(AA) Canto 9: Olympiad
Olympia Transported
There’s a silver lining to the dark clouds shining
So turn your dark clouds inside out
Till the girls come home
Comfort Borden
The world shall flourish with immortal youth,
Pre-eminence & all the large effects
Of surging majesty – but, cursing truth,
From where the Nazi demonpulse projects,
Such masquerade,
Berlin’s been beautified
Crude slogans undisplay’d while anti-semites hide!
This capital, in spotless dress,
A living poem felt like,
All to impress the foreign press
Of the virtues of the Reich,
Ekecheirians of Elis
Warmongers set on strike,
Envelop’d by Olympic bubble-groove,
Only a lunatic might trouble prove.
As sporting globals come in floods
The thoughtful won’t relax,
“Why, thro’ the woods, do brotherhoods,
With uniforms & packs
Go crawling, clutching rifles like some college of attacks?”
Berlin
July 26th
1936
Hidden Rooms
Look out inhabitants of earth,
Beware ! from the words of the Great Ones
Comes a landslide of lies, they babble
Antonio Porta
What a voyage! From Brooklyn to Berlin
Goes Goldburg, baseball player, but a Jew!
One of the few the Nazis had let in,
A show of beneficence, ’til renew
Those maggots vile
Chweing the human thought,
When reason steer’d servile by bigotry contort.
The Athletes’ Village was a dream
Of Germany back-dated,
When every member, every team
For every detail cater’d,
Now Goldburg, with a head of steam
Cautiously awaited
The diners to disperse, then slid aside
The chair that block’d the door that open’d wide…
Down-slipping steps, oer-scrambling planks,
Gloom-sunk eyes adjusted
To gaze on ranks of Panzer tanks –
Goldburg froze, disgusted –
“Raus! Raus!” the shout, “Get out! Get out!” some flusterfart inbluster’d.
Elstal in Wustermark
July 28th
1936
Spectacularists
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons,
And the war-cry was forgotten
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Plebianness companionage transcends,
The follies of the Nazi dandizette,
Where amorous as nightingales descends
Europa’s courtiers; from crystal set
Wine of the Rhine,
While from the glassy roof
Watching th’ensemble dine, Goering reclines aloof.
From livery of footmen pink,
To Berlin’s sold-out orchids,
From luscious cushions coated mink,
To silver, ivory lids
Of sumptuous dishes, enough drink
To drown the pyramids –
On brandy, vodka, rum, gin & whiskey
Randy prince & plisky princess frisky.
Tune-humming Goering took the stair,
Into the scrum did drop
So debonair – in deep despair
Goebbels & Ribbentrop
Outclass’d, outstyl’d & outpanach’d, evanish’d in a strop.
Berlin Opera House
July 29th
1936
Opening Ceremony
O Lord, our father,
Our young patriots, idols of our hearts,
Go forth to battle – be Thou near them!
Mark Twain
As dowries add delight to darling brides,
Effacious statecraft showcases regimes –
A stadium with steep & earthsunk sides
Awaits progressions of Olympic teams;
As when brute slaves
Died for the populi,
Ten times ten thousand waves laud Hitler driving by.
His was the prayer, his the place,
As when Pindar’s epodes sung
For victors of the running race,
Like Orsippus lithe & young,
With Richard Strauss waving with grace
His flowing baton flung,
Roaring Deutschland Uber Alles, his band
A thousand strong, & putty in his hand.
The eleventh Olympiad
Commences, as the world
Has never had, such myriad
Of banners spread unfurl’d,
Aside monstrous pomposity, precocity unchurl’d.
Olympiastadion
August 1st
1936
Track & Field
I am no common woman.
My brave men shine in story:
they earned what cannot fade
Lórentsos Mavílis
As nations touch upon summits of stone,
From clashing heads do heavens sparks elope
To realms of dreams where bells of temples tone
One hundred thousand faces fresh with soap
Follow the curves
Of Fleischer’s javelin…
Twas all the girl deserves, a German set to win!
Da Vinci’s dazzling designs,
To Homers lyric marbles,
When beholden to humankinds’
Propensity for marvels,
Applaud, on plinths, our gods, our times,
As when farmer’s star bulls
Swart planets in the universe of breeds,
Let’s verify great titles with great deeds!
She rose to heed her Fuhrer’s call,
Upon her breast the gold
Did rise & fall – for him, for all
His people, young & old;
For Germany, whose victories shall prosper manifold.
Olympiastadion
August 2nd
1936
Jesse Owens
I know that I might pull the tendon bands
That hold my soul together—ay, might bend
Each nerve and muscle spirit fain would keep
Fenton Johnson
The rest were reading, writing or abed
But one young man, under a cold, white moon,
Spurr’d on by destiny, outside instead,
Perfecting paces, body parts in tune
With nature’s chime
Like shamen with a drum,
For athletes in their prime know when their time has come.
Asleep… awake! A busy day,
News crews clamour all-a-fuss
“Has Germany treat Blacks OK?”
“Well, they’ve sure been nice to us!
Who’ve never here been made to stay
Silent at backs of bus!”
All further questioning he refuses,
After all, one must seduce one’s muses.
His muscles felt like mohair strings
Upon a Phyrric bow,
His heartbeat springs, his feet sprout wings,
The others seem’d so slow –
When Jesse Owens won four golds he was the first to know
Elstal in Wustermark
August 2nd
1936
Supremacists
Peace on this planet
Or guns glowing hot,
We lay there together
Jericho Brown
The cavalcade of old Olympia
Settles its sacred flame upon Berlin,
Oer Hindenburg trails an Orphic banner,
Below, even allow’d are Juden in;
Majestic roar,
O scale Wagnerian!
Of modern man at war in his coliseum.
As Jesse Owen took the track
All eyes focus upon him,
Racism hating skinsheen black
Quadruples his vigour’s vim,
A leaping cheetah from the CRACK,
The stadium grew dim;
A whirl of pounding thighs & bursting lung…
How soon, how proud, ‘Star Spangl’d Banner‘ sung.
Quite disgusted grows Der Fuhrer,
The White Supremacist –
Some dog-runner, some dumb nigger,
Wins medals white men miss’d –
Glanc’d at his wrist, hiss’d “I must leave…” blood glist’ning ‘neath clench’d fist.
Olympiastadion
August 4th
1936
Rassenfurschung
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise
Maya Angelou
With twenty-six & five sixteenth inches,
Jesse Owens triumphs in the Long Jump,
Half-stadium dash easily clinches,
Again Hitler off-hurries with a hump;
Force not yet spent,
The relay team joins he,
Like finches confluent they’ll swoop to victory!
To see such splendid, Spartan star,
Competing to perfection,
Spread theoretic doors ajar,
Forc’d racist circumspection,
To analyze just what they are,
Raising right objections,
Is it fair descendants of jungle apes
Should be the first to burst the sprinters’ tape.
Lither, stronger, faster, fitter…
Despite the public mood,
Bile & bitter, cast the spitter,
“Such negroids will exclude
From Tokyo’s Olympiad with all that turpitude.
Reich Chancellery
August 16th
1936
Hidden Truths
Stygian waters sometimes riot
And Fafnir spills out his blood
You escape from the spray of the horrible paint
Bartolo Cattafi
About the smoke of the Olympic torch,
The ghosts of ancient victors spool & swirl,
A child of Nippon smiles behind the scorch,
Her nation next into the games shall hurl
Munificience,
Arenas shall be built
To serve, four summer’s hence, swerves of the lances’ tilt,
& other sporting metaphors
From Anchorage to Alice –
But back to Berlin’s shops & stores
Returns the modern malice,
“Juden Verboten!” Nurnberg’s laws
Vambrac’d, clutch the chalice
Which poison pours, enriching whores & spies,
For Frank J Lubin fall scales from his eyes.
It seems the world has been deceiv’d
By Hitler, after all,
The world receiv’d, the world beleiv’d,
The world was in his thrall,
Who did not see these poster evils shrieking from a wall.
Berlin
August 20th
1936
Mumble Words 