(AA) Canto 3: Saunterings
Reparations
She has been abandoned
She has been betrayed
God has betrayed her
Mary Borden
The muck of money – filthy, spreadable –
Fair fertilizer of economy,
But where inflation spews incredible
Even the richest lose autonomy;
In direst straits,
Deutschland holdeth no cards,
Owing the Western States marks by the milliards.
Well… Washington leant London dough,
Paris, too, which paying needs,
When hoping, both, to fend the blow
Springething from Human greeds,
“Here’s what you owe!” the beaten foe
Are told, “forget your needs…”
Berlin, alas, unable to conduct
A single cent per dollar – purely fuck’d!
With swaggerstomp the French explode
All oer the Ruhr’s coalfield,
Send, load-by-load, back home, abroad
The Rhineland’s vital yield,
A vicious sleight of victory which VENGEANCE aches to wield.
Dortmund
January 11th
1923
Putsch
Who is this screamer in the street?!
With a frightened voice and broken heart
Who is this mad man?!
Ali Khalifa
Minacious voice yelling, “Now is the time!”
Bullies into the Beurgerbraukeller,
Bemedall’d Ludendorf lending his crime
A strange respect – that dangerous fella,
Unfash’nable,
Leaps up, shooting his gun,
“Countrymen the national revolution’s begun!”
While Roehm mans up the Ministry,
Hitler’s phrenzied followers
Steam enteric thro’ the city –
Trucks of singing stormtroopers-,
To ringing Rathaus chivalry,
Down Residenstrasse’s
Streets to the Odeonsplatz… in their way,
Long line of carbines straining for the fray.
“March with me men!” they step, a roar
Of angry bullets fly,
Hitting the floor, splatter’d in gore,
Bullets graze Goering’s thigh,
While Hitler scamper’d safely off, & left good friends to die.
Munich
1923
Bolshevik Baton
After your death
It was windy every day
Every day
Anne Carson
Death shadow’d the legend-life of Lenin,
That ceaseless leader-slayer of the Tsar,
Wheel’d thro’ wet woods, slowly, by Joe Stalin,
Spoon-feeding poison’s ruthless coup de grace;
The man is dead,
But now the God is born,
Drap’d in the Russian red like rosy-finger’d Dawn.
As bonfires warm the freezing square,
Queues trail down every side-street,
Breath funnelling the sunless air,
Patiently wait to meet
A corpse embalm’d – the empire’s heir
Sentinel, stamping feet,
Stood guard o’er the focus of devotion –
Before him coasted a bear-fur ocean…
…To whom he gestures for silence,
Voice stylish, loud & clear
The arrogance, the violence,
The flashy Cavalier-
“We shall make Mother Russia great!” for “Stalin!” thousands cheer.
Moscow
January
1924
Mein Kampf
Everybody must roar his defiance.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Millions of hearts with one mind
Tian Han
The world’s press finds the Blutenburgstrasse,
Beheld a new media sensation,
Some strange, enigmatic insurrector,
Shrieking, “I am the nation’s salvation!”
Thought’s purest prime
Hess summons to his room,
Dictating all the time his stately visions bloom.
“The Germans are the Master Race
& over the Earth shall lord,
We must secure our living space
Eastwards with a war-sharp sword,
Where Slavic chaff shall serve our grace
& Sanhedrim abhor’d
Be cut out like the cancer that they are…
Then build a global throne upon the scar!
…But first must come conflict’s dull pain;
The reckoning with France,
Then march to gain Russian champaigne,
Such fertile, vast expanse…”
A warbling lark left both entranced, watching the blossom dance.
Landsberg
June
1924
Busker’s Holiday
The more the autumn wind is wicked
And the moon desperate, —
The merrier we, vagrants, get
Georgiy Ivanov
The Putsch becomes a martyrs’ memory…
His wound well heal’d, tho’ each day morphine craves,
Herr Hitler’s plenipotentiary
To Venice travels, of the tender waves;
His wife beside,
In love to all appear,
As gently they did glide by tendant gondolier.
They took a train to meet, in Rome,
Il Duce’s iconoclast,
But heard, each hour, “he’s not at home,”
Such a dirge of days were pass’d
Round Roman tombs, St Peter’s dome,
‘Til realis’d, at last,
His mission, to acquire from Fascist friends,
Firm source of funds had fail’d… Herr Goering sends
A letter to Bavaria,
Which disappointment fills;
While, scarier, there’s barely a
Pfenning to pay the bills,
The Nazi squirearchy into obsoletion spills.
Prenestina
July
1924
Monty’s School
On the strength of one link in the cable
Dependeth the might of the chain;
Who knows when thou mayest be tested?
Captain Ronald Hopwood
As mortal mixtures of Earth’s many moulds
In substance vary – density & mass
& destiny, too, which Lachesis holds;
Those student soldiers, one afternoon class,
Sense something deep
Within their teacher’s soul,
Like greatness half asleep, behind time’s creeping wall.
“The soldiers art is pure details,
From the spotlessness of dress,
To knowing all his effort fails
If a moment of success
Unfollow’d up, triumph soon stales,
Inactions deem useless –
So, be incisive boys, whene’er you can,
& victory springs from the simplest plan!”
With common sense quite clarified,
His lads all loved to learn,
& bright applied each light their guide
Thro warfare’s fires did burn –
A luminary torch to whom with joy they yearn’d return.
Camberly
November
1924
Mussolini
more faithful man was never known,
and (from Valerius) we learn
that he was named the Great in Rome
Compiuta Donzella
As rivers gently drift along the glen,
Then gather speed & gallop down the falls,
New Ceasar, elevated by his men,
Has cross’d his Rubicon to take Rome’s walls;
Whose government
Made Fascist Mafia,
Whose Black-shirts implement a fresh brand of terror.
Ciano left the rush of Rome
To meet his lord & idol,
Strolling about his famous home
Beneath some crumbling castle,
Where playing in the sunswabb’d gloam,
A pretty, pig-tail’d girl,
“Signori, who is she?” “My eldest child.”
“Her name is?” “Edda, essentially wild!”
Il Duce donn’d his sleeping robe,
“My boy I must retire,”
Thick fingers probe the spinning globe,
Rest on his heart’s desire –
The little isle of Malta to attend his Black Empire.
Rocca Delle Caminale
1925
The Pilgrim
The altars burn,
And our voices soar
To God’s very throne
Anna Akhmatova
It was a day of thunder in the hills,
When Winifred beshook Herr Hitler’s hand!
Electric shock unblocks the pagan thrills,
He surely was the wonder of the land,
As Wagner was
When Nibelungen wrung
From primal minds because their spirit must be sung.
The orchestra did sooth & rage
To beautiful conduction,
Brunhild & Seigfreid gave the stage
A seminal production,
& then, when Wotan war did wage,
Valhalla’s destruction
Induc’d, in Hitler, total ecstasy,
That art for us, was for him prophecy.
She led him to the private tomb
Of the Wagner garden,
In moonlit gloom one could assume
Moods were tun’d by Hadyn,
As felt he brother demigod, Zeus, to this Poseidon.
Beyreuth
July 23rd
1925
Squadron-Leader Bligh
I’ll wait for daybreak
and we’ll figure out what to do
with all this sunshine
Harriet Anena
With skilful ease he piloted the plane,
Views zooming under albescent sky;
Thro’ patchwork carpet snakes the Bognor train,
‘Tween tenements of barley rusk & rye;
Swooping the Downs
Loops the stylish flyer,
Oercruising coastal towns, circling Chichester’s spire.
They heard his bi-plane’s buzzing speck,
Propellers eager spinning,
Wing him atop the field to check
If the Old Boys were winning;
He parks his steed, kisses Kate’s neck,
“Let me save the inning!”
“We need a six off the last ball to win!”
Giles Smythe-Tompkinson bowls a wicked spin;
With willow-flash the ball was sent
Beyond the bound’ry rims,
“Huzzahs!” are vent, into the tent
For sandwiches & pimms,
Says Nigel Bligh, “Back to the sky before the evening dims!”
Goodwood
1927
Mumble Words 