(AA) Canto 42: Revolutionaries
Exhausted Peace
Blissfully lying
Under the falling blossoms
A skeleton
Enomoto Seifu
The spring blooms of a generation gone,
Some daisy-beds, some lucky to grow old,
How many names bore ‘La Guerre de Sept Ans,’
How many famous stories to be told?
As lovers rest,
Ladies tire of legend,
Economies depress’d, folk will the wars to end.
Deft as gliding ballerina
Sweden sidesteps the conflict
With this new Russian Tsarina,
When war too hard to predict –
Aye, Tom Thumb & Thumbelina
In thumb war cramp have click’d –
Even Great Britain from the fight dost flit,
Whose new Clown King closes the age of Pitt.
Loquacious diplomatic spree
Warms up the winter hours,
An unfriendly hostility
Presses down the powers,
Scratching their caps oer global maps as monkeys inspect flowers.
Paris
1763
American Revolution
Haste, therefore, each degree,
To welcome destiny.
Heaven is our heritage
Thomas Nashe
Liberty is the watchword of the wise,
Breeding-ground of modernist progression,
But skeleton keys fall not from the skies,
Freedom’s rarely won without aggression;
Paul Revere peers
Thro’ hazy salmon sun,
The enemy appears, rebellion begun.
“… are coming, the British are coming!”
As militiamen bare arms,
They run t’wards rhythmical drumming
Thro’ the thickets & the farms,
Soon the Redcoats boasts sent shtumming
& when the battle calms,
The township of Concord all smoke & flame –
Old world, new world, its all the bloody same.
As Fort Ticonderoga falls
& Bunker Hill was fought
The fight appalls, hot musketballs
Break bones & pierce the throat,
While ‘Continental Congressmen’ call Europe for support.
Philadelphia
1775
The Last Jacobite
I ask the just Creator
so much refuge from Time
that a tale of mine may remain in the world
Ferdowsi
Alexander commands a private clan,
His wife & three gorgeous daughters-in-law,
Each one a mother to a strapping man,
Gone with granpaw to patriotic war;
“Let none survive,”
The old man hiss’d his hate,
“Ah maybe eighty-five but ah can still shoot straight.”
Washington launch’d verbal attacks,
“Men of our wond’rous nation,
Should we suffer a tyrant’s tax
Without representation,
Fight for your flag, both whites & blacks,
Suffer depravation,
For in the end it is our destiny
To carve a contree fit for liberty.”
Each night ‘Mac’ told the famous tayle
Of Bonnie Prince Charlie,
‘Twas never stale, did never fail
To rouse excitedly
His sons of sons, now men them all, sat proudly by his knee.
West Virginia
1778
Independence
Behold the sun, which seemed but now
Enthroned overhead
Beginneth to decline below
Panini
As Essex battl’d Tyrone’s Ulstery,
When chivalry was bogg’d down in the peat,
Cornwallis seeks American mercy,
Yorktown’s surrender rendering defeat;
Britain’s Empire,
Pitt’s darling, lies quite wreck’d,
Gunn’d down in hatred-fire, time swung to retrospect.
News is whisper’d to MacDonald,
Half-flickers of emotion,
Tho’ body limp, A mind grown old
Still swam across an ocean,
Saw Glencoe’s massacre unfold,
As he, in slow-motion,
Drops chin to chest as poppies plush with rain
Decline their heads & drooping kiss the plain.
George Washington, first president,
E Pluribus unum,
His government shall re-invent
The Grecian theorum,
Sentry of Human liberty from now ‘til kingdom come.
The United States of America
1783
Convicts
What waefu’ news is this I hear,
Frae greeting I can scarce forebear
Folk tells me, ye’re gawn aff this year
Rabbie Burns
As old soldiers earn a thievish living,
One sails home to Blaneau Ffestiniog,
Into a fate cold & unforgiving,
Arrested for robbing bottles of grog;
Transportation
An endless, restless sea,
Empire’s new direction – the penal colony.
Thro’ the sea-whiff in his nostrils,
Roughest perfume pierces heart,
A buxom lass from Buxton’s hills,
Who’d stole from an apple cart,
Sea-nights the grunt of passion fills
& then new life did start –
As when Mount Ararat received the Ark,
Pam full & pregnant as they disembark,
They trekk’d up from Botany Bay,
To a better harbor,
Upon the way, young Maggie Grey
Born from hardest labor,
Then forc’d were all to procreate Australia’s arbour.
Sydney
1789
French Revolution
See, at her voice a new creation springs,
Exulting Fancy claps her eagle wings;
Swift on the clouds, by sportive zephyrs drawn
JD Worgan
Our spirit touch’d by memories of man
& how lone man by men a legend made,
As restless time moves thro’ her milky span,
His nerve shall never from our vigour fade;
Napoleon!
Fame risen to the stars!
When all Europa won, when Eagles march’d with Mars!
As other young men of his age
Upheld the Revolution,
Aristocratics assuage
Their swift, sharp, cruel solution –
He took a step onto the stage,
Some stocky Corsican
Watching the rues run red with royal blood,
The fate of France by none more understood.
Below the Bastille soft flutes play’d
Amid the broken spears,
Thro’ death’s parade the widow made
A well from all their tears,
When born from such beginnings Liberty must bleed for years.
Paris
1789
Republican Dawn
The mouldy structure of injustice crumbles down,
Crushing underneath its weight envy, enmity & hate,
The soulless canons of the cross & crown
Hristo Smirnenski
A vacuum forms where lived the lion’s pride,
Long line of Louis, lords of France & Spain,
Prostrate beneath the coming regicide,
Begs Bourbon cousins, “Pray restore our reign;”
Thus Austrians,
French liberty to foil,
March beside the Prussians, plowing thro’ Gallic soil.
One hundred thousand souls conjoin,
Gather’d neath Valmy’s steeple,
The Cock’relle cause the only coin,
This Army of the People
Draws steely barb from belted loin,
Storms up a hard, steep hill;
The spoils of victory soon theirs to wield,
The Berlin phalanx driven from the field.
The King is forced to meet his fate
With Marie Antoinette,
Minos awaits them at the gate
To answer for their debt
Gallants dying for luxury, the guillotine is set…
Paris
1793
March of Napoleon
Autumn night so cooly comes.
Lights up with stars
Above the broken bones of men
George Trakl
Promotion upon noble promotion
Napoleonic fame paints peaks & skies,
Opinion, from doubt to devotion,
Purported in the populace’s eyes;
When Heaven sent
Then Fate must surely steer,
From lowly Lieutenant to Gen’ral Brigadeer.
The Revolutionary call
Transforms to one of conquest,
Hapsburg Flanders & Holland fall
With all of the Rhine Bank West,
Now striking thro’ Cisalpine Gaul
French face vital contest
At the battle of Tagliamento –
Where genius, unbridled, runs the show.
As Austria’s retreats increase
Vienna shrinks in fear,
To sue for peace, the muskets cease,
His Aide-de-Camps appear,
To herald their great champion, by victory soar’d clear.
Leoben
1797
Copenhagen
The medal is awarded
when nothing more happens,
when the artillery falls silent
Ingeborg Bachmann
Ascending in a ring of rising stars,
The great Horatio steers his native bark,
From body mark’d by brutal battle scars,
His lone arm points out to stubborn Denmark;
As Northern League
Defends neutrality –
Parisian intrigue drives English fleets to sea.
Cleaving a path between the buoys,
Rare heart on a pinn’d sleeve worn,
The lads the Adm’ralty employs,
Oaks from a press-gang’d acorn,
Drape Danishmen in death & noise,
From wreck’d ships sailors shorn,
As Nelson’s magnanimous ministry
Rescues so many from a crimson sea.
From port-to-port the stories flow,
Legends soak’d in prowess!
French Consuls know their ancyent foe
Defies naval duress,
Says Bonaparte, “We must build fleets to beat the sea’s mistress.”
France
1801
Mumble Words 