(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
(AA) Canto 10: Polarizations
Jewish Wedding
Throttled before
they got the word out,
it must break through
Theodore Weiss
A carriage trundles thro’ soft ribbon fog,
As tho’ a cushion of romantic myst,
The Grunfelds gather’d in their synagogue,
Speechless ’til Heidi & her husband kiss’d;
A tearsplash floor,
Anna weeps happily,
Joyously crying for yofiful family.
The Rabbi’s household welcomes them,
Full-feasted celebration,
Moses toasts, “Shalom Alachem!”
Franz faithful keeps tradition,
Stamping on glasses, cries, “Lechaim!”
To the Hebrew nation…
As into this sacred ceremony
Brashly bursts & brawling brown-shirt bully.
Worm-filthy mouth spew’d forth abuse,
Breath-stench of bottl’d beer,
“You heard the news, you filthy Jews,
No longer welcome here!”
Scatter platters, romance shatters, batter’d by rattl’d fear.
Frankfurt
1936
Guerra Civil
The wind blows across the tombs
Freedom will come
& we shall be forgotten
Emmanuel de la Vigerie
As flickers wind at coalflame’s quickening,
Francisco Franco forms a violent breeze
Dichotomizes private bickering,
Sets complex quarrels climbing the trapeze;
When all our sight
Sees victory ahead –
One mis-step left or right we’ll topple down & dead.
The International Brigade
Embrac’d by Antifascist,
Whom, common causing, on parade
Left hand raises in a fist,
Man’s noblest consciences obey’d,
Poet, author, artist,
Attend to what is right, & that’s the left,
For Fascist thugees morally bereft.
As Germany & Italy
Operate together,
Admittedly (& wittily)
“Duce, en Espagna,
Na pas de troupes – ensuite, il neles rapellera pas!”
Spain
March
1937
The Raven
Your task, O man, is not to carp & cavil
At God’s achievements, but with purpose strong
To cling to good, & turn away from evil
EW Wilcox
From Nurnburg’s grand old Palace of Justice
To notices pinn’d at Hamburg stations,
Hitlerean antisemitismus
Forbids Jewish-Aryan relations;
In deep disgust
Jack Foley boards the train,
Such dirty devil’s dust ingrinds his native grain.
Inside the capital’s bright glow
Jack slides thro’ his embassy,
Plugs in his secret radio,
London warns about Graf Spree,
Contacting corrupt Gestapo,
Mix’d charm with bribery,
Obtaining visa-clutches for these Jews
Waiting outside his room all night in queues.
Onto a pillar by them flies
A bird to perch its flight,
With moonbright eyes, lampooning cries,
He fills them all with fright,
Who watch & wonder what it brings, this thing as black as night?
Berlin
April
1937
Skymurder
Nixt efter him come Mars the God of Ire,
Of strife, debate, & all dessensioun,
To chide & fecht, als feirs as only fyre
Robert Henryson
Sun tingles the lingering drudge of dusk,
Drowning a sleeping market town, rever’d,
The centre-culture of the ancient Basque,
Who, since the Empire of the Hyksos, steer’d
A private past,
Outwithing France & Spain,
Spanspun from San Sebastian to Aquitaine.
The streets full jamm’d for market day,
As over the hills appears
An airborne fleet of beige & grey
Whose droning un-nerving nears,
When black bombs drop on prams & play,
The one bridge disappears
In dust & rubbleflop onto water –
Up in town incendiary slaughter!
As faceless venatorians
Entomb abyss alive,
Those story reels of gory wheels
Of bomber steel survive
To tell this sordid poster-tale where ghosts of condors dive.
Guernica
April 26th
1937
Internal Tyranny
The mystical ladder of prayer
Is set for our use everywhere
Our thoughts, weary angels, ascend
Julia Ward Howe
Joe Stalin hail’d more than an Emperor
What powers emanate from single source
A second Nero & Caligula
Combin’d, deified like Little Boots’ horse,
A simple nod
Of th’omnipotent head,
Obey thy demi-god, obey, or, well, you’re dead!
As paranoid, delusional,
Fray’d nerve ends ever fretting,
The Boss demands the removal
Of traitorhood, each getting
Sham justice, then a funeral,
Desperate bloodletting
An army swamp’d by wild & rampant urge
Lost half its officers in this Great Purge.
As colonel knocks his vodka back,
Tough rapping slaps the door,
A cul-de-sac panic attack,
Took pistol from the drawer,
& blew his brains against the wall, his pain free warrantor.
Moscow
April 30th
1937
Pablo
That bull which flew into a fury
Because of a dark stain at the market
So much blood spilled at the borders
Nelo Risi
Admiring women, smoking tobacco,
Reading L’Humanitie, his street cafe
Lit by sprites of Persia, Picasso
Compares the Parisian First of May
To God’s domain;
Forgetting to inhale,
What is this news from Spain – cigar-tip burns his nail.
Wholly consum’d by mystery,
Disgusted by destruction
Of perfected humanity
In women & their children;
Amalgamates, pastorally,
Sheer pre-occupation
For personal pictorial express
Thro’ mural of monochromatic dress.
Dynamism’s immolation
Splurges into being –
Deformation, fragmentation,
Agonies agreeing,
From Harlequins & Minotaurs are spinal chords sent fleeing.
Paris
May 1st
1937
Cinematica
The armaments will start their devastations,
And though we’re for it, though we’re all convinced
Some fool will press the button soon or late
John Lehmann
To moving pictures Rita treats her son,
Laughs with the Marx boys, peers upon Pathay –
Smiles straighten with increas’d trepidation,
Her country choak’d on trouble-cloak’d Cathay;
Whoop-whoops & cheers!
Appears their President,
Easing most furtive fears with rhoticless accent.
Sitting beside his homely fire,
He panic play’d down calmly,
“Unto the Japanese Empire
A friendly hand extend we,
Peace ranks beyond War’s thankless mire,
Breathe Peace, breed Liberty;
For all our childrens’ sake Men must forgive,
& build a world where they would want to live”
The Hindenburg lit up the screen,
Cauterized by plasma,
Strange ghostly sheen, strange portents glean
About that swastika….
Like Carlton playing soldiers as they left the cinema.
Jerkwater
May 6
1937
Pierre & Veronique
Oh ! for some honest Lovers ghost
Some kind unbodied post
Sent from the shades below
Sir John Suckling
Loiret’s perfect city, rose-fair & sweet,
Deliver’d from the English by the Maid,
Two perfectly-lustred, loving lips meet,
The drudge of harsh realities allay’d;
Wearing life’s youth,
Our spirit’s velvet glove,
They share but one bold truth… to love is to know love!
Pierre carreses Veronique,
Whispers, “Je t’adore ma chere!”
Hands stroking slender, quatchless cheek,
Hers insliding thro’ soft hair,
Watching Communist comrades speak,
Jacquerie fills the square,
Sporting pitchforks & the sickle banner…
“Vite!” gasps Pierre, “We’re late for lit’rature!”
They rush’d into the lecture hall,
Took their shushing places,
The floral roll of Verlaine’s soul
Wove its vernal graces,
While finger-tips touch tingling at poesy’s pretty places.
Orleans
1937
Exposition
Our essence is not bound to any place
The vigor of our wine is not contained
In any bowl
Muhammad Iqba
The world flocks to itself, a splendid fair
Of cultural pavilions, of which
The Germans built the most flamboyant there,
Tho’ Moscow’s canvas claims a larger pitch;
While them both grand
Small Spanish tent attracts;
Thousand-upon-thousand to face the Fascist facts.
Audacious painting pris’d aghast
Responses spawn’d electric
To Franco’s kshatriyan caste
In chaos geometric;
Dismemberment’s iconoclast,
Cubism’s eccentric
Masterbrush composes, in triangles
A madness of horses, light bulbs & bulls.
The Nazis swift to discommend
Such vomit strokes enslav’d
Whose dregs distending reprehend
Fine taste, fresh-fac’d & shav’d,
Not this unkempt degenerate development deprav’d.
Paris
June 1st
1937
(AA) Canto 11: Appeasement
Fascist Knot
Surely the wings that hold,
Dark-clasp’d, the mystery of Fate
This moment will unfold
Harold Monro
Hitler receiv’d his conquering idol,
A dazzle of banners & manoeuvres!
Impresses his ‘hero’ with mock battle,
“How like the Spartans march these fine soldiers!”
“My friend please speak
Beneath the Glockenturm,”
The Mai-feld’s bound’ries creak e’en in a Donnersturm.
Wooed Mussolini’s mood unique
Thro’ supper conversation,
“The British Empire has grown weak,
Wrote off the Tscheschienne nation,
Together we shall climb the peak
Of our proper station,
Forcing the course of history’s censor,
Steal victory thro all the pomp of war.”
Two sister nations buck & rise
To ride the wylde warhorse;
First centralize, then march to prise
Thy neighbour’s realms by force,
Then sail in search of empire, letting conquest take best course.
Berlin
November
1937
Anschluss
What is it that stirs the heart & mind,
Quietly & insidiously biting deep
Until it is a part of self
Rennie McOwan
Stately & silent mile-high Alpine peaks,
Stand oer the Obersalzburg, far below
By Berchtesgaden’s fairytale antiques,
Goes Doctor Schuschnigg’s car, snicking thro’ snow ;
Now Berghof looms,
How the Doctor trembles,
When moody light illumes Hitler & his gen’rals.
As tyrants try their tyranny
& fly thro’ the high-stakes game;
Alone in Der Fuhrer’s study,
His land in the window frame,
“Austria must join Germany,
The same in all but name,
My destiny forg’d to reunite us,
Oppose us & spill the blood of brothers.”
The Heldenplatz sang joyously,
Their conquerer arose
In victory, “Thro’ you & me
The German Nation grows,
Thou hast a holy mission… guard the Reich from Eastern foes.”
Ostmark
March
1938
The Question of Versaille
Alone with God, where no wind blows,
And Death, his shadow – doom’d, he goes :
That God is there the shadows shows
Ebenezer Elliott
Churchill lurch’d from his back-bench wilderness,
Round thickset neck dangl’d the Dardanelles,
Projecting deep resonance to impress
On Parliament of the Fascist perils;
“I prophesise
This Berlin maniac
Has fool’d us to the wise, that wolf must soon attack!
Let us urge the world to rally
Against this cruel dictator,
How potent the deterency
If we should pool with Russia,
So let us rouse our old country,
Raise historic vigour,
Germany is re-arming at a pace,
We must build air fleets to stay in the race!”
The House laugh’d an indignant laugh,
Chamberlain sat him down,
A telegraph from the Berghof
Pluck’d from his stately gown,
“Mister Hitler is all for peace!” cheers drown the single frown.
London
March
1938
Referendum
What he does in necessary
Whatever he does in necessary
Whatever he does in successful
Rudolf Hess
Chewing on a käsekrainer sausage,
The young, pre-vegan Fuhrer once preferr’d –
As Germany seeks Austria’s spousage
Into the pot his hidden poison stirr’d;
Dissention quell’d
A conquest this can’t be
As referendum held bitter as chicory!
Propaganda unremitting,
Radiance in eager eyes,
For a leader them befitting,
Austrian in German guise,
With none of them admitting
Him just a knave of lies,
So easy is a sacred saviour seen,
“Yes” votes on ninety-nine percent convene.
In Burgenland, with gumptive gall,
“No” voted sixty-four,
Outside the hall a gallows pole,
With nooses hung three score,
Glares out a public warning full devotion to restore.
Eisenstadt
April 10th
1938
Death Dreams
Subservient to another, full of fears & care;
Responsible for manifold affairs of state,
How can officials know the joys of love
Kumarapulapratibodha
‘How beautiful are roses in the spring!’
Thought Chamberlain to raise his weary head,
That gruelling, solemn parley with the King
Had left him wasted, wanton for his bed;
As stars complete
Their glittering display
Inside Ten Downing Street, to dream the break of day…
..the Grinning ghosts of Guernica
Danc’d madly upon his grave,
Overhead each gruesome bomber
Belching death wave-after-wave,
Now marches jack-boot soldier
Good people to enslave;
A pig-tail girl nears with an outstretch’d plalm,
Mouse nibbling at her pretty little palm…
…jag-lightning wrenches night apart
Deep thunder in it’s train,
He, with a start, awoke, his heart-
Beat drumming to the rain,
As thro’ his cramping abdomen shoots dull & thumping pain.
London
May 1938
Nazi Party Rally
The German people slumber on
In dull, stupid sleep & encourage
The Fascist criminals
The White Rose
The second Max Stemmler stept from the train
Saw him thrust into echoistic sea,
Religious fervour proscribing his brain,
His heart leapt up to greet the pageantry;
Great church bells cheer,
“O Lord, ’tis glorious!
Der Fuhrer, he it here! He has come among us!”
Neath nympholepsic fawn fanfare
& eagle-mantl’d banner,
This dreamy, acolytic stare
Of uniform’d stormtrooper,
Paces fulgurant, flament, flair,
Figure-heads together;
Pass by Kongressbau: pulsing; hypnotic;
Enter Zepp’linfeld: writhing; erotic…
…Where oratory masterful
Draws the crowd to climax,
His beautiful, triumphant will
Spits venom at the Czechs,
“Justice for the Sudetenland!” Max faints, a heart’s reflex.
Nuremburg
June
1938
Hitler’s Will
He regards even his tantrums as a sign of strength
He would prefer us to be as water,
To see us stagnating as the bottom of the cup
Mourid Barghouti
Fresh from Rome, with Mussolini’s consent
To begin, ‘gainst Czechoslovakia
His tacit conquest of the continent,
Removing that thorn, that threat to the rear;
He’ll need reasons
To show aggressive hand…
“Blood of the Aryans floods the Sudetenland!”
Touring the regions of the Rhine,
Fawning entourage in tow,
In every heart his star did shine,
To Hades they would follow,
Strolling along the Seigfried line
Musing on Maginot –
Amidst sycophants one precocious youth,
Dares challenge his captain with starkling truth;
“We lack the men to firmly man
The whole of this West Wall!”
“Schiesser, we can, we’re stronger than
Both Albion & Gaul,
Their treaty is a sham they have no spine to fight at all.”
The Saar
August
1938
On the Brink
My tender friends are all put to flicht;
For policy is fled agane in France
My sister, Justice, almaist hath tint her sicht
Sir David Lyndsay
Upon the flesh of the Tschechien nation
The hungry wolf all set to snap its jaws,
With France a-dither with their obligation,
Britannia sends a leader from her shores;
H’d never been
Into the air before,
Tho’ lofty & serene, his thoughts are screaming war!
High oer the North Europa plain
That stretches to the Urals,
Ahead, like spreading clouds of rain,
Uprise Alpine sentinels,
To Munich drops that aeroplane,
Whose good folk flock the sills,
To witness the British Prime Minister
Avert something trickily sinister.
The roads were lined with cheering crowds
Of kids & mountain men,
Gloom-rolling clouds each peak enshrouds,
Chamberlain chews his pen –
Inside those misty mountains, somewhere, lies a lion’s den.
Bad Aibling
September 15th
1938
Peace In Our Time
If few their wants, their pleasures are but few :
For every want that stimulates the breast
Becomes a source of pleasure when redress’d
Oliver Goldsmith
Distant peals of thunderdrones draw closer,
About the Kehlsteinhaus tough Zephyrs swirl’d,
No wonder, here, delusions of grandeur,
An eagle’s nest perch’d high above the world;
Hitler commands
They’ll drive below the snow,
Wringing his clammy hands, singing, ‘Bring on the foe!’
His villa was the field agreed,
By the piny, mountain wood,
“Sudetenland must be full freed
From spillage of German blood,
It must be NOW! if I must lead
In full stride of manhood,
For never! never! never! shall I yield
Even if Earth becometh battlefield!”
“If you want war why let us come,
Our time wasted I see!”
Adolf struck dumb, a softer drum,
“Will the Allies agree
To the secession?” “Si!” such was that easy victory.
The Berghof
September 15th
1938
(AA) Canto 12: Rubicon
A Game of Chess
In the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
Charles Bukowski
At the heart of Red Empire in the east,
Two pals play the ancyent game of statesmen,
Molotov persists with the Spanish priest,
Stalin moves his knight back to Queen’s Knight One;
Satiated
Of that Ivanic urge,
Content to shuffle wood, pleas’d with appeasing purge.
Molotov puzzl’d oer the board,
Puffing on a fat cigar
As Stalin’s icy silence thaw’d;
“If tomorrow brings a war,
Tho’ we prefer sickle to sword,
We must prepare to spar :
Tis not long now until Berlin’s advance –
I mistrust Britain but we must court France.
Mother Russia must be ready,
Re-arm our brave young sons,
Transfom each key tractor fact’ry,
Build airplanes, tanks & guns…”
Moves Molotov, “& if they march we’ll slay a million Huns.”
Moscow
January
1939
Conquest of Czechoslovakia
No more, O my spirit,
are we flawless,
we have seen evil undreamt
Hippolytus
The famous Ides of March, der Fuhrer acts,
Imperial intentioning reveal’d,
Tastebuds whetted for better Tscheschienne trachts
He summons Hascha to the battlefield;
“Your poor country
Stands friendless & alone,
You MUST sign this decree lest we attack at dawn!”
Von Ribbentrop shaking his pen,
& Goering, bluff for the pot,
Hound Hascha, puffing, round the den,
His temp’rament tired & hot,
Who figgles, faints, revives again
By Morrel’s morphine shot…
Thus half adream in the first flush of day
Soulcrushman signs his poor contree away.
Hitler climbs the Mala Strana,
O sea of swastikas!
Bohemia, Moravia,
His newest provinces,
Gladly kingleading Germany’s rejuvenescenses.
Prague
March
1939
Guernica
Everything is Buddha without exception
Here is that immaculate & final stage
Where thought is pure in its true nature
Saraha
For every day Franco festers in Spain
Picasso stays away , as Dante dwelt
Aside from Guelph & Ghibelline, when pain
Of exile on their souls doth whip & welt;
His art, meanwhile,
Across the seas did sail,
These times are put on trial, one side must soon prevail.
Upon wide canvas has congeal’d
Our human tearducts dripping,
Where chaos was by Somber seal’d
In composition gripping,
All to it’s banshee phantoms yield
Caught in postures tripping
Awkward, as that apocalyptic day
When Mount Vesuvo blew away Pompeii.
‘Mid museo of modern art
& zeitgeist-surfing taste,
Call’d to a part within the heart
Where empathy lies chaste,
For first times future’s truthful visceralities are fac’d.
New York
May
1939
War’s Reality
At times, God, for his own good will,
Gives hell, o’er men and nations, rule;
But Right, though crushed, I hold Right still
PJ Bailey
The scales are falling from Chamberlain’s eyes,
Deceitfulness & ridicule runs clear,
Childish to swallow Hitler’s streams of lies
His regime’s misbeseeming dreams deem near;
“Bright shines hindsight,
‘Tis inevitable,
That man was born to fight, that man yearns for battle.”
As he rose before the members
Certain sections boo’d & hiss’d,
“The world is turning serious,
For the German jingoist
Had thought he could deceive us!
But now we must resist,
For only a fool would think, come the hour,
Rise up, would we not, with all our power!”
Von Ribbentrop & Ciano stroll
Thro’ gardens blushing Spring,
Teutonic drawl, “The Poles shall fall
Beneath our battering!”
“You crave Danzig?” “No, we crave war!”… Ciano’s awakening.
Berlin
May
1939
Kulturzerstorica
I walk, I turn, sleep may I nocht
I vexit am with heavy thocht
This world all owre I cast about
William Dunbar
With Sudetenland comes all the Skoda
Factories, whose orders made to focus
On armour’d trucks, while over the border
In Poland, the energy is raucous;
Versailles’s biscuit
Has broken, crumbl’d small –
Warsaw wants to risk it, risk seizing Tschechien coal.
The sentiment of Herrenvolk,
Puffs up the Polish quota,
Of German-blooded biofolk
That, distensive, thro’ slaughter
& conquest civic, spirits broke;
Carriers of water
& hewers of wood, slave-slated, accords
The primal needs of German overlords.
Abandon’d by their ‘friends’ abroad,
Betray’d & left naked
Before the sword of Hitler’s horde,
A simple sentence said,
“Today ’tis us, tomorrow you, we live to count the dead!”
Czechoslovakia
June
1939
Zionism
I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly loved,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime
George Linley
Lord Balfour’s declaration always seem’d
The cell precancerous that suddenly
Into action sprouts, a home long dream’d,
For Israel; Mediterranean Sea
To Tigris bank,
Now, settl’d in the soil
Of Palestine, they thank Jehova Arabs toil
To drive them off by shot & shout
From the colonies & farms
So Chamberlain sends Monty out
To deal with these stern alarms,
A man whose proven, without doubt,
In mettle-tests of arms
His mental vigor, his capability,
For swift-spear tactics swoops to victory
Ensuring, soon, the uprising,
Put down in short order,
“A wondrous thing!” the gentiles sing
In New York, who board a
Boat for Jaffa like a Nordic, nautical marauder.
Palestine
July
1939
Defeatism
The man who pains his body & calls it penance
In the hope of continuing to satisfy desire
Does not perceive the evils of rebirth
Asvaghosha
As ignorami burlesquing as French
Are into pacifism whimpering
With poverty of vision, & the stench
Of parafascist dry-rot lingering;
The common man
Far from his schoolboy stance
Another set of cannon-fodder fool’d – no chance!
For ‘peace at any price’ Bonnet
Sews seeds of doubt about him
Convinc’d Monsieur Daladier
Gallic prospects fluter dim,
An ineffective counterstay
‘Gainst Germany, grown grim,
While festering, sequester’d in it’s sins
The last of England lingers in the inns.
Venetians, Romans, Persians, Turks,
One time & another
With wars & works & laws & smirks
Other countries smother
‘Til come the days when sons abus’d outgrow, outblow the mother.
France
August 22nd
1939
War’s Promise
And so, Good-bye, grim ‘Thirties. These your closing days
Have shown a new light, motionless & far
And clear as ice, to our sore riddled eyes
David Gascoyne
While Britain rode the slow boat to Russia,
Von Ribbentrop touch’d down in his Condor,
Playing perfectly the embassador,
Keeping The Boss out of Der Fuhrer’s war,
The Great Bear rose
Full ready to release,
From its ferocious claws, the keys to War & Peace.
“I reckon world needs sortin out!”
Says good ol’ Charlie Sumner,
Sipping a thick, black pint of stout,
Sat in ‘tat room o’ Mitre,
“Gerrys fer feyting, ‘ave no doubt,
It sez so in paper…”
We must finish off Nazis fer them Jews.”
“Aye!” sniff’d the barman, “& we’d best not lose!”
Pierre embraced his sweetheart’s glow,
Kissing her salty cheek,
“Alas, I go to Maginot,
Shed no tears Veronique,
Ah! Partir c’est mourir un peu…” she wept but would not speak.
Paris
August 24th
1939
Megalomania
The trumpet blows its shrill & final blast !
Prepared for war & battle here we stand
Soon Hitler’s banners wave uncheck’d at last
Horst Wessel
From Cairnhall’s mawkish church with lavish lurch,
Left Goering for his higher destiny,
The ones that lie beyond the days we search
For life’s true meaning – Reich Chancellery,
Goose-stepping quite
Mechanical, change guards –
Beyond, & thro’ the night, Der Fuehrer queues his cards.
“As ruthless hunted Genghis Khan
All enemies & their seed
With brutal truth & burning barn
Uprooting the Polish breed,
For settlement by autobahn
That throttles forth at speed
The permanence of Greater Germany,”
From firm assertions squirm his generalrie,
“& everywhere our soldiers fall
A temple there we’ll build!”
In vampyre thrall, into the hall
Those generals stall,’d & spill’d,
While DEATH among them glamour’d noting all whom to be kill’d.
Berlin
August 29th
1939
(AA) Canto 13: The Great War
We are made wiser by the age
Erasmus
Hakenkruz
The day’s last sun-rays burn wonderfully
On the evening sand,
At the beginning of the unknown night
Farrukh Ahmad
As little boys listen to their mothers
With dewdrop eyes, an Austrian sat down
Above his home, “Quite unlike the others,”
Schoolmasters said, as now, far from the town,
Mind-implings soar,
Flame-licking phantasie,
What momentary awe, when on the monast’ry
Rose Benedictine coat of arms,
O salient swastika!
Draping an artist in its charms,
Such enigmatic aura…
Alarum wildfires thro’ the farms,
“Alois needs a doctor!”
His son runs home… stunn’d & numb from crying,
Adolf Hitler watch’d his father’s dying.
The haemorrhage was flowing fast,
The doctors did no good,
Breathing its last a body cast
Its soul to fiery flood,
The daddy of a daemon-child besotted by fresh blood.
Linz
1903
Entente Uncordiale
Be war and vengeance fled:
That Europe, wrapt in lasting peace,
May rest her laurell’d head!
Louisa Stuart Costello
With all the varied vestments of her fame,
In splendid isolation London stands
Spectator of the continental game,
A global empire in her gentle hands;
The French envoy
Driven from Waterloo,
For Whitehall to enjoy high-level interview.
“Our problem here is Germany…
Her imperial intent
Could win her the hegemony
Over our old continent,
Threatening our stability,
This course we must prevent!
If war must come then Paris is prepared!”
Sentiment Britain’s delegation shared.
Meanwhile the Kaiser screams, “Be strong,
For struggle surely near!”
A marching song, for right or wrong
The white doves disappear,
As Prussian milit’rism strides into a higher gear.
Potsdam
September
Death of Innocence
Out of harmless indolence, the Greece of books,
& the Jerusalem of memory there suddenly appears
the island of a poem, unpeopl’d
Adam Zagajewski
A century of blood-stench drags the breeze,
Annals of Empire quiver to a close
Like some rogue priest bent double with disease,
Still quaking from those cataclysmic throes;
One hundred years
My tempers train shall delve,
Thro’ all the blood & tears… Nineteen Hundred & Twelve.
The Kasier calls a konferenz,
Large maps besprawling table,
“As Russia, with the funds of France,
Shall soon become full stable,
I wish the borders to advance
As prompt as is able –
Dark clouds have gather’d yon the Vistula,
It must be war… & sooner the better.”
Faint rumbles on a stormy night,
Harsh whispers in the trees,
As grainy light illumes the fight,
INNOCENCE slumps on knees,
Her hump-back’d murderer administ’ring the final squeeze.
Europe
1912
Hitler
Day & night before the dreary portal
Phantom shapes, the guards of Hades, lie :
None of heavenly kind, nor yet of mortal
W.E Aytoun
Elfin painter took leave of Vienna,
Fair jewel of the dual monarchy,
By officers branded, ‘Herr Deserter’,
Rejected by the Arts Academie;
Some quarter-Jew
Pluck’d from obscurity,
Enslaved by the milieu’s intrigues of destiny.
Dawn lit the surging Salzburg heights,
An Alp in his stout heart grew,
His memories of bitter sleights
Cleans’d by Bavarian dew,
Upon the winds young mountain kites
In eagle fashion flew…
“So fate has brought me here to Germany!”
Thought swept upon the wing & flutter’d free.
From wooded lake, to street agleam,
Here seem’d a blither Rome,
As beggars dream to taste ice-cream
He deem’d this place his home,
Where pure-blood Aryans & the anti-semitic roam.
Munich
1913
Assassin!
Onto my boisterous pathway
Falls the invisible flash
Of the secluded black hole
Istok Ulchar
The Crown Prince peers out from the motorcade,
His House of Hapsburg gorging on conquest,
Whose tall, broad-chested soldiers on parade,
Hold back the Slavic peasantry oppress’d;
Soft eyelids close,
Flora fills his vision,
Song-maiden sniffs her rose in her secret garden…
…She laughs & they laugh together,
Rows of roses grow & bud,
Redd’ning fields stretching forever
In a wave transform to wood,
Flaming crosses in the heather,
Names crudely ink’d in blood –
An orphan girl chokes on her rose & dies,
Snakes slithing from the sockets of her eyes…
Stagling slips from silent shadows,
His stern lips firmly curl’d,
The hammer blows, the bullet glows,
A blast of black doom hurl’d,
A shot to slay an Arch Duke, heard in echoes round the world!
Sarajevo
June 28th
1914
Imperial Decree
With a fiend-like yelling & cheering,
They charge up the heights at a run ;
Grim men are they all & unfearing
Rev. Andrew McNab
There was a sense of something in the air,
Of great events & him stood at their heart,
Aye, he could feel the fever everywhere,
Tho’ from that spirit stood his soul apart,
Was this the stage?
When long-felt destiny
Could burst upon the age in perfect clarity?
The Odeonsplatz, glorious,
Cheers at the declaration,
“Upon all sides the envious
Surround our precious nation,
But we shall be victorious!”
Roaring congregation
Sway’d with sheer bliss, up went a thousand hats
As if the daytime sky flew thick with bats.
Young Adolf Hitler, dour-faced, short,
Falls gloating to his knees
In spacious thought, this day long-sought,
“The world has heard my pleas,”
Beside him stood a woman gazing on him with unease.
Munich
August 1st
1914
Outbreak
Man’s life is like the morning dew:
In this world he has misfortune in plenty.
Griefs & hardships oft come early
Ch’in Chia
From sylvan pool uprose the brooding Tsar,
Old gen’rals waiting silent on the rise –
Trusting his cousins not to start a war,
How casual the call to ‘Mobilise!’
“Paddy don’t go!
I’ve an ache in mi bones!”
The carriages start slow, shrill hoots drown Freda’s moans.
As a moment’ry decision
The world with War’s rug smothers,
Epic duel of heave & vision,
Cruel dread of doting mothers,
Crude destroyer of religion,
& bandsman of brothers,
Shambles of glory, honour, passion, pride,
But days of shame as Hell’s highway grows wide.
Born of the bed-soil of Jena,
Fed on the dirt & blood,
Maxy Stemmler aims his Mauser
At movements in the wood…
A shot! A scream! A murd’rous gleam, War’s truth now understood.
Europa
August 20th
1914
Seizure of the Seas
We have come home
From the bloodless wars
With sunken hearts
Lenrie Peters
Hostilities commence upon the waves,
Hochsenflotte christening the contest,
But, afore Coronel could claim her graves,
The fleet is order’d South by South-Sou’ West;
Dolphins in train
Yon dusky Spain they blow,
Aim’d at the sailor’s bane… Tierra del Fuego.
Grey wolves round Cape Horn near & Norse,
Helmsman the gallant Von Spee,
Lying in wait a vengeant force
Rais’d anchor at Port Stanley
& sights the foe! sets fighting course!
The battle-scarr’d foe flee,
Scatter’d amid grey-beards wide & rolling,
Stern, Starboard, Port & Bow shellfire falling.
The Gneisenau, Von Spee’s Scharnhost,
The Nurnburg & Leipzig
The bubbling toast of Churchill’s boast,
His sailors dance a jig…
While England free to roam the waves the foe is forced to dig.
The British Ocean
December 8th
1914
First Christmas
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve –
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
Herman Melville
Wars of manoeuvre on their last legs stand,
Warm maxims smoking by a mass graveside,
Stalemate from the North Sea to Switzerland,
Swathes of trench-works sundering countryside;
One freezing night
Der Wehrmacht think of home,
O blaze of lantern light! O twinkling tannenbaum!
Sweet sung, “Stille nacht, heilige nacht…”
Was the Hun’s opening shell,
“Lads! Lads! we’re not being attack’d!”
Tommy hums The First Noel,
Before too long the truce had track’d
All thro the trenches hell,
Over the top & into No Mans Land
Men went to shake another human hand.
As dawn broke over ghastly ground
The love of life outpour’d,
A football found, quick kickaround,
A goal or six are scored…
Shrill whistles drift the soldiers back – where they’d play’d snow had thaw’d.
The Western Front
December 25th
1914
(AA) Canto 14: Boiling Points
Floating on the surface of the flooded trench was the mask of a human face which had detached itself from the skull.
Siegfried Sassoon
American Incunabula
Now you are one of us, you know our tears,
Those tears of pride & pain so fast to flow;
You too have sipped the first strange draught of woe
EM Walker
“Deutschland ganzlich einzukeisen!” throats wail,
Submerging terrors reverse the blockade,
Lusitania… Old Head of Kinsale…
Torpedoes… hopes of peace noyantly fade;
One explosion
Back-echoes to New York –
Ship lists, hiss-slips, is gone… the World’s press flock to Cork.
To Jerkwater the news soon spread,
Hank hock’d a hooch with Harry,
Shocking ink columns shaking read,
“I have German ancestry,
But those poor American dead
Have rais’d the beast in me!”
“It is was it is, Hank, don’t get involv’d!”
“But Buddy, how else could this be resolv’d?”
“Call off your wolves!” Kaiserwards went,
Wise, by Woodrow Wilson,
Threat keenly meant, the President
Frets at word from London.;
“Zepp’lins have bomb’d our capital…” sacred causal fusion.
Washington
May 10th
1915
The Last Grenadier
The corn was turnin’, hairst was near,
But lang afore the scythes could start
A sough o’ war gaed through the land
Charles Murray
An old man hobbl’d with his great-grandsons,
Breath’d in the dust of a past century,
The growls & the howls of the young Hun’s guns
Awakening his vivid memory;
Tho’ barely sane,
Half driven blind by age,
He shuffl’d his frail frame onto that famous stage.
Tween Hougoumont & La Haye-Saint
His raging nostalgia veer’d,
Tward a panoramic lion
All his stumbling footsteps veer’d,
Fifty thousand phantoms upon
Hades horison reer’d,
Dogs braying fearfully from nearby farms,
All round resounds the mighty clash of arms.
He saw his father hard impal’d
Upon the scarlet square,
& as he wail’d the Gaurdsmen fail’d,
His Grand Pa-Pa led there,
Shielding his cowering grand-child whilst bayoneted bare.
Waterloo
June 18th
1915
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
East Lancashire’s War
I saw him stab
& stab again
a well-killed Boche
Herbert Read
“Give some fella a gun, ‘ees an ‘ero,
Give ‘im a conscience, ‘ee gets thrown in jail!”
“Charlie,” said Rose, “I wunt want yer to go!”
“Now why would I wanna leave you?” a wail
Strays down the street,
With his next door neighbour,
“Put summat on yer feet & go get yer mother!”
Beneath the rugged Hamildon,
Marching by a brown canal,
Pass morosely top o’ Hapton
As at some dour funeral,
Reeling, at length, thro’ Accrington,
To hear of their own Pal…
Upon the Town Hall notice boards they’ll see,
‘Patrick Sumner has died for his country.’
Freda broke down, felt in her heart
An ache to never die,
Charlie’s thoughts dart, world wrench’d apart,
“Revenge! Revenge!” he’ll cry
Racing to add his signature to Gen’ral Haig’s supply.
Lancashire
October
1915
Deserter
I want to go home. I want to go home.
The whizzbangs they rattle, the cannon they roar,
I don’t want to go to the Front any more!
Anonymous
There is a madness in the mind of man,
The water torture of a constant war,
Always up fighting, always in the van,
Frank phantasizes of his native shore
Scarpers his trench,
This war for him’s over,
Pretending to be French all the way to Dover.
He ran home to his early life
From man’s terrors travels far
& ravages his pretty wife,
Trousers mingle with her bra,
But then there comes the cruel knife
To open up the scar,
Cold knock-knock at door, two stone-faced Sergeants
Have come to fetch this white feather to France.
His family’s tearful farewell
Still haunting all the while
He paced the cell, a living hell
& barely legal trial,
Shot at the wall… some sprawl’d ‘deserter’ sporting insane smile..
France
March
1916
All Quiet on the Western Front
The candle stumps stand there staring solemnly.
Across the nocturnal vault of the church
Moans go drifting & choking words
Wilhelm Klemm
T’was just another day in the trenches,
The ‘stand to’ bugler blew before the dawn,
From this heatless zee-catching he wrenches;
Slugs, frogs, bats, rats & beetles flee the yawn;
Breakfast before
Shelling begins at eight,
Less murder, more the bore men call the ‘Morning Hate.’
Those walking with the Lord worship’d,
Others played or talk’d instead,
The gaunt are by despair oft gripp’d,
Some stand up & lost their head,
The ‘stand-to’ call’d as sunshine slipp’d
In bed of rosy red;
The ‘Evening Hate’ has cool’d as fades the light,
Both sides prepare patrols to pass the night.
Some flick thro’ books, some capture mice,
Some requisition rest,
Some pick at lice, some lose at dice,
Some gaze out to the West,
Watching a crimson streak that might have issued from Christ’s breast.
France
April
1916
Verdun
Does it matter? Losing your sight?…
There’s such splendid work for the blind:
& people will always be kind
Siegfried Sassoon
There is a glory in the call to arms,
Marshall Petain bestrode the sacred route,
All galvanised by strong & simple charms,
“The city must be held here coute que coute!”
Firm-fisted hands
Charcoal maps with action.
“Monsieurs, les Allemands sont toujours a Noyon!”
“The nation’s first emergency,
France with faith & fire… ATTAQUE!”
Jean Francois treads the Route Sacree,
Two columns pass on the track,
His marching up to Calvary,
The other slouching back…
& heeding an old soldiers wise advice
Fought well & waiv’d the supreme sacrifice.
With Douamont another Metz,
The war within a war,
Recalling debts the Marshall nets
The ruin’d Fort de Vaux,
Scanty reward for non-stop days of death-craz’d blood & gore.
France
June 7th
1916
Battle of the Somme
Rivers are brim-full of blood by fall of night.
Legion are the bodies laid out in the reeds,
Covered white with the strong birds of death.
George Heym
The Top Brass dined in rich bigwigerie,
“An effort must be made to win the war!
For now we face a weaker Germany,
The hell pits at Verdun her running sore!”
Over the top,
Footballs leading the way,
Thinking nothing could stop them on the Berlin way.
Brave captains, blades melded to hand,
Lead the calm, steel-hatted rows
Cross tangl’d miles of No Mans Land…
“Here they come!” squawk sentry crows,
From deep redoubts burnt soldiers stand
Singe-tingling heads to toes;
‘Das Trommelfeur’ offers a rare respite,
“At last the bastards have come out to fight…”
The chatter of the Maxim gun
Some violent thunderclap,
“No man shall run toward the Hun!”
(Thought absent from the map),
Officers thinning on the field, “Well cheerio old chap!”
Blighty Valley
July 1st
1916
Catalytic Conversion
I have a rendezvous with Death
at some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
Alan Seeger
As Siegessauler soldiery faded,
Der Kaiser holds his heavy head in hands,
His crumbling empire… hungry, blockaded,
The curse of scurvy scourging thro’ his lands;
There but remains
One way to win the War,
To sink the shipping lanes that lap the western shore,
& sunk enough to soon impress
A modicum of urgency
Upon America’s Congress,
Their precious democracy
Should Europe’s problems readdress,
& forge all people free
From tyranny, and threats of violence made:
The President calls for a great crusade,
Then took tea at the Pentagon,
“What clothes our forces wear?”
“The fleet rusts on, arms next to none,
A few planes in the air!”
“We’d better get a move on, then, we’re needed over there.”
Washington
April 6th
1917
(AA) Canto 15: Slaughter’s End
There will be wars such as there have never been on earth… an eclipse of the sun such as there has probably never yet been on earth… I greet all the signs that a more manly, warlike age is coming, which will, above all, bring valour again into honour.
Frederick Nietzsche
Of War & Men
And here’s to the Blue & Gray as one,
When we meet on the fields of France;
May the spirit of God be with us all
G.M. Mayo
There is a scented season men name Spring,
Air slowly perfumed by a floral spray,
Laburnam, Rhododendrum, blossoming
By little lambs so sylph like in their play;
O pleasant clime,
Days of the Daffodil,
But also times of crime, the urge returns to kill.
Death comes in droves, in droves I say,
Imagine the Bernabau
When Barcelona come to play
& each fan slain… tell me how
Men can allow mankind to slay
His own as tho some cow…
Now to the stadia the Yanks advance,
Their targets are the painted dames of France,
Where Dillinger don’t give a damn
For his young wife Rita,
A quick wham-bam, & “Thank ye mam!”
Five francs ring the meter,
All while his son was born that morn out home in Jerkwater.
Paris
May
1917
Poetry of War
You must be from my country
I see it by the tick
Of your soul around the eyelashes
Tchicaya U Tam’si
Seigfreid heard soften’d knocking at the door,
Young Wilfred Owen stood there rather shy,
Clutching his poems, not one book but four!
Sass caught a special ‘something’ in his eye;
How they show it,
That special sympathy,
“I-I am a poet…” “Why, would you care for tea?”
With Graves they form’d a company
Of literary lions,
Baring the torch of Poetry
Thro this dark day’s dalliance,
Channelling sacred energy
Thro’ most artful science,
Rose milk & honey springing from within,
“These terrible times, times worth living in!”
Lost on a stroll thro’ the garden,
Life seem’d a better age,
Brave deeds now done how Keatsean
Men carved marvellous page,
Ants, players, friends & stars performing on the greatest stage.
Craiglockhart
September
1917
Passcheandale
ulcers of mustard gas, a rivet in the lung
from scrappy shrapnel,
frostbite, trench-fever, shell-shock
Basil Bunting
Sallow soldiers splash thro’ boot-sucking mud,
Clinging like poor relations, twice as fast
It breeds, each shell-hole nauseate with blood,
Swollen black lads bolt upright in repast;
Still falls the rain –
An English Pioneer,
Slow-walks the wooden vein, two German scouts appear…
…One blasted dead, aim switch’d sharp right,
Max dodg’d the angry bullet,
Thick slipping into slime & shite,
Duckboard tilts Charlie in it,
Both surging in a mucky fight,
Gasps, grappling, grasping, grit;
KARMA appears, the convertite goddess,
To part the duel, men break in weariness,
Two warriors from fight withdrew,
Exhausted breaths extrude,
Soak’d thro’ & thro’ & filthy too,
Both stalk’d off unpursued,
Waking from death’s dalliances wrack’d with disquietude.
Flanders
November
1917
Cambrai
It is more than the odor of this core of earth
& water. It is that which is distill’d
In the prolific ellipses that we know
Wallace Stevens
The summer turns to Autumn, turns to mud,
Despite the shite the ‘Big Push’ pushes on,
The German sentries frozen where they stood,
What is this ‘thing?’ this king phenomenon;
This iron-clad
Slow rumbling to their lines,
The World is going mad, the World & its designs!
More lethal than the brazen bull,
O miraculous machines!
Attack the military squall
Carrying brushwood facines
To plug the trenchs, on they roll,
The Germans rout in scenes
Of panic over tussocky grassland –
The British have no cards left in the hand,
No reserves to exploit the gap,
& the crews exhausted,
Counter attack, the ground aon back,
A captain scratch’d his head,
Cursing the moments wasted as he pasted up the dead.
Marcoing
November 27th
1917
Death of the Red Baron
Soul, to its place on high !
They that have seen thy look in death
No more may fear to die
F.D.Hemans
Young Nigel Bligh, bestriding flying horse,
Fresh from the Cam & now a fledgeling part
Of the recently form’d Royal Air Force,
Sits chomping at the bit for it to start;
Propellor whirls,
Up-up, up & away!
The glory & the girls must court him from this day.
He saw a duel oer Morlaincourt,
An Albatross & Camel,
The British plane drops with a roar,
So in Bligh sped to battle,
His spits out bullets by the score,
With a murd’rous rattle,
A bullet in his lungs the Baron drown’d
In blood, his triplane spiralling to ground.
“I hope he roasted all the way,
That bastard of the sky!”
“O frabjous day, Calloo, callay!”
Three cheers for Nigel Bligh,
A gorgeous gladiator with elation in his eye.
Vaux-sur-Somme
April 21st
1918
German Offensive
Wavering over the sun
Their arms are still greeting a king,
Holding out hands for a gun
Roger Roughton
Reading Nietzsche, muse-immured in Homer,
Herr Hitler huddles in his solitude,
“An alright sort of chap, but a loner,”
His comrades say, “Tho with spirit imbued!”
One fitful dream,
One lord over it all,
Released with banshee scream Satanus caught his soul!
Herr Goering flies above the ground
Where stormtrooper religions
With one desire to kill & wound
Like diabolique engines
Roll thro’ stunn’d trenches, hard boots pound
Cats among the pigeons,
With camouflage & special torpedo
A surge of strength wherever they may go.
Max Stemmler’s unit must advance
He kiss’d Aimee goodbye,
“Our sweet Constance best left in France,”
Their babe began to cry –
As off he rush’d up to the front their fragile love did die.
Flanders
June
1918
Ottoman Winter
Now stoops the sun, & dies day’s cheerful light.
When stars tread 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 honoours bestow,
As thro the battleground of the furies
Tread the Fates with JUSTICE & her juries…
As Visigoths view’d the Tiber,
Life left Alexander,
Fat Emperor of Helena,
& died Montezuma…
The Turks are toss’d from Syria with all their vile terror.
Arabia
October 1st
1918
New Directions
And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower
D.H. Lawrence
Max Stemmler bid a last farewell to France,
His mistress & the babe wrapt in her arms,
That sweet, little cherub she call’d Constance,
A better name to hear round Flander’s farms;
One final kiss
To evermore lament,
Leaving his love a ‘miss,’ leaves with his regiment.
Two Juden breakfast in Berlin,
A city dispirited,
From sure, so sure, they had to win,
To totally defeated,
While Jakob takes it on the chin,
Moses felt quite cheated,
“Brother, for us see this through together,
You take Frankfurt & I’ll take Vienna.”
Charlie sat in the Old Nag’s Head
With his beloved Rose,
“Love, let’s get wed” “Alright,” she said,
As giddy guiness flows,
“Time,” roars the landlord… “Its turn’d eleven,” “Aye, them’s new laws!”
Burnley
October
1918
Death of Owen
All is over & done :
Render thanks to the Giver,
England, for thy son
Lord Tennyson
The choice & master spirits of an age
Spread piety, think deep, & deal in gore,
Or lay soft-spoken thoughts upon the page…
A poet knocks upon a poet’s door;
“Goodbye Seigfreid,
My service is required,
But thanks to you my mead of poetry inspired.”
With vitesse vigour freshly found
He surged back to the battle,
Back to the brawl, back to the sound
Of teeth gnashing eternal,
It seem’d for him the world had found
A finer crucible,
For here amid the bloodshed & the rage
One could sense the poesis of an age.
He paced along the slowboat boards,
Urging men as they fell,
Damocles swords & twanging cords,
The Captain hears his knell
As the old lie sounds, “To die in battle is to die well!”
Ois-Sambre Canal
November 4th
1918
(AA) Canto 16: Outbreak!
Old Fibres
Truth is the voice of Nature & of Time –
Truth is the startling monitor within us –
Nought is without it, it comes from the stars
William Thomas Bacon
The Poets of the Grand Cataclysm
Express’d, for brasshat politics, contempt
Engendering gen’ral pacifism
Before the Hell-witch on his evil bent;
The Gods implore,
“How could you let this be,
A second major war within a demi-century!”
But now it’s here Britannia must,
With every ounce go fighting,
In she the free world put’s its trust,
To prevent Hitler alighting
The pinnacle from where the Just
Administer, citing
Those long-wrought laws of wizen’d precedent,
Not tyrant crimes of whimming president.
A generation combs its hair,
Tie-fixes, irons suits,
Prepares to share the ‘god knows where?’
The bullets & the boots,
For love of battle rumbles deep inside their tribal roots.
Britain
September 1st
1939
…& Wars Begin
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth
WH Auden
Dawn’s grey warning creeps cross the Baltic Sea,
A silhouette slow forming on the line,
Rough broadsides disturb the serenity,
Belching from Krupps of the Schleswig-Holstein;
Each solemn thud,
Peppers the Polish shore,
Earth shatters, scatters mud – the first shots of the war!
The Reichstag sit, silent, subdued,
Observing their leader jeer,
“The Polish race, backward & crude,
Violates our dear frontier!
Bombs shall meet bombs in bitter feud,
Your first captain stands here –
In ‘fourteen I offer’d my dying breath,
I don my coat ‘til victory or death!
If England dares to test our might
In battle once again,
Then let us fight, our Eagle’s flight
Surpasses her fat hen,
We all the way shall war, be it a single year or ten!”
Berlin
Sept 1st
1939
Captured!
The fears on the flanks of wind are ripening,
I pray for heaven
To protect your life from all suffering
Kama Sywor Kamanda
Unlit, Europa’s lamps, unlit once more!
Damageous death as enemy becomes;
This low, dishonest decade’s ending roar
Burns like the Devil’s churning djembe drums;
Condemn’d by dread,
Perplexity, we are
Compell’d to bang our head against the barb-d wire bar.
‘Neath many-headed monster swarm
The Polish frontier crushes,
Vladek ‘kpoks’ a human form,
Drops Gertman in the bushes,
Then caught – “What’s this! Your gun is warm!
You were shooting at us!”
“I just shot in the air, I promise you!”
The soldier slowly on his ciggie drew
“I did it for my kapitan,
But honestly, my friends,
I know I cannot kill a man…”
Loves on such threads suspend,
“You will be made a prisoner…” deep sighs as breaths extend.
Pomerania
September 1st
1939
Diplomatic Formalities
Now it is time for the hands grasping the rifle
to harden, & death is at the ready,
even tho’ you have lived only a third of your time
Vsevolod Loboda
A telegram left the lap of London,
Bound for a distant British embassy,
Whose ambassador, thou suave Henderson,
Delivers to the Reich-chancellery;
At daggers drawn
With sly Von Ribbentrop,
Voice rugged as the stone found on the Spion Kop,
“I have the honour to relate
A note from his Majesty’s
Court… if Germany acts too late
In giving assurances
To withdraw from Poland, War’s state
Exists twixt our contrees…
You have until eleven to decide!”
Von Ribbentrop slithers to Hitler’s side,
There transfers the ultimatum
(His hands had dug the hole),
Hitler struck dumb, “Then war hast come,
England has serv’d the ball!”
Goering whispers, “If we lose this War, Lord God help us all!”
Berlin
September 3rd
1939
England Expects
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face
Edwin Markham
As Chamberlain gulp’d down a nervous wine
Around his rosy garden footsteps pace,
Passing leaden seconds to the deadline,
When silence from Berlin settles the case;
With patience spent,
His politics outclass’d,
Dripping disappointment he starts his heart’s broadcast,
“I am this land’s Prime Minister,
We are, already, at war,”
Stern words whipping from his chamber
To the trannies on the shore,
“Let us once more stand together,
Yes, let our Lion roar!”
Winston Churchill stood lonely & aloof
Above the city on his little roof,
Watching those silver elephants
Arise amidst the spires,
This day presents benevolence
Inspires his warring fires,
Burning for Britain’s glory & the fates of old empires.
London
September 3rd
1939
A New War
I have seen much to hate here – much to forgive,
But in a world where England is finished & dead,
I do not whish to live
Alice Duer Miller
The Sumner clan gathers round a wireless,
Rose fiddles nervous with ‘er wedding ring,
“Kids shhhhh!” sez Charlie, “This is serious!”
The crackling voice of their stammering king
Grave parley spoke,
An old sensation grew,
The bane of common folk, their worst fears turning true.
Freda strokes Gem, her jet black cat,
Gazed up at Hargher Chimney,
Saw ‘er grandson in an ‘ard hat
Motoring across the sea,
“Y’know ah Pat’ll be in that…”
“Don’t bi daft!” sez Charlie,
“It’ll all bi over bi Christmas grub!”
He took ‘is eldest down ter Rosegrove Club;
As cue-ball crack sank winning black,
“Well son, what will it be?”
“I think…” voice slack, “Speak up our Jack.”
“…Mebbe Merchant Navy.”
“Good choice lad, nah sup up, gotta get gas mask
fer baby.”
Burnley
September 3rd
1939
Beyond the Brink
Hear, you midnight phantoms, hear,
You who pale & wan appear,
And fill the wretch, who wakes, with fear
Nicholas Rowe
No singing crowds cheer’d on his cavalcade,
‘Quite unlike Nineteen Hundred & Fourteen,’
Thinks Hitler, lying in the bed he made,
Quite downcast in his classic limosine;
His gamble fails,
Finding himself at war,
For those who play the scales oft tip the weight too far.
Upon his train ‘Amerika,’
Disgrace replac’d elation,
‘My treaty with Stalin’s Russia
Seems gross miscalculation,
War’s darkling wastes we all enter –
England! What a nation!
Why does she fight? Naught has she here to gain?’
Swirl’d round his thoughts as eastwards plough’d the train.
A little message made him freeze,
Morell prescribes a pill,
In icy seas by Hebrides
A U-Boat claims a kill,
This war turns real, a taste of highest fruits of human thrill.
Germany
September 4th
1939
The Agony of Poland
Do not tell her about my suffering,
Let her ignore the bite of pain,
that is tearing up my being
Georges Andriamanantena
As febricant, mechaniz’d juggernaut
Pours in an endless torrent from the West,
Seizing maladroit forces by the throat –
The Blitzkrieg theorum passes first test;
All Warsaw prays,
Surrounded by the foe,
Still proud her anthem plays on ev’ry radio.
Hitler steers his half-track rumble
Thro’ the war-torn countryside,
Brandishing a single pistol,
& whip of harden’d oxhide,
His finest aide-de-camp, Rommel,
Makes studies by his side –
But coming on that first hospital train,
Refused to see his soldiers suff’ring pain.
They drove on thro’ the ghostly fog
Raking that rathole town,
A pining dog, a synagogue
Charr’d black from burning down,
Where perch’d a crow, it’s beady, yellow eyes now fleck’d with brown.
Sosnowiec
September 8th
1939
Evacuees
Come away, away children:
Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly
Matthew Arnold
Sue caught the child-pack’d coach out of Poplar,
Such sadnesses sends tear-tracts swelling up,
Now the high-pitch’ d crowds at Victoria
Heaving like when the Arsenal won the cup;
She joined the rest,
Sobbing sweet maternals,
Prised from the suckling breast, both her little angels.
Onto a squealing train they hop,
Press noses to the windows,
Bursting young lungs at every stop,
Giggles as the whistle blows,
Down gulping sandwiches & pop,
Come Buxton’s fun repose
They saw a fresian real the first fun time,
“Moo-moo?” Mavis cuts short her nurs’ry rhyme.
As tall tower lights up faces,
As sea-gulls squawk thro’ air,
Wee suitcases claimed by strangers,
“We’ll take the young lass there,”
Yelps Kenny; “No, mi mummy meant us two come as a pair!”
Blackpool
September 5th
1939
(AA) Canto 17: Sitzkreig
The Agony of Poland
Do not tell her about my suffering,
Let her ignore the bite of pain,
that is tearing up my being
Georges Andriamanantena
As febricant, mechaniz’d juggernaut
Pours in an endless torrent from the West,
Seizing maladroit forces by the throat –
The Blitzkrieg theorum passes first test;
All Warsaw prays,
Surrounded by the foe,
Still proud her anthem plays on ev’ry radio.
Hitler steers his half-track rumble
Thro’ the war-torn countryside,
Brandishing a single pistol,
& whip of harden’d oxhide,
His finest aide-de-camp, Rommel,
Makes studies by his side –
But coming on that first hospital train,
Refused to see his soldiers suff’ring pain.
They drove on thro’ the ghostly fog
Raking that rathole town,
A pining dog, a synagogue
Charr’d black from burning down,
Where perch’d a crow, it’s beady, yellow eyes now fleck’d with brown.
Sosnowiec
September 8th
1939
B.E.F.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
Henry Reed
What happy breed of men cheer’d off to war;
Geordie, Scouser, Taffy, Scot & Cockney –
Shepherded yon the Cornubian shore
By Captains of His Highnesses Navy;
Unfit to fight
First-class modern conflict,
Like Agricola’s might stormdashing naked Pict.
They sail’d around Amorica,
Dodging periscopic glare,
“We’ll hang out our washing on the
Siegfried line!” flits thro’ the air,
Human paraphernalia
Landing at Saint Nazaire –
Where vital lines of communication
Criss-cross precious strings afloss a nation.
Tommy Sumner fingers the dust
Coating the farmhouse grey,
Bland ketchup must, bayonet rust,
Hand grenades & Nestle
Spoke volumes while invoking occupants of yesterday.
France
September 13th
1939
Vae Victis
With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh
Louise Bogan
Festival terms charming to exstasi
The breathless followers of his visions,
Hitler’s vast voice soars over victory,
“The Almighty Lord has bless’d our weapons,
Surrenders wrung,
We suffer sleights no more!”
Poland – the very young victims of ‘Total War,’
Whose citizens now garden-weeds,
Their modern-age conqueror,
Now rules, he says, subhuman breeds,
Whose anthem plays no longer,
“In these fields we shall plant the seeds
Of our German future,
But first we must defeat the Western foes!”
He orders an attack before the snows.
Towards the front the Russians race,
Usurping spoils of war,
Vast empires face in that same place
Where they had met before…
Hands shaking ever warily like when men meet their whore.
Brest Litovsk
September 17th
1939
Russia’s Greed
they took the West, and they took the North,
they took the beehive, and took the haystack,
they took the South from us, and the East
Marina Tsvetaeva
As thugs unruly truly know no side
But that of bullying belligerence
Thro’ tradimental spheres of influence
Russia commits Slavic sorroricide;
The Poles defy
Their fate, as ev’ry man
Gives battle but to die, to kill all that he can.
With battle-hearts in stoic chest,
Poles held the lines at Wilno,
The Vauban Terespol at Brest,
Slung Turpentine at Grodno –
Tho’ sixteen days Modlin supress’d
The Wehrmacht – pincer’d, Oh!
As, one-by-one, each eastern fortress falls
Red soldiers wave red banners on the walls.
The conquerors gave way to beasts,
Murderous repression
KVD feasts on policemen, priests,
Siberia’s oppression
Awaiting true soul Polski at their country’s fourth partition.
Poland
October 6th
1939
Stalag VIIIB
Know that they all seek happiness
In hurting them men hurt themselves
& will be born again among them
Sutrakrtanga
‘This is defeat,’ thought Vladek Speigelman,
Acamp for Polish soldiers & theirsighs,
Unseasonably freezing, when even
The strongest birds were falling from the skies;
Him set apart
From fellow Poles, a Jew
Already, ghettos start, already ‘them’ & ‘you’.
While Vladek shiver’d in tents thin
The Poles slept in warm cabins,
Soup watery splash’d in his tin,
Plus crust of bed, for din-dins;
Puss, lice & frostbite clamour’d in
Thro’ weather shepherd shuns –
there is a line when fac’d with such despair,
the ones who’ll die are those ones over there.
In icy river Vladek preens
His flesh like morning prayer,
Whose madness means the cold day seems
Tropical to compare,
For life might be a game of chance but winners well prepare.
Lamsdorf
October 13th
1939
Aktion T4
Am I a beast, a murderous dog?
Men violated
Murdered
Ernst Toller
“As death a cure for all disease & strife,
As notes discordant spoil the sacred song,
The incurable raff & chaff of life,”
Insidiously pleads the tallow tongue,
“A mercy death
Physicians must bestow
Unto the wasted breath those useless ghostlings owe.”
Jaws of Doctor Karl Brandt grinded,
As he sipp’d the rich vermouth,
By his Fuhrer’s speeches blinded,
“Must the flower of our youth
Lose their lives, so feeble-minded
Might lead theirs – most uncouth!
Anybody unable for labour
Are valueless…” “So?” said the Reichsleiter,
How to effect transformations
Of lives unliveable,
The creations of foundations
Seeming charitable
Will euthanasia minister to lives incurable.
Tiergarten
October 19th
1939
Dogged Finns
Men’s strength
soldier’s courage
poet’s cries
Agostinho Neto
Stalin shades in East Poland pencil black,
Studies the subtleties of the buffer,
Senses good well the Nazis could attack
Thro’ the passes of Scandinavia;
Thus to the Finns
He offers ‘fair’ treaty
Six small airbases wins friendship with Muscovy.
At Helsinki’s curt rejection
The blood of the Russians rise,
Dismissing the Jus Gentium
Leningrad fills with supplies
For one brief march Karelian,
A splendid exercise,
As light of hearts to battle strong men go
Up to those husky regions busk’d in snow.
As columns press the border posts
A dog-fierce enemy
Like vengeful ghosts rake Russian hosts
With bear-hug enmity
& bullets glaz’d in freezing haze, all sides the foemen flee.
Finland
November 30th
1939
Graf Spree
It aint no place for a Christian
Below there – under sea.
For its all blown sand & shipwrecks
John Masefield
Albatross scythes thro the furrowing sea,
Nine helpless British merchantmen her pray,
Sinking each ship with a broadside fury,
The Altmark streams the survivors away;
In full steam haste
The English warships sped,’
Amidst the tackless waste hunter becomes hunted.
Three fast cruisers catch up with her
Off the prize-rich River Plate,
Kruppsides cripple the Exeter
But to duel at this rate
Could see the others destroy her
She flees, but is too late,
A shell from the Ajax blows the bridge sky high,
Panic! Mayhem! “Shnell! Schnell! To Uruguay!”
She sails form the harbour’s haven,
The English lie in wait,
An explosion, the scuttle done
Herr Lansdorff shares her fate,
In time honour’d tradition, for a captains shame is great
Montevideo
December 17th
1939
Winter War
You and I do not have songs of woe
When the feet is pricked with thorns, eyes turn moist,
We do not bear those stones of despair
Kamini Roy
Christmas leaves the isthmus with no victor,
The warring nations weld this strangest truce,
The only battles broker’d by Russia,
Slipping a violent neck thro’ Finland’s noose;
Her Red Army
Check’d long the whole frontier,
Foe fighting stubbornly, belief relieving fear.
“Be strong & quit yourselves like men,
Make Death proud, proud to take you,”
Finns cry as Russians push again,
The many against the few,
Trying to gouge the front open
Against their heart’s sisu,
Dancing the dance of death between the trees,
‘Schwip-Schwip’ they went, ‘Schwip-Schwip,’ snow-skimming trees.
Stalin sends in the Betka tanks
Along the forest trails,
Onto whose flanks these furclad ranks
Unleash a lethal hail,
Of victory brew’d in the flames of molotov cocktails.
Finland
January 12th
1940
(AA) Canto 18: Battlelines
Stalemate in the West
My lord, do not go forth to a combat so giant!
Do not raise your arm where weapons clash,
in the festival of young men, the dance of Inanna!
The Lugale
The Phoney War is raging at its height,
Both sides conduct a fierce leaflet campaign,
Sometimes patrols skirmish into the night,
Sometimes a ship slips neath the Spanish Main;
What tensions rise
Each time Hitler aborts!
Unheterlan Allies content to man the forts.
Twisted steps are swiftly taken,
Thro’ Nazi racial doctrine,
A Pole told she is now German
As her Ahnenpass stamp’d clean,
Resisting pacification
Leads to but one mean scene –
Rotting husbands rocking at the gallows,
Bandsmen drowning bays of wailing widows.
Gallant little Belgium proclaims
Her arm’d neutrality,
Sidestepping games, chief of her aims,
Avoid hostility!
But selfishness breeds weakness says the court of history.
Europe
January 15th
1940
Boarding Party
Go thou to England, rest awhile thy brow
Upon her breathing bosom, cool & free
& she shall lay her arms around thee now
Basil Fry
Where running water drains a paradise
Of saw-tooth’d fjords, glacier-goug’d, deep time
In ev’ry crevice, despite the advice
Of neutral countries, a volitive crime
Plays out today
With revirescent haste,
Thro’ rains & icy spray two naval nations fac’d.
Altmark’s bows the Cossack barges –
On running its prey aground,
Tough Marines & tougher Sarges
Leap like elks to eager pound
Metal decks, all whom emerges
Were cut down where them found –
Quite the professional cutlass attack
Went hell for leather & snickety-snack.
Their haubergeons ripp’d up, a row
Of matrosen slain-sneer
As down below, voice loud & slow,
“Any Englishmen here?”
“Yes we’re all British!” “So are we!” uprioted wild cheer.
Jøssingfjord
February 7
1940
Finland’s Fall
Weapons, weapons, weapons
And poets on duty, pulling the trigger
Ready to set the last cigarettes on fire
Léo Ferré
As Russia floods the Reich with oil & grain,
The Reich returns full train-loads right on time;
Munitions, tanks & the modern warplane,
To help them pierce the stalwart Mannerheim;
One million men
Launch a grand offensive –
Tis now not if but when that bastard front must give.
Thick furs fire at fifty paces,
But for ev’ry man they slay,
Five more Ivan took fresh places,
Five fresh men to hold at bay,
Sheer exhaustion etch’d drain’d faces,
Working both night & day…
Desperate Sisu holding grimly on,
But in the end, the brave end, War’s are won.
Yes War! the ancyent arbiter
Of disputing nations,
Whose proud victor may cast censure,
Politic’s extensions,
For battlefield diplomacy drowns converse with it’s guns.
Helsinki
February
1940
Swing Youth
In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about
Taylor Mali
Not every German struts about like Geese,
Some still prefer to swing the jinx away,
That unencumber’d, evergreen release
Teenagers feel when real musicians play;
Eurythmical,
Each gramaphonic scratch
Comblendeth mystical new music without match.
Young Xaver Stemmler caught the drug,
Grew his hair an awfa’ long,
Goes wiggling thro’ the jitterbug
In good English sang along,
When puffing like a paddletug,
Settling himself among
The girls, he curls a cigarette, or two,
Sits back & swoons, impassion’d, at the view.
“In here there is no Nazi yoke,
In here feel liberty,”
He lit a smoke, he bit a toke,
He blew the white rings free,
Facing the floor, lush fraulines laughing with frivolity.
Berlin
March
1940
Lights of Freedom
Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked
Kahlil Gibran
Aghast of life, this living suicide
Of odorous companionship bleeds out,
“As tears by aching patience must be dried,”
The rabbis plead, “you’ll be releas’d, no doubt!”
Hatches the wish,
For one the dark hath ceas’d,
Pretending, “I’m Polish!” Spiegelman’s time releas’d.
On Parsha’s Trauma stepp’d he out
To world of dazzling brightness,
No more the angry clanging shout
Of Nazis in their spiteness,
While all bucolical about
Spring sprung in its spriteness
& now a train to take him homewards bound
An open’d door, a house alive with sound.
His son could not stop hugging him,
& his wife so happy,
Then losing vim her voice grew dim,
“Vladek, the factory,
Was seiz’d & taken off us!” “But at least, my love, we’re free!”
Sosonoweiz
April
1940
Conquest of Norway
Trains clattering coastwards out of sight
along the valley floor in this textbook
twilight provide all the metaphor you need
Steve Xerri
Their native rock gript, from the Skagerak
To the Arctic Circle, by German hands,
Their soldiers withering neath the attack,
Their King harras’d by bombers thro his lands;
Norwegian sires,
Hardiest of races,
Enslaved – Hitler desires all their coastal bases.
Millennial neutrality
Sever’d by Teutonic sword,
Sad King Haakon quits his contree,
Crosses oer the Romsdalsfiord,
At Tromso’s bomb’d-out harbour quay
Hustl’d quickly aboard…
Surrounded by London’s fail’d strategum,
Troops cold & damp who lost him a kingdom.
An eagle dis across the day
Watching destroyers lurch
Beyond the bay, subdued & grey,
The skies became a perch,
A lofty throne from which all Norway felt it’s keen gaze search.
Galdho Peak
May 3rd
1940
Lancashire’s Finest
And we stretched out, unbuttoning our braces,
Smoking a Woodbine, darning dirty socks,
Reading the Sunday papers – I saw a fox
Alun Lewis
On Belgium’s border barrack’d the East Lancs,
The one word whisper’d in the mess was, “when?”
Amidst the chassis of Matilda tanks,
Captain Andrews reviews his tawny men;
Such hardy bunch
From Pendle’s rugged vale,
When coming to the crunch he knew his lads wunt fail.
Picking their spades up after tea,
Some small subsidence to mend,
Tom Sumner swivels to Billy,
His baby-faced schoolboy friend,
“All this diggin’ is plain silly,
These lines we shan’t defend,
As soon as Gerry turns himself hostile
We’ll leave these bloody trenches for the Dyle!”
They dug awhile & watch’d the sun
Conclude ephemeral,
The digging done, jigging his gun,
Tommy foresaw battle,
“There’s summat funny goin’ on… t’night… I sense trouble.”
St Amand-les-Eux
May 9th
1940
Teutonica
The moon’s rays shiver in the branches.
Forest dark. Silence. Dug-outs.
How wonderful May nights are !
Georgii Suvorov
Racist nations face the decadent West!
Spermatic as the coming of the Spring,
When leafy woods are at their loveliest,
& bowers vibrate with the blossoming,
When golden streams
Sol sends set on the scene,
When gorgeous glinting beams rebound off each machine.
Hitler boards the Amerika,
Under stars he trundles west,
Stirring strains of his dear Wagner
Lull him to a good hours rest,
Whirrs time by… train reaches bunker,
His bomb-proof Felsennest…
Praying before purpuric bloodshed starts,
“O God of Battles steel my soldier’s hearts!”
Facing the tranquil occident,
Rommel reclines with wines,
Cool, calm, content; his regiment
Should thunder thro’ the lines,
Flicking thro’ Sun Tzu, Von Clauswic & Charles DeGaulle’s opines.
Germany
May 9th
1940
Edge of War
This age her whole loveliness maul’d
batter’d & barren from a six year’s bout
so trod & torn, grossness itself defiled
RP Blackmur
Herr Hitler glances nervous at his wrist,
He counted only two hours ’til sunrise,
Ushers in his meteorologist,
“I promise you a week of clear blue skies!”
O happy plan!
The gods smil’d on his plot,
He gives the weatherman a medal on the spot!
Syphilitic abhorrancy
Of imperial desires,
Fuell’d constant by fate’s buoyancy
Oer dreams of epic empires,
Guided by strange clairvoyancy
A single man inspires
World history; its res gestae, whose thought
As truth or falsehood, over now, fierce fought.
Stepping out to view the passage
Of all-auroral dawn,
Sky-blue blank page, a brand new age
Was born this coming morn –
Forever & eternally this day shall be his own.
Bad Münstereifel
May 10th
1940
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