(AA) Canto 21: Evolutions
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
Mumble Words 