(AA) Canto 12: Rubicon
A Game of Chess
In the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
Charles Bukowski
At the heart of Red Empire in the east,
Two pals play the ancyent game of statesmen,
Molotov persists with the Spanish priest,
Stalin moves his knight back to Queen’s Knight One;
Satiated
Of that Ivanic urge,
Content to shuffle wood, pleas’d with appeasing purge.
Molotov puzzl’d oer the board,
Puffing on a fat cigar
As Stalin’s icy silence thaw’d;
“If tomorrow brings a war,
Tho’ we prefer sickle to sword,
We must prepare to spar :
Tis not long now until Berlin’s advance –
I mistrust Britain but we must court France.
Mother Russia must be ready,
Re-arm our brave young sons,
Transfom each key tractor fact’ry,
Build airplanes, tanks & guns…”
Moves Molotov, “& if they march we’ll slay a million Huns.”
Moscow
January
1939
Conquest of Czechoslovakia
No more, O my spirit,
are we flawless,
we have seen evil undreamt
Hippolytus
The famous Ides of March, der Fuhrer acts,
Imperial intentioning reveal’d,
Tastebuds whetted for better Tscheschienne trachts
He summons Hascha to the battlefield;
“Your poor country
Stands friendless & alone,
You MUST sign this decree lest we attack at dawn!”
Von Ribbentrop shaking his pen,
& Goering, bluff for the pot,
Hound Hascha, puffing, round the den,
His temp’rament tired & hot,
Who figgles, faints, revives again
By Morrel’s morphine shot…
Thus half adream in the first flush of day
Soulcrushman signs his poor contree away.
Hitler climbs the Mala Strana,
O sea of swastikas!
Bohemia, Moravia,
His newest provinces,
Gladly kingleading Germany’s rejuvenescenses.
Prague
March
1939
Guernica
Everything is Buddha without exception
Here is that immaculate & final stage
Where thought is pure in its true nature
Saraha
For every day Franco festers in Spain
Picasso stays away , as Dante dwelt
Aside from Guelph & Ghibelline, when pain
Of exile on their souls doth whip & welt;
His art, meanwhile,
Across the seas did sail,
These times are put on trial, one side must soon prevail.
Upon wide canvas has congeal’d
Our human tearducts dripping,
Where chaos was by Somber seal’d
In composition gripping,
All to it’s banshee phantoms yield
Caught in postures tripping
Awkward, as that apocalyptic day
When Mount Vesuvo blew away Pompeii.
‘Mid museo of modern art
& zeitgeist-surfing taste,
Call’d to a part within the heart
Where empathy lies chaste,
For first times future’s truthful visceralities are fac’d.
New York
May
1939
War’s Reality
At times, God, for his own good will,
Gives hell, o’er men and nations, rule;
But Right, though crushed, I hold Right still
PJ Bailey
The scales are falling from Chamberlain’s eyes,
Deceitfulness & ridicule runs clear,
Childish to swallow Hitler’s streams of lies
His regime’s misbeseeming dreams deem near;
“Bright shines hindsight,
‘Tis inevitable,
That man was born to fight, that man yearns for battle.”
As he rose before the members
Certain sections boo’d & hiss’d,
“The world is turning serious,
For the German jingoist
Had thought he could deceive us!
But now we must resist,
For only a fool would think, come the hour,
Rise up, would we not, with all our power!”
Von Ribbentrop & Ciano stroll
Thro’ gardens blushing Spring,
Teutonic drawl, “The Poles shall fall
Beneath our battering!”
“You crave Danzig?” “No, we crave war!”… Ciano’s awakening.
Berlin
May
1939
Kulturzerstorica
I walk, I turn, sleep may I nocht
I vexit am with heavy thocht
This world all owre I cast about
William Dunbar
With Sudetenland comes all the Skoda
Factories, whose orders made to focus
On armour’d trucks, while over the border
In Poland, the energy is raucous;
Versailles’s biscuit
Has broken, crumbl’d small –
Warsaw wants to risk it, risk seizing Tschechien coal.
The sentiment of Herrenvolk,
Puffs up the Polish quota,
Of German-blooded biofolk
That, distensive, thro’ slaughter
& conquest civic, spirits broke;
Carriers of water
& hewers of wood, slave-slated, accords
The primal needs of German overlords.
Abandon’d by their ‘friends’ abroad,
Betray’d & left naked
Before the sword of Hitler’s horde,
A simple sentence said,
“Today ’tis us, tomorrow you, we live to count the dead!”
Czechoslovakia
June
1939
Zionism
I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly loved,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime
George Linley
Lord Balfour’s declaration always seem’d
The cell precancerous that suddenly
Into action sprouts, a home long dream’d,
For Israel; Mediterranean Sea
To Tigris bank,
Now, settl’d in the soil
Of Palestine, they thank Jehova Arabs toil
To drive them off by shot & shout
From the colonies & farms
So Chamberlain sends Monty out
To deal with these stern alarms,
A man whose proven, without doubt,
In mettle-tests of arms
His mental vigor, his capability,
For swift-spear tactics swoops to victory
Ensuring, soon, the uprising,
Put down in short order,
“A wondrous thing!” the gentiles sing
In New York, who board a
Boat for Jaffa like a Nordic, nautical marauder.
Palestine
July
1939
Defeatism
The man who pains his body & calls it penance
In the hope of continuing to satisfy desire
Does not perceive the evils of rebirth
Asvaghosha
As ignorami burlesquing as French
Are into pacifism whimpering
With poverty of vision, & the stench
Of parafascist dry-rot lingering;
The common man
Far from his schoolboy stance
Another set of cannon-fodder fool’d – no chance!
For ‘peace at any price’ Bonnet
Sews seeds of doubt about him
Convinc’d Monsieur Daladier
Gallic prospects fluter dim,
An ineffective counterstay
‘Gainst Germany, grown grim,
While festering, sequester’d in it’s sins
The last of England lingers in the inns.
Venetians, Romans, Persians, Turks,
One time & another
With wars & works & laws & smirks
Other countries smother
‘Til come the days when sons abus’d outgrow, outblow the mother.
France
August 22nd
1939
War’s Promise
And so, Good-bye, grim ‘Thirties. These your closing days
Have shown a new light, motionless & far
And clear as ice, to our sore riddled eyes
David Gascoyne
While Britain rode the slow boat to Russia,
Von Ribbentrop touch’d down in his Condor,
Playing perfectly the embassador,
Keeping The Boss out of Der Fuhrer’s war,
The Great Bear rose
Full ready to release,
From its ferocious claws, the keys to War & Peace.
“I reckon world needs sortin out!”
Says good ol’ Charlie Sumner,
Sipping a thick, black pint of stout,
Sat in ‘tat room o’ Mitre,
“Gerrys fer feyting, ‘ave no doubt,
It sez so in paper…”
We must finish off Nazis fer them Jews.”
“Aye!” sniff’d the barman, “& we’d best not lose!”
Pierre embraced his sweetheart’s glow,
Kissing her salty cheek,
“Alas, I go to Maginot,
Shed no tears Veronique,
Ah! Partir c’est mourir un peu…” she wept but would not speak.
Paris
August 24th
1939
Megalomania
The trumpet blows its shrill & final blast !
Prepared for war & battle here we stand
Soon Hitler’s banners wave uncheck’d at last
Horst Wessel
From Cairnhall’s mawkish church with lavish lurch,
Left Goering for his higher destiny,
The ones that lie beyond the days we search
For life’s true meaning – Reich Chancellery,
Goose-stepping quite
Mechanical, change guards –
Beyond, & thro’ the night, Der Fuehrer queues his cards.
“As ruthless hunted Genghis Khan
All enemies & their seed
With brutal truth & burning barn
Uprooting the Polish breed,
For settlement by autobahn
That throttles forth at speed
The permanence of Greater Germany,”
From firm assertions squirm his generalrie,
“& everywhere our soldiers fall
A temple there we’ll build!”
In vampyre thrall, into the hall
Those generals stall,’d & spill’d,
While DEATH among them glamour’d noting all whom to be kill’d.
Berlin
August 29th
1939
Mumble Words 