside a nightmare’s aftershock,
The great God of War wakens in the rains,
Arms entermeddl’d, tied to craggy rock,
In craven rage instraining at the chains;
“Why hold me here?”
Shouts echo cross the seas,
No rescuers appear, now dropping to his knees,
He fills the cosmos with despair,
From dawn ’til the drop of night,
At last the Dark Lord made aware
Of the War God’s awful plight,
So sends three harpies thro’ the air,
Craw-throated feral flight,
From whose sharp claws raindrops a golden key,
What mass of slime uprises from the sea?
That key grabb’d by a tentacle,
& Lord Mars was releas’d,
Stands grateful, branding his skull
With numbers of the beast,
Pois’d ready for the battle, Hell’s hegemony increas’d.
Oceania
Trials of Strength
Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle
Aaron Hill
Mars track’d deep wolf prints North & West & South,
& found Fenir a-feasting in the East,
Plunged his brave gauntlet thro the drooling mouth,
To lose a hand but tame this famous beast;
Mounting its back
They gallop to Asgard,
Leading a snarling pack of blood-hounds battle-scarr’d.
As all Valhalla dined & drank
On the fare of Saehrimnir
Tyr strutted in & broke a shank
From the loins of Andhrimnir,
“Good brethren pleased I am to thank
You all for being here,
Lord Odin I have sworn to challenge Thor
& win thy favours as goes Aesir law.”
He dons the magical gauntlet
That Mars enfused with power,
Forearms firm set, grunts, groans & sweat,
The contest lasts an hour,
A table smash! the Aesir cheer, how tall did Mars tower!
Valhalla
Conversazione
Soft peace she brings; wherever she arrives
She builds our quiet as she forms our lives ;
Lays the rough paths of peevish Nature even
Matthew Prior
The goddess Karma flew to Fairyland,
Convers’d with Mab, Queen of the Pixie Glen,
By daffadowndillies them lovely fann’d,
Far from the prying eyes of Gods & Men;
Sipping their brews,
Teas of rare wildflowers,
They share their recent news, minutes turn to hours….
A wood nymph with translucent wings
Serves the best blueberry cakes,
Sings Mab, “These new Gods & their Kings
Seldom learn from late mistakes,
& discontent with what Fate brings,
Each lusts more while he takes –
In that I trust not Satanus, nor Mars,
Lords of land’s cancers & the sea’s catarrhs.
In these futurities foreseen
Your days must grow busy?”
“Not quite, my queen, I choose one scene
So very carefully –
Two families shall represent all of humanity.”
Fairyland
The Hastening
Let all the gods hear and bend for your yoke
Let sovereigns hear and fall prostrate before you
Let countries hear and bring you their tribute
The Seven to Erra
Upon Bifrost, lush bridge of rainbow light,
Which Asgard joins with Midgard’s mortal realm,
Alerted by black Valkyries in flight,
The handsome Heimdall don his golden helm
The Aesir come
Leading an army grand
Marching to the thunder drum, the scope of Heaven spann’d.
Odin counsels upcoming war
From stallion-steed Sleipnir,
To son & heir, lieutenant thor,
Who swings the hammer Mjolnir,
Points at Europa’s forest core
With sharpest spear, Gungnir,
“Beneath the morning progress of Sol’s lamp
There Zorya & her Amazons make camp.”
They waited ‘til the sun had swept
Far yon the scepter’d noon,
Sly & adept Thor’s heroes crept
‘Tween treetops, rock & dune,
To sight Tuchola’s garrison beneath a swollen moon
Lechia
Schism of Heaven
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon
Dylan Thomas
Before there passes time, some far off time,
When every palm should bare the Devil’s mark
& Mammon, like a Jabba in the slime,
Shall gorge all human labour, like a shark,
‘Til gutted full,
All monies must explode,
& divine lights dim dull as all accounts zeroed!
Before, totalitarian,
Humanity sells its soul,
Aviating erebian
Hordes of Hades’ angels squall,
T’where, singing Stygian paean
The First Prince of their Fall
Howls “Anti-hosanna!” thro’ conching horn,
Messiah urging never to be born.
They swept a lifeless parallax,
Pass Pluto, & all that,
Yon mofette cracks, long torture racks,
‘Til Hell spread icy flat,
Where on his master-throne, in jubilation, Satan sat.
Cocytus
Aesir Roar
Peace on this planet
Or guns glowing hot,
We lay there together
Jericho Brown
Thor summons a storm warflame-bolted,
At the onset of glorious onslaught,
Tuchola’s awfully assaulted,
It’s Amazons fall dead inside the fort;
One survivor
The Valkyries restrain,
The elderly Zorya, chain’d naked in the rain.
For destinies are as the sun
Which rises at the dawning,
Unstoppable, once we’ve begun
Our progress through life’s morning:
When only half-the-day is done,
Sudden, without warning,
We find our brightest face begin to fade
The death-mask of the midnight masquerade.
Odin arriv’d with victory
Fill’d toasts with hydromel,
All thrill’d to see his soldiery
With hero killers swell,
Then turn’d his gaze towards the east, where tromp’d the hordes of Hell.
Lechia
Heart of Hades
To my true king I offered free from stain
Courage & faith ; vain faith & courage vain.
For him I threw lands, honours, wealth, away
Lord Macaulay
Satanus, at Jove’s goodness, sneers disgust,
Prepares angels once more to rebel,
To cast them up the planet’s fissur’d crust
Where Mosca banish’d, once, to depthsy Hell;
Like Legionnaires
They gather, band, & form,
Surmounting cirques of stairs, the Devil’s daemon-swarm
As big fleas attract little fleas,
Sat on their backs to bite ’em,
& fleas even smaller than these
Find them & then alight ’em,
So, in ever-dwindling degrees,
On ad infinitum,
Evil pulses thro’ gods, thro’ priests, thro’ men,
Thro’ animals & back to fleas again.
More fallen angels take to air
With creak & scrape & hiss,
Ascend from where their kindred share
The cinder-swept abyss,
Ascending high & everwards for Heaven’s realms of bliss
Hell
Heroic Counsel
I find a strange knowledge of wind,
an open door in the mountain
pass where everything intersects
Lorna Dee Cervantes
High upon the snow-clad slopes of Snowdon
Britannia brandishes her family,
Empacing by her faithful Gwydion,
Awaiting Neptune’s first emissary;
Green Merman comes,
Darp’d in coral sharkskin,
The sounds of horns & drums… the meeting may begin.
Phoebus the drouthy scene illumes
As serious parlance cooks,
Zephyrs ruffle Ra’s ostrich plumes,
Her Majesty nears the crux,
“I sense the Harbinger of Dooms,
Rough cancer fills the flux,
The testing time forespaken draweth nigh!”
“Come the day,” shouts St£rling, “who’ll fight, who’ll fly.”
The loyal company, & true,
Cries ready for the War,
Violet Vishnu skims skiey blue,
Ra sails for dusky shore
Neptune accommodates Dagon, the Lion roars it roar!
Britain
Hell’s Legions
Lust for gold in the dreadful couch
Red as with blood are the heavens in flames
The roof-tops collapsed, a sight to appall
Dietrich Eckart
The long-horn’d one climbs to the Sapric Crag,
Roars out cross the Valley of the Dead,
Where groan dark woods, where drags his angry flag
Thro’ jagged trees that under him did spread;
Plague host appears,
A shamblegang that sways
& stumbles under spears, burn grass to smoky greys.
Em’rald-navell’d Asmodeus
Battle’s black protagonist
Let’s three hook-tooth’d & bulbous crows
Blood suckle his royal wrist,
Then cast them high, all Heaven shows
A shudder as he hiss’d,
“Sky, thou herest me! Sky, thou feareth me!
Sky, when seest me, shudder before me!
His army wades the River Styx,
Fording its torrid flow,
Picks scythe-topp’d sticks do tip & mix
Advancing row-on-row,
As replicants incarnate sluggish forwards scratch on slow.
Hell’s Fifth Circle
(AA) Canto 19: Invasion
**************************************
Oh, more or less than man – in high or low,
Battling with nations, flying from the field;
Now making monarchs necks thy footstool, now
An empire couldst thy crush, command, rebuild
Lord Byron
Pawn Moves
Under the white flag as he advanced
They say he stood bravely, never winced
As the first bullet pierced his lungs
Ruthven Todd
Aft shouts of war the shafts begin to fly,
No longer men must idle day-long days,
The sun was barely half-an-hour high
& all the Lowland Borders were ablaze;
Wilhemina
Rushes across the sea,
The crooked Swastika denuding majesty.
Rules re-writ for modern warfare;
First possess total surprise,
Then wholly dominate the air;
Thro’ th’Ardennes a phalanx flies,
Cheval-de-frise embatter’d bare
Beneath the Stuka skies,
‘Rev–Rev–Rev,’ three lines of polish’d Panzer,
Wait as if with Nelson off Trafalgar.
King Leopold laments the end
Of proud neutrality,
Forced to defend, his German ‘friend’
Is ravaging freely –
Men learn from history they’ve nothing learn’d from history.
Brussels
May 10th
1940
The Top Job
I was among you; I was sad, unearthly.
My words resounded everyplace.
While all of you just mocked me
Andre Bely
Chamberlain winces under back bench brays,
His government attack’d on every side,
Embarras’d, all, by Norwegian affrays,
The time has come to win back England’s pride;
As angers grow
Disillusionment grew,
“In the name of God, go! Let us have done with you!”
At the regal heart of kingdom,
Prime Minister retires, backs
His choice successor premium,
Elderly Lord Halifax,
Then news comes in from Belgium
of Germany’s attacks,
“But it must be Winston,” his Lordship splurts,
“The only one who’ll hit them where it hurts!”
To Churchill royal summons fly,
Soon to his majesty;
“Do you know why I’ve summon’d thy
Sel?” “No, ’tis beyond me…”
A laught, “Please form my government,” a poignant, “Certainly.”
Buckingham Palace
May 10th
1940
Lightning War
War! The winds are sighing it,
The hill birds are crying it
To the valley’s uttermost bounds
WH Ogilvie
Deep amidst the forested Sedan Gap
Rommel’s panzers re-fuelling for free,
From some deserted garage steals a map
To guide them all thro’ champaign to the sea;
The tanks oil full
No time to hesitate,
Breakneck into battle, for waiting games vexate.
As pontoons creak beneath the tracks,
Blitzkreig rolls on guns blazing,
France buckling under wide attacks,
Morale ever descending,
At last ! the Gallic backbone cracks
Sedan’s surrendering –
Rommel photographs a ghostly fortress,
Whose scenes of slaughter sanities emboss.
Down daggletail, rag-taggling roads
Fox thrusts his lethal lance,
the air explodes as carts & loads
Crush’d by ceaseless advance,
Once more Prussian milit’rism galls Gallic arrogance.
France
May 14th
1940
Arras
all dying isn’t sad
there is the dying that precedes the living
and that’s the secret kind
Ketty Nivyabandi
Defeat seems such a certain circumstance,
The Allies losing battleplans & pride,
The British cut off from the rest of France,
A state of siege upsetting ev’ry side;
At Charleville,
His boots muddy once more,
Hitler calls a council to clarify his war.
The orders whipp’d along the ranks
To wait their coming orders
Before Gravelines, refresh the tanks,
Secure the army’s borders;
What anger rode the riverbanks,
Thro’ the Wehrmacht’s warders,
Pois’d on the brink of total victory
His acts & dreams seem contradictory.
But little did those soldiers ken
The reason why they’d froze,
For Hitler, then, the Englishmen
Aryan juxtapose,
& all they needed was a Bismarkian bloody nose.
Charleville-Mézières
May 24th
1940
Britain Stirs
Now over the map that took ten million years
Of rain and sun to crust like boiler-slag,
The lines of fighting men progress like caterpillars
Louis Macneice
German Arms form an arm-like corridor,
Fist punching up thro’ Flanders to the coast,
Not wheel’d to Paris, as lost Bismarck’s War,
Tho’ given up is Galleini’s ghost;
Spirit thought fled
Seizes the Cinque ports,
The ghoul-songs of the dead blew thro’ abandon’d forts.
Adm’ral Ramsey climb’d Henry’s keep,
With a Nelsonian stance,
Gazes across the hoary deep
To the distant dark of France,
Where brave embattl’d Britons heap
Slim chips upon one chance…
Slipping back to Blighty via Dunkerque…
“It’s crazy, but I’ve got to make it work!”
For once the British do not reel
Before the German gale,
From Grand Fort Phillipe, down to Lille,
Let fresh defence prevail,
From now each deep, bloodletted inch be fought for tooth & nail.
France
May 27th
1940
Slaughterhouse
A deadly bullet gliding through my side
Lies heavy on my heart. I cannot live.
I feel my liver pierc’d & all my veins
Christopher Marlowe
Ninety-nine of the Norfolks surrounded,
Sick of France, the French & the Luftwaffe,
Endurance & ammo nigh exhausted,
Bullet-bitten… hon’rable surrender…
Not welcome here,
With fresh, scourging duress
Fensmen filling of fear, the infamous S.S.,
Disgusted at how well they fought,
Rifle home with hammer-butts,
Upsprunging crude kangaroo court,
With falsest dum-dum bullets,
Finding the long, the tall, the short,
Guilty; by bayonet
Them march’d off into line, promis’d no harm,
With hands-on-heads they file by Duries Farm.
Twin barrels of two maxim guns
Shoot murd’rous swathes of lead,
Hot scarlet runs, England’s brave sons
Now sweet & fitting dead,
Or groyners stick’d like old, sick pigs, or pistol’d thro’ the head.
La Paradis
May 27th
1940
Fall of Belgium
Disconsolate I go,
The summer looks as cold to me
As winter’s frost & snow
John Clare
With the line along Lys lying broken,
Leopold calls General Derousseaux,
“Best seek a ceasefire for beleagured men,”
Then pell-mell breaks for the Anvaing Chateaux;
All hope is gone
As a gladsome Fuhrer,
Offers only unconditional surrender.
As Belgium’s capitulation
Ends the bloody killing spree,
Twenty miles of unmann’d’ station,
Between Wipers & the sea,
Opens up to devastation
& Hitler’s infantry,
Coming as a most terrible surprise
To these medieval-minded Allies.
Of his stubborn neutrality
The King now counts the cost,
But dares not flee while his country
To providence is toss’d,
“I have decided to remain, the Westeren cause is lost.”
Wynendale Chateaux
May 28th
1940
Monty
That wretched wire before the village line
Rattles like rusty brambles or dead bine,
& there the daylight oozes into dun
Edmund Blunden
All hope was burn’d by Belgium’s bare defeat,
The onus falls on one to save the day,
Retrieving lines of severing retreat,
Night falls, & he ingages at Roublaix:
Twenty-five miles
Travers’d thro’ anxious night,
Now safe behind earth-piles awaiting dawn’s own light.
The Wehrmacht push, & how they push,
Impassionate with killing,
Against a rock that rides the rush,
Oblivious to shelling,
Monty inspires his men to crush
All that bloody schnelling –
The gifts of victory soon his to reap,
Those very precious twenty winks of sleep.
In one short hour the courier
Predicts a coming rout,
“Do not bother me…” “But sir!”
His patience snaps in shout,
Yells, “Tell that blasted brigadier to turf those rascals out.”
Louvain
May 29th
1940
Dunkerque
The old dead Captains fought their ships,
& the great dead admirals led the line.
It was England’s night, it was England’s sea.
Robert Nathan
Panic grips the fabl’d British army,
Her soldiers splinter’d into shatter’d shards,
Her wounded bench’d to face the enemy,
Her bodies rotting, her ordnance scrap-yards;
But for one lot,
Led by Ervine Andrews,
Whose pure Parthian shot let loose tho’ they must lose.
In soft barnthatch did Tommy ‘ide,
Wi’ captain & five more men,
Beneath them fifteen Germans died
(& they’d do ‘em all again),
Two poor survivors fled outside
Raw-scalp’d by Billy’s bren;
“Let’s scarper boys!” young lads fleshly blooded
Wade thro’ Flanders fieldscapes freshly flooded.
By dune collars up piles the kit,
“Look lads, just like Lytham!”
A Messerschmitt swoops down, to spit
Death’s teeth, O hangman’s drum,
Then inland hangs… they brush off sand, “Yer don’t get them on prom!”
Malo-les-Bains
May 30th
1940
(AA) Canto 20: Evacuations
**************************************
I hate England by instinct & tradition. I hate her in my own name & in the name of my ancestors. The day may come when the nations of Continental Europe will unite to overthrow the tyrant with his reputation of invincibility. Perhaps the day is near
Henri Baraud
Monty Muses
No half men these
No black coats ink stained
But fighters war grimed
Geoff Pearse
As angels of death from Nilfheim descend,
The satanic strength of the Schutzstaffels
Oerwhelms those motley mobs who play pretend
At war – Bernard Montgomery dwells
Upon his own
Battle philosophy
& how ’twas hammer’d home by Britain’s enemy.
As Allied tail-end went to bat
Upon a sticky wicket
Said Monty, ‘that’s the end of that,
War’s now a game of cricket,
But serious, the starving rat
Slinking in a thicket,
Waiting weak creatures, innocent, to pass,
Then pounc’d on, ripp’d apart to formless mass!
As forces floop in ghostly rout,
Small matter of revenge
Made Monty pout; “Deer swift, bull stout,
Solid as Stonehenge
Fuse must we Tudor armies for to face this rude challenge.”
Dover
May 31st
1940
Air Support
At Dunkirk I
Rolled in the shallows, and the living trod
Across me for a bridge
Sidney Keyes
As chaplain preaches calm on bended knee,
His prayers tumbling out from parching lips;
Men-laden craft creep slowly out to sea,
In hopeful silence bobb’d those lidded ships;
Firm officers
Check chaos with their guns,
“Form a queue you blighters, I’ll shoot each git that runs!”
Shark’s Head in swinking triumph rolls,
Its jubilant pilot gloats
At two rickety, wooden moles,
Those pathetic little boats,
Those cold, exhausted, starving souls,
Grasping for filth that floats;
“How long until Der Fuhrer will prevail?”
He spies a goofy bird upon his tail…
…The labours late-night of boffins
This new ‘Spitfire’ deploys,
Messerschmitt spins… wings dorsal fins…
Pack’d beaches burst in noise;
“‘’Bout bleedin’ time!” screams Tommy, “three cheers for the Brylcreem Boys!”
Malo-les-bains
May 31st
1940
Death of a Frenchman
Sacred friendship! heav’nly fire!
Unmix’d with gross impure desire;
In thee we’ll live, in thee we’ll die
Robert Fergusson
Only Lille deserves the honour of France,
Endures a losing battle to the end,
La Garde in front of La Belle Alliance
Would have been glad to frame these soldats ‘friend’;
Full fierce they fought
Like rigid rocks of Rome,
& ev’ry second bought some son sends safely home.
After many an adventure
Two poilus find safety’s grace,
Howling bagpipes call to muster
Bearded dregs of English race,
Out of copious wine cellar,
Fell some drunken disgrace;
Together they all stagger thro’ the night,
The last few boats for Dover to alight.
Boarding the pack’d Saint Helier
Henri slips, then falls &
Screams out, “Pierre!” soon oil-slick hair
& lone, ring-finger’d hand
Are gone, leaving no trace but shallow footsteps in the sand.
Dunkerque
June 2nd
1940
Echoes of Defeat
Alas! where there were woods,
I see flag-poles standing.
Men have swept nature’s nest away
Bewketu Seyoum
One last, dissarrang’d dragnet of soldiers,
Stretches to breaking points both boat & crew,
Alas, when rear guards reach empty beaches,
Crass shrieks of British perfidy ensue;
They’d fought to save
Those footsteps in the sand,
Them gone across the wave, gone to the promis’d land.
“…the odious apparatus
Of the Nazi privateers
We shall fight on fields & beaches,
Offer I: blood, sweat & tears,
If the empire of the English
Should last a thousand years,
Then let men say this was her finest hour!”
Churchill’s balsam plants Pendragon power.
The floating corpse of poor LeGrand
Wash’d up close by Calais,
Above, huge band of gen’rals stand,
Bedeck’d in sylvan grey,
Viewing those cliffs… pecking the waves, an eagle surfing spray.
France
June 4th
1940
Enter Italia
Be with us through the lingering night,
Protect us by thy holy might,
Let no vain dreams our sleep disturb
Magnus Felix Ennodius
Upon the hour Il Duce will decide
Around the gaunt & lonely ruins rose
This modern Rome, whose mind personified
With dark & fierce face greets the applause;
For war? For peace?
He, only, owns the choice –
The cheers & clapping cease, as with a husky voice,
“France wallows in decadence,
While the British do the same,
But youthful rejuvenessence
Tho’ Italy flows, whose fame
& ancyent, lofty permanence
The sea could never claim;
Run to your weapons, th’Ausonian shore
Be watchful of, for we are now at war!
Expecting loud ‘bravissimo!’,
Cough-silence reign’d instead,
Round & below the palazzo
Murderous murmurs spread,
“Whatever happens now {a whisper}, fascism is dead.”
Rome
June 10th
1940
France’s Ignominy
He sat down in his chair
after watching
thirty thousand peasants die
Mercedes Durand
How they fought on the field of Alesia!
How they conquer’d crowns with Napoleon!
How they endured the seige of the Kaiser!
How they bled at the bloodbath of Verdun!
Thro’ Paris flares
Peaceful fait acomplit,
Ominouscent declares theirs was open city.
As ageing Petain chair’d the meet,
His cabinet divided,
“Gentlemen! We must accede defeat,
To battle on misguided!”
“To Africa let us retreat,
Fight like corner’d tigers!”
“Oui! If we go we shall retain our pride,”
“Non! Prison camps will cloak the countryside!”
“What of our comrades, les Angliches?”
“They offer union;
To fight, they wish, right to finish…”
“Tis naught but corpse fusion,”
Says Petain, “Soon her neck shall be wringing like a chicken.”
Bordeaux
June 17th
1940
Seasider
‘Tis vain to say – her worst of grief is only
The common lot, which all the world have known;
For her ’tis more, because her heart is lonely
Hartley Coleridge
Sue Johnstone drifts to London Bridge Station,
Jumps on a train escaping to the sea,
Leaves London’s diamond civilisation,
Inspiraling hornet activity;
Infinite air
Of this midsummer’s day,
Wind ruffles thro’ wash’d hair, so good to get away.
East Croydon first, then Three Bridges,
Plouhshar’d scenery serene,
Rusted bangers building hedges,
Signposts nowhere to be seen,
At Brighton hops she on a bus,
Winding to Rottingdean,
To stretch tired limbs on pebbledashing sand,
“I’m sorry, lav, civilians are bann’d!
We’ll mine the beach this week,” he said,”
Sue stood up, brush’d down skirt,
Her pretty head was full of dread
Building to full alert,
Temper’d by thoughts her little ones were safe from hate & hurt.
Sussex
June 21st
1940
Peace in our Time
They chose silence
feigned blindness
pleaded ignorance
Cecil Rajendra
On the date Napoleon saw JUSTICE
Decree to the defeated her disgrace,
Petain begs Hitler for an armistice,
His rabbit trapp’d inside a paper chase;
Momentous ask,
As retribution piques,
That little corp’rals task accomplish’d in two weeks.
Midsommer graces stately trees
Girdling a verdant clearing,
From a polish’d black mercedes
Der Fuhrer leaps out jeering,
At this place, at his enemies,
Uncouth contempt searing –
He blows into the carriage where Berlin
Let Paris & her allied wretches win.
The ghosts of Gallic millions
Cried, ‘what did we die for,’
Civilians, Dominions,
A universal roar,
Extinguish’d by the wishes of Evil’s conquistador.
Forest de Compeigne
June 22nd
1940
Conqueror!
I am, with luck, the very future
Of this afflicted people who
Is shown the path and how to tread it
Grigore Vieru
Clear as crystal in his reminiscence,
The world-historical adventurer
Tours poppy fields; here was youth’s full vibrance
Expended as lowly despatch runner;
“How good & true
Our sacrifice now seems!”
He sighs, while driven thro’ the city of his dreams.
Embedded in his consciousness
Were the palaces & rues,
The operatic spaciousness
Ev’ry artist soul imbues,
Electrical vivaciousness,
As if prolific muse;
Swift papparazi following his lead
Yon Arc & Tower to the Invalides.
.
He gazed thro’ the sarcophagus
Into his hero’s core;
Soft silences, stood glorious
On Alexander’s shore…
“This city truly wond’rous, let us make fair Berlin more!”
Paris
June 23rd
1940
(AA) Canto 21: Evolutions
**************************************
Another year!—another deadly blow!
Another mighty Empire overthrown!
And We are left, or shall be left, alone;
The last that dare to struggle with the Foe.
‘Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid low
William Wordsworth
Art Lovers
Who will save my soul from a crash?
Only snakes could let their skin be fallen,
People lose the soul — not the flesh
Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev
From pilot on the Galilean Lake
To arch-apostle preaching ‘God’ abroad,
Well, Paris, where he’s clearly on the take,
Plundering artwork load-by-priceless-load;
Whilst at the Ritz
Sitting in finest rooms,
No Christian whose bits brick’d up the catacombs,
But conqueror, whose master’s reign
Moves ready to rule us all,
The Louvre fills a special train,
Destination Carinhall,
Some tinpot temple to obtain,
Apollo in his thrall,
When culture, this new epoch for mankind,
Destin’d to be shap’d by the German mind.
The nights went whores-in-tights, & drugs,
The days spent feasting long,
On Afghan rugs with laughing glugs
Of cognac, when in song
He’d dance beside the gramophone in toga, bling & thong.
Paris
June 26th
1940
Sonderfahndungliste
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Martin Niemöller
Beyond braggart brainage & bland oestro
The Nazi was a nasty phantasist,
So Schellenberg, the SD’s best maestro,
Order’d to author a ‘Special Search List,’
Thousands of names
Of Britons to arrest
To wipe away their names, cleanse Britain for a nest.
On this most murd’rous of appels,
To face their final curtain,
Was Aldous Huxley, HG Wells,
Virginia Woolf for certain,
With Noel Coward’s tricksy spell
& Dowding, from Merton,
Also to face the Einsatzgruppen squeeze –
Boy Scouts, Masonic lodges, clubs like these.
He’d sav’d the first name, wrote it last
Then underlin’d three times;
Derang’d, disastrous, fiend who’d cast
Us all in war’s deep slimes,
Yes, Winston Churchill, hang-draw-quarter him for all his crimes.
Berlin
July
1940
Protecting Hegemony
Of Neptune’s empire let us sing,
At whose command the waves obey;
To whom the rivers tribute pay
Thomas Campion
No highly-strung ally left to pamper,
Saint George’s subjects, huddl’d at the fire,
Petering on nearly empty hamper,
Most thankful for the bonus of empire;
Whose trump card held,
An oceans’ mastery,
Since Alfred’s Danish geld the key to victory.
Brave sailors pack’d in ev’ry bunk,
Off floats a fresh flotilla,
The French marine has grown defunct
Yon stoutly stone Gibraltar,
“Please, sink thy ships or they’ll be sunk,”
Sweeps oer North Africa,
& everywhere that fleet was compliant,
But for one dock… HMS Valiant
Flings flaming shells on former friends,
The fire was return’d,
The shelling blends, the shelling ends,
The French ships sunk or burn’d,
A lesson of necessity the adm’ralty’s long learn’d.
Oran
July 3rd
1940
Lend Lease
And he began to chide the titan sun :
‘Fool that thou art ! No wonder men deride thee
To lie all night with dawn, as thou hast done
Geoffrey Chaucer
Roosevelt stirs cautiously to action;
Betied by bonds of culture, tongue & blood,
Firmfeet steeping forth from isolation,
Helping that vital fight for right & good;
Circumvent
Rules of leagues & lawyers,
Manifests heaven-sent rifles & destroyers.
Fifty ships they’ve saved from scrapping
Gain bases from old Britain
To chain a Carribean string
Of forces American,
If ever Fascist foes fling
Armies over ocean,
Their fleets would be destroy’d before the shore –
The fright’ning foresights of a future war.
As ship-by-ship that steaming team,
Up Solent soon appear,
These angels seem that safely stream
Thro’ docks of joyous cheer,
With sailors buzzing to survive to buy a pint of beer.
Southampton
July 12th
1940
Fallen Giants
No longer hosts encount’ring hosts
Shall crowds of slain deplore
They hang the trumpet in the hall
Michael Bruce
Guilty men of France thy names are legion
Whose third eleven kind of fellows deal
Conspiratorial – race & region,
Pride imprison’d in a supra-bastille;
Things could have gone
The other way for sure,
When De Gaulle will’d “fight on!” but Petain’s will de jure.
The Lion – Scotland, England, Wales -?
Hitler’s Boa Constrictor?
The choice was made, what tipp’d the scales
Was the age-old vendetta;
Quebec & Crecy’s tragic tayles,
Agincourt, Trafalgar –
What can we do when reason’s in a cloud
Of bitterness, but pander to a crowd,
Disunity, inertia, sent
To the slippiest slope
The reticent, the hesitant,
Who sens’d the only hope
For national redemption was be slaves then break the rope.
France
July 14th
1940
Vital Days
I dare not look into his eyes anymore,
His eyes are blazing with the five poisons
And it can easily control and capture souls
Tsering Woeser
Swastikas hanging from the Brandenburg,
Hitler skulks back to the Reichschancell’ry,
Aft Belgium, Holland, France & Luxemburg,
One more army, determin’d utterly;
A giant map
Frames the situation,
One dew-bejewel’d gap protects that damn’d nation.
“A fleet of mine layers shall build
A bristling ballustradus,
The legions then may land unkill’d
From Ramsgate to Lyme Regis,
Soon British fields for Berlin till’d,
But first remember this,
That only one pre-requisite is there,
We must control the all-important air.”
From the glades of well-won battle
Twelve Knights made Field-Marshal,
Full-favour’d sons gifted batons –
Goering’s lust not yet full,
His baton must be kingsize… with ivory enamel.
Berlin
July 19th
1940
Dunkirk Spirit
This name shall be the symbol for the soul,
A new Promethean triumph in defeat,
And find its place in the historic scroll
EJ Pratt
Nothing to come seems unrealistic,
Morale stabs an amorphous entity,
Horsham deem’d ‘smug,’ Oxford ‘optimistic,’
Godalming ‘defeatist,’ Ipswich ‘happy;’
The battle-front
Drifts into British streets,
Prepar’d to bear the brunt of all that Berlin metes.
This is no day to save the stags,
Conscientious objector
Branded, “a rat-thing wrapp’d in rags,”
Then worse, “a bloody traitor,”
Sniff housewives sat beneath the flags,
Waiting for Herr Hitler,
Sipping weak tea, suggesting, “Bloody Huns
Are parachuting in disguis’d as nuns!”
A motivating spirit charm
Envelops Britain’s mood,
From storm comes calm, when safe from harm
World Peace shall be renew’d,
‘Til then they’d have to buckle down like neighbours in a feud.
Great Britain
July 24th
1940
Factory Floor
Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory
Elizabeth Bishop
Charlie took Patrick up Healeywood pen,
To do their bit & dig for victory,
Water’d the veg & fed each clucking hen,
“Looks like we’re ‘avin’ scambled eggs fer tea!”
The town below
Grim-chok’d in chimney haze,
“It’s busy lad, y’know, just like in th’olden days.”
Rose skivvies in the weaving sheds
On shirts fit for a soldier,
On blankets for the pilots’ beds,
On soft hats for the sailor,
On berets for the captain’s heads,
A crude kind of tailor
Hard-toiling, as the lasses goes to work,
To turn around big losses down Dunkerque.
The ‘home-go’ blows, she rush’d outside,
In charcoal black-out night,
The street-lamps died, her only guide
A dicky-shine-a-light,
Lit haggard flags until her ragged door warm’d into sight.
Burnley
July 28th
1940
Censorship
All beautiful things draw near & come to me.
I dream upon a woman’s glorious breasts,
And watch the dew-drop & am glad with the birds
Sri Aurobindo
“Brother, come out & play, before you leave
For battle!” prattling Xaver collars Khan;
Of course he went, “What glory we’ll achieve,”
Sports Khan as whizz’d they up the autobahn,
Reaching great port
Beside the Western Pond,
Where sailors records brought from Britain & beyond.
With jackets flash & poise perfect
Felt they very fine indeed,
What music moved thro’ these select
Young socialites… a stampede
Of jackboots… “Our youth must reject
This filth – heroic deed –
At the front this Nigger-Jew jazz transcends –
When leave you Moringen go tell your friends.”
Khan Stemmler kept his cool, his calm,
Claiming them just passing,
Well did he charm, when safe from harm,
Happiness amassing,
They ran, giggling ‘neath streetlights, in friendship unsurpassing.
Hamburg
July 31st
1940
(AA) Canto 22: Battle of Britain
**************************************
In order to win the war Hitler must destroy Great Britain. He may carry havoc into the Balkan States; he may tear great provinces out of Russia; he may march to the Caspian; he may march to the gates of India. All this will avail him nothing., It may spread his curse more widely throughout Europe & Asia, but it will not avert his doom
Winston Churchill
Home Guard
We got a tank-trap too, y’know,
though I cain’t tell ‘e where t’ go
T’zee arr zecret, long an’ wooden
Beau Parke
The Battle for France is truly over,
The Battle of Britain has now begun,
The Royal Air Force versus Luftwaffe,
Her nine hundred outnumber’d three to one;
Vague Sky-lines drawn,
Cautious, star-cross’d fencers,
A first few flights are flown, nose-probing weaknesses.
Sarge hands out two rounds for practice,
“That’s all the top brass could spare;
Lads, aim yer rifles straight at this
Scrawny scarecrow with straw hair…”
As man-to-man his misfits miss,
“Ya bleedin shower, there
Won’t be a second chance wi’ them Germans!”
This time that scarecrow cut into ribbons.
As Sarge shouts, “March!” off they all sail
Into the nearest pub,
Pints of real ale, a Great War tayle,
Plus Mrs Braithwaite’s grub,
Not looking like Britain’s front line, more like a rambling club.
Scarborough
August 1st
1940
Alderangriffe
The mountain trembles to the echoing sound
Of falling rocks, that from her sides rebound.
Each day all respite, all repose denied
Nizami Ganjavi
Black Bentley slinks thro’ Royal Tunbridge Wells,
Crunching begravell’d roads to Calverly,
At Four A.M, punctual as hotels,
Into dark morning’s ill-lit mystery
Out steps Dowding,
Man at the Air Force helm,
Appointment by the King, ‘Defender of the Realm.’
‘Sir,’ was chauffer’d to the centre
Of his Operations room,
“Morning girls, what news the weather?”
“Clear from Deal to Ilfracoombe!”
Cathode BLIPS were growing louder
Bulbs scarletting the gloom,
Models traverse imaginary air,
The stick-work of a master croupier.
“…forty… sixty… eighty… & more
Bandits fast approaching
The Southern shore…” with clammy claw
Pluck’d thistle struck Dowding,
“Send five squadrons to intercept,” his ties unloosening.
Biggin Hill
August 13th
1940
Royal Air Force
I had one faithful comrade
‘Ere we heard the trumpet’s call,
And we pledged our hearts forever
Johann Ludwig Uhland
Crackling speakers announce men to their fate,
The summonstir to scramble & to fly!
“Queen to Bishop seven… that’s check & mate!”
Squeals Ginger up to Squadron-Leader Bligh,
From “Tally ho!”
To cruising thro’ blue skies,
With bold “Bandits below!” they swoop to scoop a prize.
“…in the field of human conflict
Have so many owed so much
To so few!” O how hearts were prick’d
By Churchill’s Tyrtaean touch,
“You know, Nigel, we shan’t be lick’d!”
Both of their spirits such
They crave the day, & that day’s victory,
As if they wait for Spain off Tilbury.
Bligh conducts a daisy-cutter,
Keen to renew the fray,
No time to dine, a swift woodbine,
“A wizard show today!”
The ground crew shout, “She’s ready Nige!” to cockpit, “Chocks away!”
RAF Kenley
August 15th
1940
Spycraft
Mighty the Son who caused our wound –
Him our pursuit can never reach
even were we to raise a host
Mor MacFayden
Beneath the radar screen lone dornier
Ploughs thro’ clouds… from it, leaping overboard,
Danish agents of the Nazi Abwehr
Drift across starlight… on yanking rip-cord;
“What beautiful,”
They thought, “English contree,”
They land… an ankle’s break… “Go, go on without me!”
Hans Schmidt, National Socialist,
Alfred’s fabl’d vales,
Taking photos like a tourist,
Til a shady guy from Wales
Subfluvials a secret list
Of safehouses… avails
Him to… “remain cautious.. avoid the ports,“
Firm handshake & a wad of five pound notes.
By spire & streets, & all around
SNAP-SNAP went camera,
When gone to ground the secret sound
Of his small transmitter,
Hamburg informs of troop manoeuvres thro’ the area.
Salisbury
August 20th
1940
Bombing the Reich
From among us we have sent out
Into the enervating dusk
One little whining beast
Mina Loy
They watch’d the wonder of the Milky Way,
Where Phaeton’s crashing chariot did scorch,
A splash of stars awash with Hera’s spray,
Like glitter in the trail of Luna’s torch;
As mondenschein
Silvers the cloudy seas,
Wings steel’d & aquiline float on propeller breeze.
Chic Xaver basks in revelrie,
Infesting the late night bars,
Vesta’s disturb’d tranquility
As whine-sirens sound for Mars,
Flak throws up flash’d hostility
Where searchlights sweep the stars…
“O what disgraceful form of War to wage!”
Shout sleep-robb’d storm’d round shelters in a rage.
She crawls outside to count the cost,
Picks up the sky-pamphlet,
“The War is lost while you are boss’d
By Hitler’s cabinet…”
“Now they have started something!” “Der Fuhrer shall finish it!”
Berlin
August 28th
1940
The Blitz
In fight for life found class distinction fades,
dying never showed a discriminating face:
serge or barathea alike to Hun or death
Peter Fahy
The scales are tilting from Fighter Command,
Empty steel seats at meal-times ev’ry day,
How terrible the strain upon that band,
When here they come again, the cross & grey!
Twelve hundred planes
In eight-square miles of sky,
Bringing the burning rains to churn the old Thames dry.
At an expos’d heart of Empire
Has the world curtail’d all sense?
Sirens squeal & children cry a
Lament for lost innocence,
Mason’ry crumbles into fire
As Andersson’s defence
Lies mangl’d in a corrugated heap,
Beside which crumpl’d infants charr’d asleep.
The half-lights shine beneath the ground
On tunnels & platforms,
Tho’ songs abound sleep passes round
These snoozy, fidget dorms
Of whiskey, fags, soft sneaky shags & hopes for lonely homes.
Kings Cross
September 3rd
1940
Flirting & Danger
Is it the leaving of life,
Knight, or the yearning to die,
Darkens that notable brow?
Ricarda Huch
Yes, give them trivial frivolities,
Transient pleasuring, inbetween flights,
If by day they dare death, send them jolities
Scented treasures of Arabian nights;
From mortal drunk
Unto utter terror,
Young flyboys practice punk, ’til a fatal error.
As Nelson held the windward line
& Collingwood the lee,
To them, most votive & divine,
More than gasoline, was tea,
& sex, of course, when arches spine
In writhing ecstasy,
Such as the time young siren, Anna Tweed,
Lay fertiliz’d by Nigel’s siring seed.
They waited for them at the base,
Whenever planes did drop
Right out of space, her anxious face
Full fretful ’til the flop,
When she espied her sweetheart’s plane who’d this day dodg’d the chop.
RAF Kenley
September 8th
1940
Inferno
starlings flying in formation,
sudden sharp turns, steep ascents,
swarm on delightful swarm
Jesper Svenbro
Paladin Goering hurls his armada,
English airmen currying twards demise,
Another Phlegra, another Zama,
Unfurling upon frail, blue meadow skies;
“Now is the time!”
Ring-fingers fist a THWACK!
From Cherbourg to Trondheim the Luftflotten attack.
Nigh on ev’ry plane was scrambl’d
As the bloody crux was fed,
What battle royale entangl’d
Thro’ the smoky swirl-skies spread,
When the fate of Britain dangl’d
On such a slender thread?
Unless such loss of pilots sooner staunch’d,
Tomorrow would see the invasion launch’d.
Christ-blood streams from a crucifix,
Rains onto streets aflame,
Firedrake antics like sixty-six,
But this time Lady Dame
Shone brilliant defiance as wave after wan wave came.
London
September 15th
1940
Bligh’s Capture
It’s been a terrible trip;
you should be happy you have survived it
Statistics prove that not many do
Naomi Lazard
There is a heat at the heart of battle
Which only the heroical may bare,
Molder’s aim unlooses brutish rattle,
Sends Ginger smithereening into air;
Life-scything cry
Peals from that pilot’s end,
Poor Squadron-Leader Bligh has lost his perfect friend;
So fell upon the Major’s tail
The bleak, red mist descending,
Lets off such lethal eight-gun hail,
It seem’d t’were never-ending,
Such rages yet condemned to fail
Via skilful wending…
For in pursuit of vengeance being blind
His shores of native safety left behind.
Some sharp-eyed coastal battery
Hath clipp’d the wings off Bligh,
His chute free, proclivity
Drifts slowly thro’ the sky,
At muzzles in a field emits a bitter-season’d sigh.
France
September 19th
1940
Mumble Words 