(AA) Canto 5: Crescent & Cross
Islamica
Even the flowers greet you as of old;
Then you may well divine in what degree
My heart has already welcome for my friend
Kokin Shu
In pagan Mecca was man-mountain born,
Thro’ meditations in the Hiran cave,
From Heaven’s will Qu’ranic verses shorn,
But shunn’d from town with condescending wave;
Still, Medina,
His righteousness perceiv’d,
”Those who pray to Allah by Paradise reciev’d.”
While Meccanese rode to rid
The deserts of this ‘prophet,’
Defensive actions made valid
By visions of Mahomet,
For bloody decade far outdid
All rivals threat-by-threat,
& with an empire flowing far & wide
Islam’s first Imam, cleans’d, at Khaibar died.
Those men who tasted the divine
Holler up a sandstorm,
Drive Byzantine from Palestine,
Damascus made a home,
Then from the holy city all the papists whip to Rome.
Jerusalem
638
Monjoie!
his patronage maintains every poet group:
in his palace drinking is no dream
for his great thronging generous troops
Niall Mor
Great Charlemagne has claim’d the Frankish throne,
The Seat of Christ is his to long sustain,
His blows prodigious yonder Rhine & Rhone,
Brings empire bustling to his sapphire train;
Firm by his side
Valiant Count Roland,
First lion of the pride, Durendal in his hand.
Great Charlemagne a palm’s breadth drew
His sword, Joyeux, for glory,
Nobles from Normandy, Poitou,
Maine, Gascony, Picardie,
Tourain, Flanders, Guyeme, Anjou,
& pretty Brittany,
Traverse the ancyent vales of Ronceveaux,
Spain’s delitescent leagues searing below.
Such a battle is upon us,
Twyx Christian & Moor,
When beauteous Spanish passes
Turn wretched scenes of war,
When fell’d knights, decomposing, food for slugs & nuzzling boar.
Pyrenees
778
Crusaders
This desert, to which you came
with two raised palms like an absurd hope,
no longer begets prophets
Amjad Nasser
From the Praetendarius of Llanfair,
To the old Thesaurarius of Lille,
It seems Pope Urban’s essence moves thro’ air,
Prospering thro’ keen priesthoods, steeling zeal;
Christ’s foremost knight
Tours Europe’s fidget thrones,
“Those Muslims we must fight!” rouses convictive tones.
Men march & capture Antioch,
Long siege of land & water,
Fights infidels, from rock-by-rock,
Apocalyptic slaughter
Depleting, daily, human stock –
War’s terminal quota;
Infernal, body-mangl’d battlefield,
Where hymns mingl’d as the moaning for mercy peel’d.
From miracle to miracle
The city stood no chance,
A gritty yell, the citadel
To libbards, fell, of France,
Lungs bellowing, “Avanti!” “Adelante!” & “Advance!”
Jerusalem
1099
Sa-Lah-Din
It is bitter
To walk among strangers
When the strangers are in one’s own land
Iain Crichton Smith
The Crescent League cries faith & sacred war;
Turban’d Berbers, pitch-black Afric captains,
Pristine Emirs, the shark-paced Almacor,
Sunburn’d Saracens, fervent Syrians;
Lord at the helm,
One man unites them all,
To raze Outremer’s realm & seize the Wailing Wall.
Damascus & Aleppo fall
To the dark Mujahaddin,
Crushing Christian armies small
At that slaughter at Hattin,
“Allah!” the cause, “Allah!” the call,
“Allah! & we shall win!”
At last, on Heaven’s city look’d he down,
Where man-on-man press’d forwards for renown.
The situation sacrosanct
Beneath a saffron sky,
The Templars thank’d their lord, outflank’d,
They set themselves to die,
Preserve their place in Paradise & Allah’s hordes defy .
Jerusalem
1187
Constantinople’s Fall
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’
Emma Lazarus
As panting deer outpace the panther’s claws,
Then sleep where wolves oft meet in company,
The Ottoman clamps down his drooling jaws
Upon outposted Christianity;
Eighty thousand
Gore-grizzl’d warriors,
Encamp upon the sand soft kissing Bosphorous.
As cannons swallow gunpowder,
To spit out destructive balls,
Devil clamour ripples louder
From the beaches ‘neath the walls,
Scenes of sorry death enshroud her,
Byzantium,who falls –
Janissaries slaying the last Ceasar,
Crescent flags commanding Kerkoporta.
Leaving the Sultan to his prize
The Genoese flee,
As local wise men realize
Passage to Italy,
They leave behind a changing name, shaming its history!
Istanbul
1453
Death of Chivalry
Her tears of bitterness are shed: when first
He had put on the livery of blood,
She wept him dead to her
Robert Southey
Beneath the Pyramids the Sultan stands,
Protecting ancestral lands Islamic
From Ottoman conquest, his line expands,
Across the sands, strange musket chambers click;
Fathomless force
That is the flow of time,
Electrifies his horseman on a charge sublime.
Bravebreast Aegyptians went to work,
Yanking drawstrings back on bows,
Deep lust for bloodshed bleeds bezerk
As fans one thousand arrows,
But images of future lurk
From the Turkish shadows,
Masters of black gunpowder blasting shots,
Withers the Mamluk line to trembling trots.
As Lion Kings must lose their pride
When old worlds meets the young,
Lead-ball-wall-wide of genocide,
Dead men from dead mounts flung,
As, knowing he would be the last, the last Sultan was hung.
Cairo
1517
Siege of Vienna
The bird in me awoke again
Its cry spread anguish
In the heart of my kingdom
Nimrod Bena Djangrang
Islamic spectres on Austria fell,
Vienna must, for Europe’s soul, stand firm,
Else Pasha & the Turkish infidel
Into the west & thro’ their wives shall worm;
Aiming the guns
At Allah’s grand empire,
More bonfires than are suns, the Kahlenburg’s on fire.
As constant as those perfect waves
That roll into Biaritz,
The Sipahi slip to their graves
In the death-deep city pits,
Tho’ conquest human honour craves,
At these extreme limits,
Facing superior technology,
The apex fled of Turkish history.
The royal horses are preserv’d,
Churches Hosanna sing,
Islam unnerv’d, Europe preserv’d,
Her internecine spring,
When bleeding for one’s empire breeds purpose in existing.
Vienna
1688
Gallipoli
They seek to bring us under
But England lives, & still will live –
For we’ll crush the despot under
Alfred Tennyson
Kitchener’s Churchillian conjecture
Battle brings before Constantinople,
Champagne thrill of Achaean adventure,
The Gentle, savage; the Savage, gentle;
“Where are you from?”
“Melbourne…” “Why are you here?”
Senses of soldiers numb, led captive to the rear.
The soul of Rupert Brooke releas’d,
Packs poetry for the trip,
Byronic sortie to the East
But mosquito punctures lip,
By volumes his visions increas’d,
Death climbs aboard the ship,
For what seem’d a tayle, epic & Trojan,
Now slowly sluiced with tragical poison.
From sandy cliffs to hills jagged
Sloping from Chunuk Blair,
Up ridge ragged, long trail hagger’d,
Thro’ hot, wilderness air,
Bluce Slater from Australia spat bullets ev’rywhere.
Turkey
August
1915
Ottoman Winter
Now stoops the sun, & dies day’s cheerful light.
When stars stread forth, intone this two-tongued folk,
Standing with firebrands, hymns of sacrifice
C.M. Doughty
Empires are born as glass is born of sand
Then turn to sand, scarlet sands Syrian
Are roam’d by one born of another land,
Laird of the head-dress’d horsemen of Hejan;
Fair Lawrence leads
King Feisal’s cavalry
Upon fine, strong-thigh’d steeds behind an enemy.
Thro’ olive grove & fields of grain
Wind the streets of Megiddo
Blows bloody fall as stormswept rain,
White the hot-edged sabres glow
As dim-spawn’d devils deal in pain
Angels honours bestow,
As thro the battleground of the furies
Tread the Fates with JUSTICE & her juries.
As was murder’d Montezuma
& Visigoths did ford,
Em’rald Tiber, from Syria
By Lionhearted sword
The Turks are toss’d accosted from possessions lost abroad.
Arabia
October 1st
1918
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