(AA) Canto 1: Broken Peace
Armistice
And view with retrospective eye
Th’Imperial States whose awful destiny
It was to fade, decay, & disappear
Count Frederick Von Erlach
The War is over, namore the killing,
Meek Franciscans move thro’ many nations,
HOPE mops blood-sodden brows, when, god willing,
All countries & creeds breed good relations;
Order’d to yield,
The Wehrmacht leave the trench,
Behind, a bitter field & the ecstatic French.
The Hohenzollern dynasty
Emulates the ancyent Czar,
Forfeits the Kaiser’s monarchy
To the fortunes lost in war,
The Junkers of old Germany
Gathering at Weimar,
Shall delegate a democratic air,
A treacherous republic to declare.
In some disused railway carriage
All honour sign’d away,
A fretful page, a flaming rage,
To burn some bitter day,
When rise once more shall Germany, when all the world shall pay.
Forest of Compeigne
November 11th
1918
Hitler Awakes!
Indeed the idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men’s Eye much wrong :
Have drown’d my honour in a shallow cup
Edward Fitzgerald
Far from the front rested little Hitler,
Bed-stricken with a bout of syphilis,
Into the ward bursts a babbling pastor,
“Friends, we are beaten, there’s an armistice!”
The war was lost,
As fury rakes the room,
Into a sea-storm toss’d souls suffering in gloom.
He struggl’d to his feet in pain,
Rush’d pass’d the shell-shock’d patients
Into an evening’s winter’s rain,
Cursing the western nations,
“Is all our sacrifice in vain?
All our bleak privations?”
How could this be, he’d sens’d it in his core,
Herr Hitler was a superman of war.
Slump’d by rain-swept roadside seated,
Sobbing for Germany,
His depletedly defeated,
Yet wunderbar contree,
He felt brave future’s grooming to assume his destiny.
Pasewalk
November
1918
Flight of Peace
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll !
Leave thy low-vaulted past !
OW Holmes
Where once was warring calm must reign supreme,
When analysts can encase all the data,
Oer Saharan hues, cerulean dream
Dovelets flew, ellipsing the Meseta;
Dog-rough cloud rolls
Inspiral from the Earth,
Lest we forget those souls who sacrificed their birth.
The tumult & the shouting dies,
The world three armies receives,
The first with murder in the eyes
When a wounded heart bereaves,
The next already on the rise
As good men become thieves,
Then pity the last! forced to bear the mark
Of battle… some crippl’d, some mad, some dark.
O slender bird, majestic mein,
Men watch ye as ye fly
Up over Spain & in thy train
Men made contented sigh,
Watching thee dance amid the burning tapers of the sky.
Europe
November
1918
English Salon
one more presentiment
where certainty is not hard to come by:
wing tips brush the face of the waters
Gottfried Benn
Men gather’d for Parisian soiree,
The leading lights of England, more or less,
Collected like a Bloomsbury bouquet
By Mary Borden, warden & hostess;
When, with war won,
Gone was the nervous strain,
Which flummox’d everyone like maggots in the brain.
Lloyd-George was there, his snow-white hair
Did flutter with the winces,
Winston would mutter with a stare
While one of nature’s princes
A garb of Arab robes did wear
“Moscow shan’t convince us,”
Splurts Churchill, “of their Bolshevik journey,
One might as well legalize sodomy!”
“Now of the Germans let us speak…”
“The Kaiser should be shot!”
“Let’s squeeze & tweak, ‘til pips do squeak
Their war debts ‘til we’ve got
Enough to pay off Washington & stave the Empire’s rot.”
Paris
January
1919
Soloheadbeg
Not in the clamour of the crowded street
Not in the shouts & plaudits of the throng
But in ourselves are triumph & defeat
Henry Longfellow
“Home rule is Rome rule”, the Six Counties say,
The rest of Ireland bounc’d back from the booths,
Sinn Fein land-sliding, biding ’til this day
Of souls exploding to their simple truths;
Ireland’s Ireland,
Let’s send the British home,
Still… Ulstermen won’t stand the slightest link with Rome.
As gelignite, by horse-drawn cart,
Trundles down a country lane,
Six rifles aim’d at head & heart,
Halts two soldiers in its train,
A moment’s madness made them dart
For cover, but were slain,
Whose deaths – before false warriors were blam’d –
The Irish Republican Army claim’d.
“Posters pasted like paper swords
Painting duty martyrs,
Promise rewards from London’s lords
& pardons meant to part us…”
“We’ve got ’em rattl’d lads, fuck their English Magna Cartas.”
Tipperary
Jan 21st
1919
Table Talk
Touch’d by this vastness
I ask the boundless earth;
Who after all will be your master
Mao Tse-Tung
Men gather’d for Parisian soiree,
The leading lights of England, more or less,
Collected like a Bloomsbury bouquet
By Mary Borden, warden & hostess;
Where, with war won,
Gone was the nervous strain
Which worried everyone like maggots in the brain.
Lloyd-George was there, his blizzard hair
Did flutter with the winces,
Winston mutter’d a lizard stare,
While one of nature’s princes
Wore robes the Arab wizards wear –
“Moscow shan’t convince us,”
Splurts Churchill, “of its Bolshevik journey,
One might as well legalize sodomy.”
“Now of the Germans let us speak…”
“The Kaiser should be shot!”
“Let’s squeeze & tweak until pips squeak
Her war debts, ’til we’ve got
Enough to pay off Washington & stave the Empire’s rot.”
Paris
February 1919
Homecoming
That, setting, the sun has only to highlight
Girls crowding the railway track, as the train slows,
For me to discover it is not my station
Boris Pasternak
At the Douamont fort, by sunset shades,
Lay veterans a wreath to heal Verdun,
Melancholic souls of fallen comrades
Escort one, living, back to Briancon;
Two hundred francs,
Two shirts, suit, shoes, no more;
With all a nation’s thanks for winning them the war.
Click-clack’d the slowly sloping train
Up thro’ the Alpine passes,
Attack’d by shawls of driving rain,
He wipes his misty glasses…
“At last! Mon coeur sees home again!”
Light & glossy lasses –
Like flutes, dribbling jubilant glucose –
Applauding nostoi of their handsome heroes.
He heads for home, he sheds a tear,
A gasp! “C’est Jean-Francois!”
Who, halting cheering, jolts back beer,
Drenching thirst in nectar,
“Deux francs,” “Deux francs! C’est ridicule pour une Stella Artois!”
France
March
1919
Spoils of War
No longer hosts encount’ring hosts
Shall crowds of slain deplore
They hang the trumpet in the hall
Michael Bruce
They came like Jackals to a wounded bear,
Reflected in the mirrors of the Hall
Men shone no souls – remorseless, unaware,
That what they will’d would build a gilded wall
Twyx world & peace,
This fog-drench’d vengeful clime,
When, who was there to police the intransigent crime
Of Germany’s reparations,
When memories of menace
Choke all cautious moderations –
Grunting hogs like top-tier tennis,
Carcass-tooth’d the delegations,
Concurring, say “When is
A conqueror unable to dictate
What crown or territory to mandate!”
On Berlin foists the guilt of war,
The peace branch but a twig,
That scratches sore, a corridor
Links Warsaw to Danzig –
The French entrenching with revanch, how deep the spurr’d heels dig.
Versailles
June 28th
1919
Returning Heroes
Goodbye my friend, without hand or word,
and don’t let sadness furrow your brow,
in this life dying is not a thing unheard
Sergei Yesenin
When Alister & Charles Glen Rosa reach,
Miraculously both twins had surviv’d
The war unscath’d, one day on Brodick beach
They took a picnic, felt they’d home arriv’d
Safe from the sights
Of body-bits in sacks
Of lives in sniper sights ‘tween suicide attacks.
What men the boys had all become,
Tensions ever simmering,
Jock wheel’d round Lamlash by his mum,
Jabber-gibbon gibbering,
& Douglas, ne’er without his rum,
Persistent pestering;
“I fought for you, & I lost my brother…
Those who’d stay’d at home bought him another.
Our twins stroll to their timeless glen,
Untouch’d by all the games
Of Gods & Men, Goat Fell was then
In green & orange flames
Lit by the sun, they sat scene-stunn’d, whispering dead friends’ names.
Arran
July
1919
Mumble Words 