(AA) Canto 59: Imperial Scrambles
:
Downfall!
Having reached life’s hilly stages,
Hemmed about with sleet & snow,
On a drift the swain now seated
Magnus Stefansson
The poet’s task to glorify the page
With stories richer than the Golden Fleece;
Come stand upon the threshfold of an Age
Peace-loving doves flock chirping for release;
Yet men bewitch’d
By warfare yet to come,
When antique pibrochs pitch’d to thund’rous battledrum.
Napoleon feels life’s fierce strain
Steel chains round sad soul wreathing,
Him stood upon the Trojan plain
When demi-gods were breathing,
Hot blood pulsed thro’ his temple’s vein,
Angry, proud & seething –
If Ishtar brings us empire, she’ll bring fall,
Across each tyrant’s dreams Fate hauls her wall.
Held by mercy & his victor,
Like some Sinean King,
Thro’ Mombaza, Montezuma,
To Charlie’s highland fling –
Forced to flutter – an Emperor made putty schmetterling.
Saint Helena
1815
Risorgimento
But thy sounds were sweeter
Than the dome of Peter
Flings oer the Tiber
Father Prout
No longer the montage of petty states,
Spiritus uprisen thro Italy,
Austrians driven from the city gates
By the stoic will of Garibaldi;
Bravely fighting
Where e’er his thousand ride,
Beneath a native king the North now unified.
The Kingdom of Two Sicilies
Rejects unification,
Soon subject to hostilities,
With grim determination
Palermo lost her liberties
& Naples her station,
As with one fierce, jingoist show of force
He enter’d Rome upon a flame-red horse.
From Brindisi to Lake Como
A country re-appears,
The foreign flow of soldato
Lasted a thousand years,
Now cast forever to the past by dashing cavaliers.
Rome
1864
Japanese Renaissance
Like a long, long journey
on a flax-pale steed
is man’s life
Steinn Steinarr
They watch’d them steam into the Edo Bay,
Grey smoking dragons, whose guns numerous
Serv’d the querelous Shogunate’s dismay,
Saying, “This matter does not concern us!”
White faces made
Fair sail across the sea,
Bringing the global trade of Commodore Perry.
Sensing the world had pass’d them by
Japan opens up her quays,
World influxes revivify
Evolution by degrees,
Nippon’s old masters this defy
To be dragg’d to their knees,
As bold Mutsuhito replaces school
With palaces & his ‘Enlighten’d Rule.’
Directly from Yokohama
The nation’s first train flew,
What calibre of Emporer
Into the station drew,
Inspiring such devotion as the lilies drink the dew.
Tokyo
1872
Steadying the Ship
settled on
the temple bell
a sleeping butterfly
Buson
Conscious of a manifest destiny,
Tho’ barely yet a pawn of the great game,
The fledgling wings of eagle of Liberty
Spread oer the world, fanning the flames of fame;
Yet, southern states
Fat on their their slavish fee,
Form bands of vicious mates led by courageous Lee.
Theirs was a very bitter war
Where nobody was thinkin,’
But for the great conquistadour,
A Yankee call’d Abe Lincoln,
Who won slave freedom from the gore;
As his toasts were drinkin,’
Assassins took his life & left a ghoul
Singing the national anthem every school.
A continent is set to go,
Its vast resources spend,
As Alamo quell’d Mexico,
With Canada her friend,
America shall prove the key as did the Gods intend.
USA
1865
Otto Von Bismark
Each different spike you joined into a broom,
You had the same vision
As that of Bismarck
Dhani Ram Chatrik
The German nations reach a higher gear,
With industry manpowering supreme,
Enter Von Bismarck & his vision clear,
Mind xiphoid proffering empiric dream;
Thro’ noble veins
The Junker spirit flows,
Where lust for great campaigns & martial glory grows.
Joining forces with Vienna
Denmark driven from Sleswick,
But bickering with Austria
Leads to battle ballistic,
A trial of strength at Sadova
Shows Hapsburg has grown sick –
World-status lost with Berlin’s victory,
& even Venetia to Italy!
Proclaim the hero of the hour,
First of this epoch’s men,
With deep glower what keen power
Glows rushing thro his pen,
Signing the scroll of peace, pronounce bloodshed not if, but when?
Prague
1866
European Struggle
Wild as the tomb, wild as the mountainside
A storm of hours has shaken the fine spun world
Tearing away our palaces, our faces, & our days
Kathleen Raine
The nephew of the first Napoleon
Light-hearted bent on conflict, as it nears,
What enmity ruffles thro the Prussian,
Catalyst for a century of tears;
An excuse found,
Madrid’s invalid throne,
The buglers calls resound & brutal war is born.
Abandon’d by her enemies,
Once vast manpower dwindling,
France faced the conjoin’d Germanies
Like a bee without a sting,
United were her enemies
Beneath a single king;
Baden, Württemberg & Bavaria
Merge with the North & its Prussian kaiser.
What mighty military rolls
To Paris at a pace?
Grand fortress falls, “Surrender!” calls
The emperor’s red face,
Far from Jena a great power put firmly in her place.
Sedan
1870
Defeating France
After the tumult & the blood
Had died, had dried,
Silence unmade its history
Fyodor Tyutchev
“Vive la France!” gen’ral Gambetta’s cry,
New armies rais’d to save the capital,
On ev’ry side great hordes of grey-coats lie,
Willing moments when men would do battle;
Now Paris meets
Visions of Baudelair,
Shapes grotesque grip the streets, folk starving everywhere.
While waiting for the diplomats
They gorged on their resources,
Then, after eating all the cats,
Felt forced to eat the horses,
& when the city free of rats
In march’d Bismark’s forces,
Forcing humiliation on the French,
Thro Gallic hearts avengeant thoughts entrench.
The gate went up at Brandenburg
Praising Victoria,
Crowns from Hamburg to Nuremburg
Absorb’d by the Kaiser,
A mighty friendship forged to face an unforeseen future.
Berlin
1871
Victoria
The Leaning Tower.
The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.
I made a little watercolour of them all
Carol Ann Duffy
Most rugous, longevous, famous of forms,
Roll’d slowly midst her Golden Jubilee,
Upon all sides the doting empire swarms
Piloted by her growing family;
Sitting alone
Her banquet shall begin,
The whole world bares the throne of Britain’s sovereign.
Europa’s aging grandmother
Attends her garden party,
With crown heads of Romania,
Nippon, Siam, Hawaii,
Plus dashing princes of Persia;
Many-a-majesty
Pays homage to the splendour of their Queen –
Her three grandsons play polo on the green.
A British crown prince lames the horse
Of a future Kaiser,
His curses coarse, a show of force
From the prince of Russia –
Petty is the bickering continuing thro’ supper…
London
1889
War’s Progress
The old strifes are done, the fight is fought.
And with a clang and roll, the new creation
Bursts forth ‘mid tears and blood and tribulation
Sir Lewis Morris
With Gordon’s blood encrusted at Khartoum,
Bit-chomping Churchill blushing vernal haste –
Advancing to an oblivious doom
Brave Dervishes drift cross the desert waste;
Fifty thousand,
Led by bearded Emirs,
Cross tiger-lily sand, raising courageous cheers.
Hail Maxim, military king,
As the s’cockacoka glows,
Death’s mechanical chattering
Scatters Dervishes in rows,
Forms tangl’d heaps of suffering,
But few foe come to blows,
As tho’ they wore tartan at Culloden –
Dows’d in blood the desert sands grew sodden.
“Well, war has chang’d,” young Winston said,
Watching with Kitchener,
Sunset flows red, above the dead
Rose a haunting clamour,
“La llaha illa llah Muhammed Rasul Allah!”
Omdurman
1896
Mumble Words 