(AA): Canto 8: Resurgences
A Daring Stroke
Well done! You have conquered anger!
Well done! You have Vanquish’d pride
Well done! You have banished delusion
Uttaradhyana Sutra
Schact strode down the bustling Wilhelmstrasse,
Admires the grandiose Reichchancell’ry,
Usher’d to the office of his Fuhrer,
“Have you used your license to print money?
Across the land
We’ll re-arm clandenstine!
“This is what I want & this is what must be mine!”
With spirit assertive as steel,
He silences the Reichstag,
“I have the honour to reveal,
That under the party flag
Our soldiers march with strength & zeal
To slay the scallywag
Of our Rhineland’s criminal occupation, –
Confident of global approbation
Stream across the Rhine tonight
Goosestepping with such pride,”
& he was right, no appetite
For conflict clarified
His keen assessment of the Entente Cordiale’s divide.
Cologne
March 7th
1936
The New Rome
He sins and drinks and gambles
and in a backwards twist of luck
she suffers, fights, and prays
Adela Zamudio
Clutching crude spears & shields of Rhino hide,
Brave tassle-beards defend these lands once free,
Tho’ overhead planes glide cross countryside
Spitting caustic droplets without mercy;
As lethal mist
Poisons their thirsty land,
The will to still resist erodes to sinking sand.
As shadows of Mount Antoto
Drew long over Ababba,
A last, hot flash of bullets flow
From their fearless Emporer,
Chok’d on the hopeless word to go…
Then hail the conqueror,
When Mussolini’s legions, triumphant,
Banish the anguish of late Rome’s lament.
“My good people are suffering!”
Tears stain’d Selasso’s eye,
Altho’ the king stands soul-weeping,
The League hangs idly by…
Men melting into mountains underneath a bomber sky.
Abyssinia
March
1935
Transformations
As a clear crystal assumes
The colour of another object
So the jewel of the mind is coloured
Aryadeva
The mutilation of the soul begins
From burning books the past is falsified,
For those who sway the mind the spirit wins,
& those who smite their protest must have died;
Such whispers swell
About the foul regime
When in the torture cell no-one can hear you screanm
Goebells insists a wireless set
Like the cross hung in all homes
As when the Christian was yet
Untouch’d by the serpents tongue,
As propaganda cast its net
On minds of old & young,
Grasping at Hitler’s visionary bliss
All of life’s aspects lick’d by lizards kiss.
Society dissolves, reform
By swastikan twin snakes
That grip & swarm – the tannenbaum
Fair angel tip forsakes,
For this is Earth & alters things thro’ tectonic earthquakes!
Germany
April
1935
Hitler Youth
I have thrown way the veil,
I have taken refuge in the great guru
& snapped my fingers at the consequences
Mirabai
Max Stemmler roars along the autobahn,
Palingenetic tribute to contree,
Musing upon the Battle of the Marne,
So close to Paris, & to victory!
He parks the car,
Bear-hugs his eldest son,
“My boy if we must war, with you our battles won.”
Khan dined with peers clever & couth
As his malleable mind
Bombarded was with Nazi truth,
The majesty of their kind,
Carefree below the starry roof
Boys talk’d & laugh’d & dined,
Singing proud songs, so strong & beautiful,
Of Lebensraum & of love of battle!
They run, they swim, they fight, they share
The life of Herr Soldier,
As mountain air rang with fanfare,
They planted Swastika
On summits for the glorious Fatherland & Fuhrer.
Harz Mountains
1935
Fascist March
Crumbled I die
Tortured I die
In innocence
Albert Kalimbakatha
Sensing a most depress’d & restless Rome,
If Rome, of course, the whole of Italy,
Turning the focus from his forehead’s dome
T’wards paths of hypnagogical glory;
Enseismic shift
Rumbles athwart Mankind,
His anchor rais’d as drift the lamarckians, blind.
From Erit & Somalia
Marches facinorous creed,
Oer ancyent Abyssinia
Like some martial millipede,
All the churches rang in Pisa
To celebrate the deed,
Of conquerors, their brave & bouyant band,
Gone marching, all, into the promis’d land.
Men thee hail, Haile Selassie!
As Emperor, as King,
The grand Gabbi sends Italy
A message, as they sing,
“Repulse, resist, punish, persist, them from our farmsteads fling!”
Addis Abbaba
October
1935
Nazifizierung
They will soar on wings like eagles
They will run & not grow weary
They will walk & not be faint
Isaiah
The Battle of the Jobs Front has begun,
Infused the words, “work sacrifice” thro’ all,
While conscripts for rural conservation
Cry ‘blut & boden’ as their warring call;
Militariz’d,
The language of the state
Hath deftly appetis’d the Holy Knights innate.
As blue-ey’d girls in bows & rows
Learn vigour thro’ gymnastics,
& pirouette on tippy-ties
Or flex like stretch elastic,
Group leader peers along her nose,
Scribbling beside neat ticks
When itemizing all the better wombs
A visionary dynasty illumes.
The classroom fills, the leiter stands,
None dare there to tarry,
Question demands a show of hands,
Answers wee Hemirih,
“Miss, fifteen hundred kilogrammes can a bomber carry!”
Michelstadt
November
1935
An Evening with the SS
Tell, Muse, how such treasure came to be at
Wewelsburg & how Himmler kept his Knights
Loyal with blood rituals of genocide
Nicholas Hagger
Oer the Prussian fief of Westphalia
Uprose a gothic, speartipp’d citadel,
Home for an Order, its strange Grandmaster –
Himmler & his infamous Shutstaffel;
Unbridl’d lord,
Far from the chicken farm,
Sharp’ning the Fowler’s sword to conquer Lebensraum.
Young Gerhart Buscher – blonde, blue-eyed –
Deem’d widely the blood ideal,
To long day’s lessons hard applied
His cool, fanatical zeal,
On one fine night, heart thumping pride,
Sat haught at Heydrich’s meal;
An invitation follow’d the supper,
“Come show us your skills with the rapier!”
Baron Von Grolsch made the first play,
Set on him in a flash,
Blades race away, graceful ballet,
Til with an uncheck’d slash,
Stormblasting pain stings Buscher’s brain, cheek splits with spilly gash.
Wewelsberg
1936
Spitfire
The chief head honcho of Supermarine
Departs Southampton, feeling gay & strange,
Today might be the day to contravene
The growing threat of Germany in range;
Matt Summers met,
Dismissing threat of rain,
Who, rubbing hands, loose set that metal monoplane.
Thro’ poet-ravish’d heaven-light
Lone spitfire vrooms thro’ the air,
Upon first, vernal maidensflight
Whose pilot grew soon aware
To handle her was sheer delight,
All Hugh could do was stare –
Dowding, that is, who with Lord Swinton stood,
“Not bad at all!” “Yes, she looks very good…”
As when the South Welsh at Rorke’s Drift
With firmer fibre fill’d,
Mens’ spirits lift, mens’ spinebones stiff’d,
“At last we’re set to build
A plane to match the Germans’ best!” “Well Churchill will be thrill’d!”
Eastleigh
May
1936
Zeppelin
The Sumners took a walk down Accy Road,
From Rosegrove rail’d the train to Padiham,
Finding the lanes round Fence always restor’d
Health better than Pasteur’s bacterium;
Charlie & Rose,
Pat, Tommy, Maggie, Jack,
Huff’d on their tippy-toes up Pendle’s steep whaleback.
Nigh nine hours from Friedrickschafen
Over Trawden’s trees it flew
Like a dolphin up in Heaven
Gliding thro’ the velvet blue,
But, like to a silent coffin,
The shadow t’ward them drew
Of this strange, stunny airship of the skies
That slowly dissapear’d beyond the rise
Of ever-splendid Pendle Hill,
To startle Clitheroe;
Then render thrill or send a chill
Wherever next t’would go
Photographing tractor fields & factories below.
Lancashire
May
1936
Mumble Words 