Axis & Allies
Serializing
Damo Bullen’s
Epic poem
AXIS & ALLIES
Throughout 2024
In 85 Cantos
Preface
What has been may be again: another Homer, & another Virgil, may possibly arise from those very causes which produced the first
John Dryden
Axis & Allies has been the work of my life. Beginning in Brighton, 1999, it has both escorted & driven me across the planet in the pursuit of its creation. Four years ago, on the Greek island of Samothraki, I thought I’d formally completed the poem, as I saw it then, & as this video attests;
An Olympiad later, or so, I shall be resuming my task, focusing this year on the central cantica, concerning the build up to, & the actualisation of, the Second World War. This video shows me at the very start of the poem’s latest composition period;
This next video was filmed January 18th, 2024, & shows me adding flavour to the stanza notes from events 1930-36.
The next video was film’d just a few days before the start of the Chinese new year (I’m a Fire Dragon)
The next video was film’d in Arran on the day I finalised the poem’s architectronics
Each week there will be two new cantos, out of 85 in total,
Uploaded onto Mumble Words
Enjoy !!
x
Damo
(AA) L’Amfiparnasso
So arose the practice of celebration in exalted verse the battles & other notable deeds of men, together with those of the gods.
Boccaccio
Invocation
Something has broken in the mouths
of the young men on earth
Our thoughts fails us, we are made poor
Arthur Yap
There is a glade in an ancyent forest
Where glittering pools of dewy azure
Assail ripe sense… insliding, moonbeam-bless’d,
Soul bathes in blissful dreamtime gleaming pure;
Attended by
My nine naked maidens,
Vulvaean lullaby lilting thro’ Love’s gardens.
She harps a song, she summons stars,
She waltzes round the waters,
She treats these sainted battlescars,
She paints a floating lotus,
She strums her summergold guitars;
Loxianic daughters!
How lovely & how livid floods thy light,
What verses & what wonders must I write?
They ring & weave thro’ tryptych tones,
Sing rich enchanted chime,
Soft music hones their mystic moans,
& so… my all must rhyme…
With hopes of flashing heroes up Parnassus slopes we’ll climb!
To My Readers
he had worn out his teeth
on the locks of ancient gates.
On the most out-of-the way paths
Ahmad Shamlu
I know these words rest heavy in the hands,
When reading them should heap a little while,
But think of me alone in distant lands,
With heavy load, abroad an extra mile;
Thro’ thorn, up steep,
In search of awesome views,
Where I would sit in deep communion with the Muse.
Gadswounds! My global chronicle
Will preserve the violent show
Of our planet’s lust for battle,
Men panting for Megiddo;
Friends! Be ready for to Google
All words ye do not know,
When mining into human history,
This is a kind of University!
Prepare a bath, pour out your wines,
Light up a candle’s flame,
Encase your minds, embrace these lines,
Enlightenment our aim,
War’s business is but terrible – not glory, nor a game.
Impulses
Unleash a poem slow enough,
Fie with vigilance & care
& you’ll discover lots of stuff
Don Paterson
I sing of Mars, whose blood-besplatter’d reign
Lived long among the secret brotherhoods,
& if these verses vast mine aim deem plain:
To elevate auld lives before the Floods;
When to the stars,
Or in our upmost caves,
This exile song of Mars an epic epoch saves.
As the vestige Villanovan
Found in Verruchian tombs,
As golden-thron’d Glasgerion
Immortalis’d ladies looms,
Ready, my lithe young mind…. Open!
When poetry resumes,
I’ll pay the World its histrionic dues,
Quite polyamorous to every Muse.
Non sono nazifaschisti,
Fair freedoms forged in blood,
The mystery of history
Spreads thro’ me like a wood,
In which I’ll twist unfettered feet as only Clio could.
Valedictions
I should invent my own speech
and leave others empty and afraid
that they did not know it, could not ask
Ricardo Pau-Llosa
I am no pickpurse of another’s wit,
Yet understand tradition is a tool,
When mostly I’m the Muses’ conduit
& sing to them, prostrately, as a fool,
“Je suis rien,
Per je ne suis pas dieu,
Vous etes tout mon bien, le lustre de mon cieux!”
As when old Thales’ Iliad
By princely rhapsodes utter’d,
The ghosts behind these lines glow glad
Whenever they’ll be mutter’d,
As if some new Upanishad
Down the Deccan flutter’d,
Containing all the epos of an age,
Far from the sterile tombstone of the page.
As when elders Albanian
Sang legends kith & kin,
Or Suqatran, hoary herdsman
Harps word-hordes held within…
Verse-vestibules of history maintain Cruachan’s Djinn!
Arcadia
A beggar at the crack of dawn comes with
an empty cup, just as a line of monks
serenely with their bowls set out for alms
Saksiri Meesomsueb
Always preparing, always reparing,
The new ensemble of a Danaan song;
No single impulse, but many sharing,
A swirl of verse, a whirl of words among
Eternal heights
Of endless mountenance:
Criss-crossing cloudless nights wild woodland swans advance!
With Saint John & the Patmos vine,
The Bard of the Scyldingas,
Dante’s Commedia Divine,
Tasso’s inspired Crusaders,
With Spenser’s store of faerie wine
& Milton’s masterclass,
I made my bed – from patchwork eiderdown,
I pluck’d my quills & ink’d them up in town!
From erudition constancy
To genius applies;
Consistency, coherency,
Watch phaerie wonders rise
From paranormal mutterings… them given golden guise.
Astrophel
into a world
waiting like
a quiet lover
Max Reif
I stretch to grasp the gross Orphean lyre,
These fingers on the fringe with fuga fraught,
When en-plein-air whisp’ring perfumes transpire,
Hyblean murmors of prophetic thought;
Beside Mankind
I find my social niche,
Reflective & refined; the poesy of pastiche.
Along the road I drank my wine,
While others gave it gladly,
Good souls were they, old friends of mine,
Such thanks to all who’ve had me,
Some tickl’d by this soul-sunshine,
Others flummox’d madly,
For poets & their strangely ancyent ways
Are meant to men affix… affront… amaze.
As from the Wealth of Nations rise
A pleasure-loving soul,
Invested ties friendship supplies
Up puff me proud & tall,
To conjure something rich & queer to steer us, each & all.
Testamundi Poeticus
And if there’s something that remains
Through sounds of horn and lyre,
It too will disappear into the maw of time
Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin
I am a man, many have gone before
& will come yet; to thee I trust this song,
Pray let her fly to every foreign shore,
Shewing the World how once the World went wrong;
Such manic times
Have ended, only just,
Whose freshness fills these rhymes far from the bookish dust.
I would the World should hear this song
& sing her down the ages,
So, when the epic, proud & long,
Renaissance ever stages,
Let poets ply their trade among
Polytechnic pages,
Finding a thing or two that they could use
In future conversations with the Muse.
Namore shall Homers chaunt War’s praise
Or Owens curse it’s game;
Some psychic craze, unbridl’d days,
Crude torture, quelling shame,
This is my long-wrought testament to what Mankind became.
Avanti!
I am not a mirage, but a being in flesh
Born of a sea that has neither
Waves nor shore, nor moon, nor star
Horace Gregory
When two traditions meet in epic song,
There history & poetry converge
Upon a point called nexus, whence among
Man’s consciousness progressive senses merge;
Tilling the soil,
Planting these sapling shoots,
Which over time uncoil as fields of figs & fruits.
So grow, ye lotus-burnish’d gold,
Ye zest-infested lemon,
Go store these tales of glories old
For future to look back on,
Five thousand years must now unfold
Before this age is run;
Half-way, of course, some Homer might arise
& half-an-age in poesy realize.
Asoka’s edicts I have seen
War’s monuments may you,
Days pass’d have been disturb’d, obscene,
But from the gore their grew
This peaceful pearl, this precious planetary parvenu!
Aquarians
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons,
And the war-cry was forgotten
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We’ll all look back on Us with pure disgust,
How on Earth did we let Hitler happen?
Lest we forget his deeds, with thee I trust
These tryptychs prim’d on a cryptic pattern;
Homeric horn,
Of perpetuity,
To thrill, to teach, to warn, through all futurity!
Beyond the threshfold of warfare
As fought by brave Achaean,
To atom-splitting solar flare
Flung from the North Korean,
The threat of death the World would share;
Bodies block the Scaean –
Unnumber’d, multitudinous, immense –,
How many lives are robb’d of innocence?
Like amaranth anemones
This book of rumbling words,
Mnemones & melodies,
Midst lines of waltzing thirds,
Must shimmer ever phosphorous as if t’were sufi birds.
(AA) Canto 1: Broken Peace
Armistice
And view with retrospective eye
Th’Imperial States whose awful destiny
It was to fade, decay, & disappear
Count Frederick Von Erlach
The War is over, namore the killing,
Meek Franciscans move thro’ many nations,
HOPE mops blood-sodden brows, when, god willing,
All countries & creeds breed good relations;
Order’d to yield,
The Wehrmacht leave the trench,
Behind, a bitter field & the ecstatic French.
The Hohenzollern dynasty
Emulates the ancyent Czar,
Forfeits the Kaiser’s monarchy
To the fortunes lost in war,
The Junkers of old Germany
Gathering at Weimar,
Shall delegate a democratic air,
A treacherous republic to declare.
In some disused railway carriage
All honour sign’d away,
A fretful page, a flaming rage,
To burn some bitter day,
When rise once more shall Germany, when all the world shall pay.
Forest of Compeigne
November 11th
1918
Hitler Awakes!
Indeed the idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men’s Eye much wrong :
Have drown’d my honour in a shallow cup
Edward Fitzgerald
Far from the front rested little Hitler,
Bed-stricken with a bout of syphilis,
Into the ward bursts a babbling pastor,
“Friends, we are beaten, there’s an armistice!”
The war was lost,
As fury rakes the room,
Into a sea-storm toss’d souls suffering in gloom.
He struggl’d to his feet in pain,
Rush’d pass’d the shell-shock’d patients
Into an evening’s winter’s rain,
Cursing the western nations,
“Is all our sacrifice in vain?
All our bleak privations?”
How could this be, he’d sens’d it in his core,
Herr Hitler was a superman of war.
Slump’d by rain-swept roadside seated,
Sobbing for Germany,
His depletedly defeated,
Yet wunderbar contree,
He felt brave future’s grooming to assume his destiny.
Pasewalk
November
1918
Flight of Peace
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll !
Leave thy low-vaulted past !
OW Holmes
Where once was warring calm must reign supreme,
When analysts can encase all the data,
Oer Saharan hues, cerulean dream
Dovelets flew, ellipsing the Meseta;
Dog-rough cloud rolls
Inspiral from the Earth,
Lest we forget those souls who sacrificed their birth.
The tumult & the shouting dies,
The world three armies receives,
The first with murder in the eyes
When a wounded heart bereaves,
The next already on the rise
As good men become thieves,
Then pity the last! forced to bear the mark
Of battle… some crippl’d, some mad, some dark.
O slender bird, majestic mein,
Men watch ye as ye fly
Up over Spain & in thy train
Men made contented sigh,
Watching thee dance amid the burning tapers of the sky.
Europe
November
1918
English Salon
one more presentiment
where certainty is not hard to come by:
wing tips brush the face of the waters
Gottfried Benn
Men gather’d for Parisian soiree,
The leading lights of England, more or less,
Collected like a Bloomsbury bouquet
By Mary Borden, warden & hostess;
When, with war won,
Gone was the nervous strain,
Which flummox’d everyone like maggots in the brain.
Lloyd-George was there, his snow-white hair
Did flutter with the winces,
Winston would mutter with a stare
While one of nature’s princes
A garb of Arab robes did wear
“Moscow shan’t convince us,”
Splurts Churchill, “of their Bolshevik journey,
One might as well legalize sodomy!”
“Now of the Germans let us speak…”
“The Kaiser should be shot!”
“Let’s squeeze & tweak, ‘til pips do squeak
Their war debts ‘til we’ve got
Enough to pay off Washington & stave the Empire’s rot.”
Paris
January
1919
Soloheadbeg
Not in the clamour of the crowded street
Not in the shouts & plaudits of the throng
But in ourselves are triumph & defeat
Henry Longfellow
“Home rule is Rome rule”, the Six Counties say,
The rest of Ireland bounc’d back from the booths,
Sinn Fein land-sliding, biding ’til this day
Of souls exploding to their simple truths;
Ireland’s Ireland,
Let’s send the British home,
Still… Ulstermen won’t stand the slightest link with Rome.
As gelignite, by horse-drawn cart,
Trundles down a country lane,
Six rifles aim’d at head & heart,
Halts two soldiers in its train,
A moment’s madness made them dart
For cover, but were slain,
Whose deaths – before false warriors were blam’d –
The Irish Republican Army claim’d.
“Posters pasted like paper swords
Painting duty martyrs,
Promise rewards from London’s lords
& pardons meant to part us…”
“We’ve got ’em rattl’d lads, fuck their English Magna Cartas.”
Tipperary
Jan 21st
1919
Table Talk
Touch’d by this vastness
I ask the boundless earth;
Who after all will be your master
Mao Tse-Tung
Men gather’d for Parisian soiree,
The leading lights of England, more or less,
Collected like a Bloomsbury bouquet
By Mary Borden, warden & hostess;
Where, with war won,
Gone was the nervous strain
Which worried everyone like maggots in the brain.
Lloyd-George was there, his blizzard hair
Did flutter with the winces,
Winston mutter’d a lizard stare,
While one of nature’s princes
Wore robes the Arab wizards wear –
“Moscow shan’t convince us,”
Splurts Churchill, “of its Bolshevik journey,
One might as well legalize sodomy.”
“Now of the Germans let us speak…”
“The Kaiser should be shot!”
“Let’s squeeze & tweak until pips squeak
Her war debts, ’til we’ve got
Enough to pay off Washington & stave the Empire’s rot.”
Paris
February 1919
Homecoming
That, setting, the sun has only to highlight
Girls crowding the railway track, as the train slows,
For me to discover it is not my station
Boris Pasternak
At the Douamont fort, by sunset shades,
Lay veterans a wreath to heal Verdun,
Melancholic souls of fallen comrades
Escort one, living, back to Briancon;
Two hundred francs,
Two shirts, suit, shoes, no more;
With all a nation’s thanks for winning them the war.
Click-clack’d the slowly sloping train
Up thro’ the Alpine passes,
Attack’d by shawls of driving rain,
He wipes his misty glasses…
“At last! Mon coeur sees home again!”
Light & glossy lasses –
Like flutes, dribbling jubilant glucose –
Applauding nostoi of their handsome heroes.
He heads for home, he sheds a tear,
A gasp! “C’est Jean-Francois!”
Who, halting cheering, jolts back beer,
Drenching thirst in nectar,
“Deux francs,” “Deux francs! C’est ridicule pour une Stella Artois!”
France
March
1919
Spoils of War
No longer hosts encount’ring hosts
Shall crowds of slain deplore
They hang the trumpet in the hall
Michael Bruce
They came like Jackals to a wounded bear,
Reflected in the mirrors of the Hall
Men shone no souls – remorseless, unaware,
That what they will’d would build a gilded wall
Twyx world & peace,
This fog-drench’d vengeful clime,
When, who was there to police the intransigent crime
Of Germany’s reparations,
When memories of menace
Choke all cautious moderations –
Grunting hogs like top-tier tennis,
Carcass-tooth’d the delegations,
Concurring, say “When is
A conqueror unable to dictate
What crown or territory to mandate!”
On Berlin foists the guilt of war,
The peace branch but a twig,
That scratches sore, a corridor
Links Warsaw to Danzig –
The French entrenching with revanch, how deep the spurr’d heels dig.
Versailles
June 28th
1919
Returning Heroes
Goodbye my friend, without hand or word,
and don’t let sadness furrow your brow,
in this life dying is not a thing unheard
Sergei Yesenin
When Alister & Charles Glen Rosa reach,
Miraculously both twins had surviv’d
The war unscath’d, one day on Brodick beach
They took a picnic, felt they’d home arriv’d
Safe from the sights
Of body-bits in sacks
Of lives in sniper sights ‘tween suicide attacks.
What men the boys had all become,
Tensions ever simmering,
Jock wheel’d round Lamlash by his mum,
Jabber-gibbon gibbering,
& Douglas, ne’er without his rum,
Constantly pestering;
“I fought for you, & I lost my brother…
Those who’d stay’d at home bought him another.
Our twins stroll to their timeless glen,
Untouch’d by all the games
Of Gods & Men, Goat Fell was then
In green & orange flames
Lit by the sun, they sat scene-stunn’d, whispering dead friends’ names.
Arran
July
1919
(AA) Canto 2: Delegations
Reparations
Every bit of scrap iron sits
In the hall of the old manor,
And, on the wall, a shadow flits
Theophile Gautier
“Upon the sacred soil of Vaterland
No enemy had stepp’d a single foot,
Thus how audacious they are to demand
These reparations, slump us in a rut!?”
Poor Germany
Never might recover
As when two soul mates see their other with a lover!
Where shrunken, starving babies curse
The birth to which them fated
As once pure housewives fill their purse
Thro men’s lust satiated
A scapegoat sentence well rehears’d
“Let all Jews be hated,
Living luxuriously while we strive
Each day, in desperation, to survive.”
Six cases of the best Moet
Blackmarkets Ribbentrop,
Round cabaret, the play, ballet,
He tour’d his mobile shop,
Some handsome, dashing chancer somehow dancing to the top.
Berlin
August
1919
Broken Dreams
I have nae will to sing or danse
For fear of England & of France
God send them sorrow & mischance
Sir Richard Maitland
“Upon the sacred soil of Vaterland,
No enemy had stepp’d a single foot,
Thus how audacious are they to demand
Such reparations;” tuskers in a rut,
For Germany
Never might recover
As when two soul mates see each other with a lover.
As shrunken, starving babies curse
The birth that they were fated,
As once pure housewives fill a purse
Thro’ men’s lust satiated,
The scapegoat sentence well rehears’d,
“Let the Jews be hated,
Living luxuriously while we strive
Each day of desecration, to survive!”
Six cases of the best Moet,
Black-markets Ribbentrop,
Round plays, ballet & cabaret
He tour’d his mobile shop,
Some handsome, dashing chancer dancing, somehow, to the top.
Berlin
November 1919
Brave New World
Sleep, for the yards of jail houses
Are all teeming with violent death,
And you are the more in need of rest
Muhammad Mahdi Al-Jawahiri
“Let us establish a League of Nations,”
Say the wardens of a war-weary world,
Glimpsing Man’s maturer aspirations,
Now that his battle-banners have been furl’d;
The status quo
Returns to normalcy,
The nurse-child of Anglo-Saxon hegemony.
Britain proclaims pre-eminence,
Now Russia has revolted,
The moral laurels worn by France,
For ‘peace’ truly devoted,
But spurning this most perfect chance,
Ostrich isolated,
The Yanks withdraw yon oceanic moats,
Jealous of England’s empire’s six full votes.
On a simple piece of paper
‘World Peace’ has had its birth,
America’s non-signature
Belittling its worth,
Shirking responsibilities as policemen of the Earth.
Geneva
January 1920
War & Peace
I am the rustling of the world
the swaying between here and elsewhere
the dumb foliage of the cactus
Abdourahman A. Waberi
As the snarl of that Star-Spangl’d nation,
Which ended Europa’s love of violence,
Shrivels, daily, into isolation,
Two Philopoema, charg’d with their defence,
Nestle to eat
Pot hot, home-made dinner,
Fans wafting off the heat from a white veranda.
As Mrs Patton pours the wine,
The gentlemen wisdom share,
Drape musings with a southern whine,
On the art of Tank Warfare,
“To penetrate the foe’s front line
Swift as a grizzly bear
“Plucks salmon, strike, back’d by artillery,
Not hamper’d spread defending infantry.”
Once Mrs Mamie Eisenhower
Had serv’d the last liqueur,
A quick shower, within the hour,
They’ll start a smart lecture
On ‘Pursuit of Routing Armies,’ by a young MacArthur.
Camp Meade
September
1920
The Nazi Party
I cannot tell what ails me,
But this I know for sure,
Thou only art my cure
Baba Tahir
He took the stand before a growing band
Of misfits, bandits, madmen & chancers,
Enchants them with a panorama spann’d
Over time across epic expanses;
His voice rings loud,
Flush’d with higher German,
Binding demotic crowd to th’ypnotic sermon.
“For over fifteen centuries
Reign’d the Holy Roman law,
When Fate unites the Germanies
We shall speak the peace once more
& Versaille’s damned iniquities
Demolish with a roar!”
”Rubbish!” some quatted heckler dares a noise,
Dragg’d off, rough’d up by tough-mouth’d bully-boys.
All hail the hero of the right,
Staunch National Socialist,
Ready to fight by plebiscite
Thro politics & fist,
The decadent democracies… his horde applaud upryst.
Munich
December
1920
Baby Boom
Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads,
Like gnats around a streetlight in summer,
The children we could have
Sharon Olds
Charlie Sumner stagger’d down Accy Road,
Hit Havelock’s lock-in, a quick whiskey,
Then thro’ his crude two-up, two-down, tiptoed,
To pounce upon his wife, drunk & frisky;
“Gerroff!” a clout,
His silent smile’s intrigue
Bends to triumphant shout… “We’ve won the blummin’ league!”
How rare is it to find true mate
To share thy meagre ration,
Youths rush upstairs to celebrate,
Indulging perfect passion
Without a jonny, for, of late,
Babies are in fashion:
He gasps as he sighs as his seed slips in,
A cry! Rose rises, “Our Jack needs feedin!”
His wife away…. some charabang
Lets off a lively BOOM!
With barren pang the clammy clang
Of battle claims the room,
While friends that fell at Passcheandale wail, “Charlie!” thro’ the gloom.
Burnley
May
1921
Enchanted Land
water they needed
this morning when
the river was drying
Rina Garcia Chua
The Oppenheimer’s lov’d the holidays,
Whose Picassos hung at Riverside Drive,
Were nothing to the glorious haze
Of shimmering sun the day they’d arrive
Back at the ranch,
Hard by Albuquerque,
For barbies, branch-by-branch, jug-glugs of Wild Turkey.
Young Bobby donn’d a cowboy’s hat
Said to the ranchers, ‘let’s go,’
With native shaman sat to chat
& smok’d & tok’d each next go,
Then kinda stoned in silence sat
By Sangre de Cristo
Where lonely, wee Los Alamos appear’d
To strike some chord within him, fraught & weird.
He rode back home, where there did sit
Some letter forwarded,
So open’d it, a flapping fit!
‘Mom, I’ve been accepted,”
She rushes in; “Where is it?” “Ma” “What?” “I’m off to Harvard!”
New Mexico
June
1921
The Birth of Ulster
The cavalry flew by and vanished,
The storm thundered and hushed.
Lawlessness bore down, bore down
Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin
From powderkegs of possibilities,
Europa exploded with republics,
Enjoying the responsibility
Of self-determination – old dog tricks
Of sit, beg, stand,
Silenc’d, & forever,
Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia!
Now Ireland wants a bit of that
Again, quite complicated,
As murder gangs go tit-for-that,
Assassins unabated,
The Black & Tans despising ‘Pat,’
Heinous & hated,
This crowded hour of Gaelic history,
Deals in dark death instead of liberty.
Partitioners accept the curse,
Imperial hybrid;
It could be worse, the public purse
No thirsty invalid,
For, to be fair, wealth everywhere blares what the British did.
Ireland
July
1921
Curiosity
a poet came,
lightly opened his lips,
and the inspired fool burst into song
Vladimir Mayakovsky
“The reason I have usher’d you here for,
Truman, is to find out information,”
Said the American ambassador,
“On a political demonstration,”
“Where, sir?” “Munich…”
“The Nazis?” “Yes…” “The place?”
“Cornelius Street, quick field check, y’know, just in case.”
Smith silent sits as Hitler stands
Above the hundertschaften,
Where ruffians in red armbands,
Men of lowly origin,
Goose-stepping slid to marching bands,
Twas such a raucous din,
That any tetratologist would think
Some creature-thing was shrieking at the brink.
Outslurr’d the Juden diatribe
From babbling, bubbling craw;
Thro’ jeer & jibe threats clear proscribe
The shirkers of the war,
Whose profiteering cowardice sets fires in the straw.
Munich
November 15th
1922
(AA) Canto 3: Saunterings
Reparations
She has been abandoned
She has been betrayed
God has betrayed her
Mary Borden
The muck of money – filthy, spreadable –
Fair fertilizer of economy,
But where inflation spews incredible
Even the richest lose autonomy;
In direst straits,
Deutschland holdeth no cards,
Owing the Western States marks by the milliards.
Well… Washington leant London dough,
Paris, too, which paying needs,
When hoping, both, to fend the blow
Springething from Human greeds,
“Here’s what you owe!” the beaten foe
Are told, “forget your needs…”
Berlin, alas, unable to conduct
A single cent per dollar – purely fuck’d!
With swaggerstomp the French explode
All oer the Ruhr’s coalfield,
Send, load-by-load, back home, abroad
The Rhineland’s vital yield,
A vicious sleight of victory which VENGEANCE aches to wield.
Dortmund
January 11th
1923
Putsch
Who is this screamer in the street?!
With a frightened voice and broken heart
Who is this mad man?!
Ali Khalifa
Minacious voice yelling, “Now is the time!”
Bullies into the Beurgerbraukeller,
Bemedall’d Ludendorf lending his crime
A strange respect – that dangerous fella,
Unfash’nable,
Leaps up, shooting his gun,
“Countrymen the national revolution’s begun!”
While Roehm mans up the Ministry,
Hitler’s phrenzied followers
Steam enteric thro’ the city –
Trucks of singing stormtroopers-,
To ringing Rathaus chivalry,
Down Residenstrasse’s
Streets to the Odeonsplatz… in their way,
Long line of carbines straining for the fray.
“March with me men!” they step, a roar
Of angry bullets fly,
Hitting the floor, splatter’d in gore,
Bullets graze Goering’s thigh,
While Hitler scamper’d safely off, & left good friends to die.
Munich
1923
Bolshevik Baton
After your death
It was windy every day
Every day
Anne Carson
Death shadow’d the legend-life of Lenin,
That ceaseless leader-slayer of the Tsar,
Wheel’d thro’ wet woods, slowly, by Joe Stalin,
Spoon-feeding poison’s ruthless coup de grace;
The man is dead,
But now the God is born,
Drap’d in the Russian red like rosy-finger’d Dawn.
As bonfires warm the freezing square,
Queues trail down every side-street,
Breath funnelling the sunless air,
Patiently wait to meet
A corpse embalm’d – the empire’s heir
Sentinel, stamping feet,
Stood guard o’er the focus of devotion –
Before him coasted a bear-fur ocean…
…To whom he gestures for silence,
Voice stylish, loud & clear
The arrogance, the violence,
The flashy Cavalier-
“We shall make Mother Russia great!” for “Stalin!” thousands cheer.
Moscow
January
1924
Mein Kampf
Everybody must roar his defiance.
Arise! Arise! Arise!
Millions of hearts with one mind
Tian Han
The world’s press finds the Blutenburgstrasse,
Beheld a new media sensation,
Some strange, enigmatic insurrector,
Shrieking, “I am the nation’s salvation!”
Thought’s purest prime
Hess summons to his room,
Dictating all the time his stately visions bloom.
“The Germans are the Master Race
& over the Earth shall lord,
We must secure our living space
Eastwards with a war-sharp sword,
Where Slavic chaff shall serve our grace
& Sanhedrim abhor’d
Be cut out like the cancer that they are…
Then build a global throne upon the scar!
…But first must come conflict’s dull pain;
The reckoning with France,
Then march to gain Russian champaigne,
Such fertile, vast expanse…”
A warbling lark left both entranced, watching the blossom dance.
Landsberg
June
1924
Busker’s Holiday
The more the autumn wind is wicked
And the moon desperate, —
The merrier we, vagrants, get
Georgiy Ivanov
The Putsch becomes a martyrs’ memory…
His wound well heal’d, tho’ each day morphine craves,
Herr Hitler’s plenipotentiary
To Venice travels, of the tender waves;
His wife beside,
In love to all appear,
As gently they did glide by tendant gondolier.
They took a train to meet, in Rome,
Il Duce’s iconoclast,
But heard, each hour, “he’s not at home,”
Such a dirge of days were pass’d
Round Roman tombs, St Peter’s dome,
‘Til realis’d, at last,
His mission, to acquire from Fascist friends,
Firm source of funds had fail’d… Herr Goering sends
A letter to Bavaria,
Which disappointment fills;
While, scarier, there’s barely a
Pfenning to pay the bills,
The Nazi squirearchy into obsoletion spills.
Prenestina
July
1924
Monty’s School
On the strength of one link in the cable
Dependeth the might of the chain;
Who knows when thou mayest be tested?
Captain Ronald Hopwood
As mortal mixtures of Earth’s many moulds
In substance vary – density & mass
& destiny, too, which Lachesis holds;
Those student soldiers, one afternoon class,
Sense something deep
Within their teacher’s soul,
Like greatness half asleep, behind time’s creeping wall.
“The soldiers art is pure details,
From the spotlessness of dress,
To knowing all his effort fails
If a moment of success
Unfollow’d up, triumph soon stales,
Inactions deem useless –
So, be incisive boys, whene’er you can,
& victory springs from the simplest plan!”
With common sense quite clarified,
His lads all loved to learn,
& bright applied each light their guide
Thro warfare’s fires did burn –
A luminary torch to whom with joy they yearn’d return.
Camberly
November
1924
Mussolini
more faithful man was never known,
and (from Valerius) we learn
that he was named the Great in Rome
Compiuta Donzella
As rivers gently drift along the glen,
Then gather speed & gallop down the falls,
New Ceasar, elevated by his men,
Has cross’d his Rubicon to take Rome’s walls;
Whose government
Made Fascist Mafia,
Whose Black-shirts implement a fresh brand of terror.
Ciano left the rush of Rome
To meet his lord & idol,
Strolling about his famous home
Beneath some crumbling castle,
Where playing in the sunswabb’d gloam,
A pretty, pig-tail’d girl,
“Signori, who is she?” “My eldest child.”
“Her name is?” “Edda, essentially wild!”
Il Duce donn’d his sleeping robe,
“My boy I must retire,”
Thick fingers probe the spinning globe,
Rest on his heart’s desire –
The little isle of Malta to attend his Black Empire.
Rocca Delle Caminale
1925
The Pilgrim
The altars burn,
And our voices soar
To God’s very throne
Anna Akhmatova
It was a day of thunder in the hills,
When Winifred beshook Herr Hitler’s hand!
Electric shock unblocks the pagan thrills,
He surely was the wonder of the land,
As Wagner was
When Nibelungen wrung
From primal minds because their spirit must be sung.
The orchestra did sooth & rage
To beautiful conduction,
Brunhild & Seigfreid gave the stage
A seminal production,
& then, when Wotan war did wage,
Valhalla’s destruction
Induc’d, in Hitler, total ecstasy,
That art for us, was for him prophecy.
She led him to the private tomb
Of the Wagner garden,
In moonlit gloom one could assume
Moods were tun’d by Hadyn,
As felt he brother demigod, Zeus, to this Poseidon.
Beyreuth
July 23rd
1925
Squadron-Leader Bligh
I’ll wait for daybreak
and we’ll figure out what to do
with all this sunshine
Harriet Anena
With skilful ease he piloted the plane,
Views zooming under albescent sky;
Thro’ patchwork carpet snakes the Bognor train,
‘Tween tenements of barley rusk & rye;
Swooping the Downs
Loops the stylish flyer,
Oercruising coastal towns, circling Chichester’s spire.
They heard his bi-plane’s buzzing speck,
Propellers eager spinning,
Wing him atop the field to check
If the Old Boys were winning;
He parks his steed, kisses Kate’s neck,
“Let me save the inning!”
“We need a six off the last ball to win!”
Giles Smythe-Tompkinson bowls a wicked spin;
With willow-flash the ball was sent
Beyond the bound’ry rims,
“Huzzahs!” are vent, into the tent
For sandwiches & pimms,
Says Nigel Bligh, “Back to the sky before the evening dims!”
Goodwood
1927
(AA) Canto 4: Fascist Dawn
Nuclear Pretensions
When or where did the ancient world, or ours,
Ever see such lively, ever feel such pure
Light coming out of dark ink
Giambattista Marino
Pools of academic alligators
Are jewels in the muddy earth of us,
Repudiating repudiators
With gliding minds, perfectly merciless;
What feats of brains
Did beastlike congregate
About the crystal chains, to conquer & create.
Now branded ‘Oppy’, broomstick thin,
A dashing, tall chain-smoker,
Who wanted everything to win
From bursaries to poker,
& after dark, cigars & gin,
Just a Joe Bloggs joker –
But all the time, relentless, without pause,
His brain was calculating Newton’s laws.
He chew’d, with Otto Hahn, the cud,
Cueing up the Meson,
The whole world would be won if could
Be conjur’d, with right reason,
Bombs atomical the next time warfare was in season.
Gottingen
1927
First Waves
My heart is drowning in love for you
I am so proud of you
I pledge my life to you
Sayed Khalifa
Little white cloud-flake breaks a blue spring sky,
While below, in the glittering city,
Sit avant garde sipping martini dry,
The men looking good, the women pretty;
Beneath that cloud
Defeat did, drifting, fade;
The people laughing loud at this strange street parade.
Men joining hands, chests out-puffing,
Herr Hitler & disciples;
Hawk-ey’d Hess, gorbellied Goering,
Club-footed, dwarfish Goebells,
Himmler completes the inner-ring,
Lord of the Schutzstaffels;
Defended by the brown-shirted SA,
Sensing their time will come… but not this day…
That will end in disappointment –
Like condescending water,
The party sent just three percent
From the common voter –
Who on earth would ever let a Nazi date his daughter!?
Berlin
May
1928
Dionysia
Ladies & young men in love,
Long live Bacchus & long live Love!
Let every one make music, dance, & sing
Lorenzo De’ Medici
Excess in Weimar’s capital prevails!
This eldorado of exquisite chic
Cocaine contains – characters & cocktails!
Round Adlon’s rooms swan-headed trollies creak,
Where julep mint
& complex oyster dish
Spice every ducal stint with a royal relish.
From cocktails at the Jockey Club,
They flooded to the negro bars
The jumbl’d, thumping, huddl’d hub
Where saxophones & guitars
Muffl’d the bass’s double dub
Where decadents from Mars
Surround the Carolina cryin’ queen,
Freaks cheek-to-cheek her plaintive wails did preen.
In saunter’d Roehm, a transvestite
Busty, in bright blonde wig,
& gave a light to some young sprite
Naked but for a fig
& took him to a secret room, men grunting like a pig!
Berlin
July
1929
Wall Street Crash
Tents of winds are my home
And stones are my furniture
The cycle of my days is one of curses and misery
Mustafa Seed Ahmed
Young land of a liquor-laced razzmatazz,
Grown richer from the Big War’s victory,
Home to the silver screen & jive-cat jazz,
Flag-waving for global prosperity;
Along Wall Street
Ford motorcades whizz by,
Princeton & Yale compete for share-blocks rising high…
Whose shares, in one black instant fell,
Auguring a global doom,
Strain’d faces yelling, “Sell! Sell! Sell!”
Burst the pink bubblegum boom,
‘Twas like some scene from Dante’s Hell
As chaos gript the room,
& thro it all one sharp sound to derange –
The staccato click of the Stock Exchange.
“All dem good times dey be over,”
Serfs cry from shore to shore,
How ruthless the great leveller,
Rich stoopeth with the Poor,
A wicked vortex currencies upsucking by the score.
New York
October 28th
1929
Nazi Fires
If I were fire, I would set the world aflame;
If I were wind, I would storm it;
If I were water, I would drown it
Cecco Angiolieri
The mountains seem’d in song, as fell the snow
On Oberstdorf; whose timber rooves did seem,
To all who gaz’d upon the streets below,
A darling face in a sensual dream;
Herr Dietrich lit
Saltpetre cigarette,
Continuing to sit, a hunter with a net.
The townsfolk all surpris’d to see
First physical swastika
On Dietrich’s arm, show sympathy
When, bullish as Boudicca,
He spews, “this world catastrophe
Jews of America
Have conjur’d – a dystopian nightmare,
With vermin infiltrating everywhere!”
With set of sun he rode the slopes
Up in a cable car,
By torchlight gropes around laid ropes
All smear’d with pitch & tar,
To light bewitching swastika – that flaming, far-seen star.
The Nebelhorn
November
1929
Der Fuhrer
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing
Where feeble hope could never have flown
Annamacharya
Max Stemmler took Kreuzberg’s mendicant streets,
Epiloguizing dejected fortune,
Each crashing bank long labour’s theft repeats,
Made money might as well be on the moon;
One grey stone wall
New poster burning bright,
Piercing his solemn soul as if ’twere holy light.
Max bought the party newspaper,
Absorb’d it over coffee,
The Voelkischer Beobachter,
Giddying philosophy,
Promises of doing better,
See… today… a rally!
He asks for the bill, “Danke, that was nice.”
“Since you’ve come in coffee doubl’d in price!”
A new Crusade to test the Jews,
None knows just what it is,
Pairs of worn shoes torn into twos,
Scuddle home in phrenzies,
Flogging that dogged gospel to bedraggl’d families.
Berlin
1930
Businessmen
Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs,
And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels,
And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs.
Thomas Hardy
From Immenstadt & Kempton went the boys
So proud storm-troops to be for the SA,
A clank of jackboots, rhetoric & noise,
& over-barging all fools in their way;
Threw crude Jew jibes
At holidaymakers,
As when astonish’d tribesmen first view’d the Quakers.
Hoteliers from round the town
Congather’d, handshakes, all smiling,
‘Til with a stern, mood-slicing frown,
“Those bastards unbeguiling
That prance about in shirts of brown,
Paradise defiling,
Are scaring off our customers, you know,
I mean… Ringelmann, he is a maestro!”
“Judge Neuberger, a whole floor takes
All summer – each carafe
With wine & steaks adds up, & makes
Good wages for my staff –
The Jews are good for business – while the Nazis just make me laugh!
Oberstdorf
1930
Festival of Rice
He was adorned in his very best,
he was oiled like a king,
with beads of silver in his hair
Ama Ata Aidoo
As Basho join’d the chanting how he cuts
A handsome figure in those robes of gold,
Among the drummers round the paddy huts
With Kagarume dancers, young & old;
As wood blocks flail
To clank of bamboo rods,
The Sumiyoshi hail the Shinto harvest gods.
With dip & swirl the girls releas’d
The whirl of a spinning top,
The fields are bless’d as begs a priest
The boon of a fruitful crop,
then villagers all flock to feast
& drank dry every drop,
As did ancestors centuries ago
Intently sentimental went Basho
& toasted all the emperors
“Their names grow with the trees,
Who fend for us, descend for us
On Heaven’s splendid breeze –
To these I am devoted, & to all we Japanese.”
Kansai
June 14th
1930
(AA) Canto 5: Crescent & Cross
Islamica
Even the flowers greet you as of old;
Then you may well divine in what degree
My heart has already welcome for my friend
Kokin Shu
In pagan Mecca was man-mountain born,
Thro’ meditations in the Hiran cave,
From Heaven’s will Qu’ranic verses shorn,
But shunn’d from town with condescending wave;
Still, Medina,
His righteousness perceiv’d,
”Those who pray to Allah by Paradise reciev’d.”
While Meccanese rode to rid
The deserts of this ‘prophet,’
Defensive actions made valid
By visions of Mahomet,
For bloody decade far outdid
All rivals threat-by-threat,
& with an empire flowing far & wide
Islam’s first Imam, cleans’d, at Khaibar died.
Those men who tasted the divine
Holler up a sandstorm,
Drive Byzantine from Palestine,
Damascus made a home,
Then from the holy city all the papists whip to Rome.
Jerusalem
638
Chansons du Roland
In the distance a star was absorbing
my tiredness, and itself heading like a pilgrim
towards you, leaving blank its place in the heavens
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
For France must father Carolinga fly,
Roland commands his rear-guard curtle axe,
This is a day on which brave men must die,
When fluttering to a stunning climax
Swarm’d pagans flow,
“Count Roland blow thy horn!”
“Such act would shame me so, we face the foe alone!”
Duelling among the dull-hued stones,
Dragons face the Oriflame,
Many a splint’ring emir’s bones
Knew, briefly, Durendal’s name,
This field a symphony of moans,
Winning eternal fame,
Only the master of the Franks still stands,
Seizing his oliphant with slimy hands…
Riffs of haunted thunder resound
For fifty leagues or more,
Charles turns around… the battleground
A charnel-house of gore,
Scarring the ghostly frontier of a long, religious war.
Ronceveaux
778
Crusaders
This desert, to which you came
with two raised palms like an absurd hope,
no longer begets prophets
Amjad Nasser
From the Praetendarius of Llanfair,
To the old Thesaurarius of Lille,
It seems Pope Urban’s essence moves thro’ air,
Prospering thro’ keen priesthoods, steeling zeal;
Christ’s foremost knight
Tours Europe’s fidget thrones,
“Those Muslims we must fight!” rouses convictive tones.
Men march & capture Antioch,
Long siege of land & water,
Fights infidels, from rock-by-rock,
Apocalyptic slaughter
Depleting, daily, human stock –
War’s terminal quota;
Infernal, body-mangl’d battlefield,
Where hymns mingl’d as the moaning for mercy peel’d.
From miracle to miracle
The city stood no chance,
A gritty yell, the citadel
To libbards, fell, of France,
Lungs bellowing, “Avanti!” “Adelante!” & “Advance!”
Jerusalem
1099
Sa-Lah-Din
It is bitter
To walk among strangers
When the strangers are in one’s own land
Iain Crichton Smith
The Crescent League cries faith & sacred war;
Turban’d Berbers, pitch-black Afric captains,
Pristine Emirs, the shark-paced Almacor,
Sunburn’d Saracens, fervent Syrians;
Lord at the helm,
One man unites them all,
To raze Outremer’s realm & seize the Wailing Wall.
Damascus & Aleppo fall
To the dark Mujahaddin,
Crushing Christian armies small
At that slaughter at Hattin,
“Allah!” the cause, “Allah!” the call,
“Allah! & we shall win!”
At last, on Heaven’s city look’d he down,
Where man-on-man press’d forwards for renown.
The situation sacrosanct
Beneath a saffron sky,
The Templars thank’d their lord, outflank’d,
They set themselves to die,
Preserve their place in Paradise & Allah’s hordes defy .
Jerusalem
1187
Constantinople’s Fall
‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’
Emma Lazarus
As panting deer outpace the panther’s claws,
Then sleep where wolves oft meet in company,
The Ottoman clamps down his drooling jaws
Upon outposted Christianity;
Eighty thousand
Gore-grizzl’d warriors,
Encamp upon the sand soft kissing Bosphorous.
As cannons swallow gunpowder,
To spit out destructive balls,
Devil clamour ripples louder
From the beaches ‘neath the walls,
Scenes of sorry death enshroud her,
Byzantium,who falls –
Janissaries slaying the last Ceasar,
Crescent flags commanding Kerkoporta.
Leaving the Sultan to his prize
The Genoese flee,
As local wise men realize
Passage to Italy,
They leave behind a changing name, shaming its history!
Istanbul
1453
Death of Chivalry
Her tears of bitterness are shed: when first
He had put on the livery of blood,
She wept him dead to her
Robert Southey
Beneath the Pyramids the Sultan stands,
Protecting ancestral lands Islamic
From Ottoman conquest, his line expands,
Across the sands, strange musket chambers click;
Fathomless force
That is the flow of time,
Electrifies his horseman on a charge sublime.
Bravebreast Aegyptians went to work,
Yanking drawstrings back on bows,
Deep lust for bloodshed bleeds bezerk
As fans one thousand arrows,
But images of future lurk
From the Turkish shadows,
Masters of black gunpowder blasting shots,
Withers the Mamluk line to trembling trots.
As Lion Kings must lose their pride
When old worlds meets the young,
Lead-ball-wall-wide of genocide,
Dead men from dead mounts flung,
As, knowing he would be the last, the last Sultan was hung.
Cairo
1517
Siege of Vienna
The bird in me awoke again
Its cry spread anguish
In the heart of my kingdom
Nimrod Bena Djangrang
Islamic spectres on Austria fell,
Vienna must, for Europe’s soul, stand firm,
Else Pasha & the Turkish infidel
Into the west & thro’ their wives shall worm;
Aiming the guns
At Allah’s grand empire,
More bonfires than are suns, the Kahlenburg’s on fire.
As constant as those perfect waves
That roll into Biaritz,
The Sipahi slip to their graves
In the death-deep city pits,
Tho’ conquest human honour craves,
At these extreme limits,
Facing superior technology,
The apex fled of Turkish history.
The royal horses are preserv’d,
Churches Hosanna sing,
Islam unnerv’d, Europe preserv’d,
Her internecine spring,
When bleeding for one’s empire breeds purpose in existing.
Vienna
1688
Gallipoli
They seek to bring us under
But England lives, & still will live –
For we’ll crush the despot under
Alfred Tennyson
Kitchener’s Churchillian conjecture
Battle brings before Constantinople,
Champagne thrill of Achaean adventure,
The Gentle, savage; the Savage, gentle;
“Where are you from?”
“Melbourne…” “Why are you here?”
Senses of soldiers numb, led captive to the rear.
The soul of Rupert Brooke releas’d,
Packs poetry for the trip,
Byronic sortie to the East
But mosquito punctures lip,
By volumes his visions increas’d,
Death climbs aboard the ship,
For what seem’d a tayle, epic & Trojan,
Now slowly sluiced with tragical poison.
From sandy cliffs to hills jagged
Sloping from Chunuk Blair,
Up ridge ragged, long trail hagger’d,
Thro’ hot, wilderness air,
Bluce Slater from Australia spat bullets ev’rywhere.
Turkey
August
1915
Ottoman Winter
Now stoops the sun, & dies day’s cheerful light.
When stars stread forth, intone this two-tongued folk,
Standing with firebrands, hymns of sacrifice
C.M. Doughty
Empires are born as glass is born of sand
Then turn to sand, scarlet sands Syrian
Are roam’d by one born of another land,
Laird of the head-dress’d horsemen of Hejan;
Fair Lawrence leads
King Feisal’s cavalry
Upon fine, strong-thigh’d steeds behind an enemy.
Thro’ olive grove & fields of grain
Wind the streets of Megiddo
Blows bloody fall as stormswept rain,
White the hot-edged sabres glow
As dim-spawn’d devils deal in pain
Angels honours bestow,
As thro the battleground of the furies
Tread the Fates with JUSTICE & her juries.
As was murder’d Montezuma
& Visigoths did ford,
Em’rald Tiber, from Syria
By Lionhearted sword
The Turks are toss’d accosted from possessions lost abroad.
Arabia
October 1st
1918
(AA) Canto 6: Swastikas
Omar Mukhtar
They are inevitably destroyed
Like plaster washed off in the rains
Like the sandy bank of a river
Lalitavistara
On Turkish carcass Italy doth gorge,
Only the true Senussi Rome withstood,
But tanks emitting from the Fiat forge
& gangs of fascists fill black pails with blood;
Closing a ring
Round Jebel Akhdar’s hills,
Where Muhktar’s rebel spring resistant moods instils.
As mustard gas, like falling snow,
Deals death & devastation
Il Duce on the radio
Thro’ camps of concentration,
the struggle crumbles blow-by-blow –
To ensure starvation,
At Egypt’s border wire divides the sand,
& every mosque as clos’d down out of hand.
At last the Desert Lion caught,
Treasonly convicted,
The noose grew taut, a life cut short,
Watchers on predicted
The Goddess KARMA could no let such acts go unafflicted.
Suluq
Libya
1932
A Sudden Engagement
A gentle wind fans the calm night:
A bright moon shines on the high tower.
A voice whispers, but no one answers when I call
Fu Hsuan
“Costanzo, Granduca di Livorno,
This nouveaux Fascistnoblesse has a son
Handsome enough, his name Galeazo…”
Whom Edda meets, tho’ neither is smitten
A film-date shar’d,
Topless girls pearl fishing
In Polynesia, staring silently, wishing
The bodyguards a row behind
Would vanish on their vespas,
This role she lived lived all undefin’d
Where suffocation prospers,
Her young man seems to read her mind,
Leans across & whispers,
“Do you want to marry me?” Edda smil’d
& said, “Why not?” – “My daughter, she is wild,”
Her mother said, “but one to tame,
A maschiaccio –
But, all the same, to her a game
This life – she shall not sew
Or cook – but be assur’d her love & loyalty will grow.”
Rome
January
1932
Deutschland Sings!
The two-voiced mouth of secrets shared,
We two make a single Sphinx.
The two arms of a single cross
Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov
From boist’rous lieder of the Alpine south
To bawdy ballads of the Baltic ports,
Teutonic spirit, drawn first as a thought,
Emerges as music from every mouth;
Orchestras play
In Cafes, without pause,
The stage hits of the day to sing-a-long applause.
As over wooden balconies
The housemaid hangs a mattress,
She fills the air with melodies –
Clad in well-iron’d hiker’s dress
Stroll the strumming mandolinnys
Along lanes litterless
Thro’ the old walls to the forest hills,
While to those women at the window sills
The boatman from his flowing throne
Waggles happy fingers –
The scratchy drone of gramophone
Cast the meistersingers
Around the square ’til overwhelm’d by the handbell ringers.
Heidelberg
1932
Fascist Nuptials
We think we know ourselves, but all we know
Is: love surprises us. It’s like when sunlight flings
A sudden shaft that lights up glamorous the rain
Liz Lochhead
Explosions of fragrant fecundity
From azaleas, roses, gardens fill,
Spill’d from Torlonian villa, pretty
Edda look’d, like a tower on a hill,
Or Dante’s muse,
The wedding party march’d
To San Guiseppe’s pews thro’ gladiusi arch’d.
As Papal Nuncio demands
The day to be religious,
Ambassadors from many lands
& editors prestigious,
With uniforms, bejewell’d hands,
Diamonds, furs, prodigious;
Surround the darling dance of vows & rings,
That consummates recurring terms of kings.
Choir singing Romagnolan hymns,
The bride & gloom set free
To lock lithe limbs, their fiat skims
The vias speedily
To Hotel Quisisana on the island of Capri.
Rome
April 30th
1932
Albert Einstein
Prisoners of hope, arise,
& see your Lord appear !
Lo ! on the wings of love He flies
C Wesley
This crazy prophet, this quantum guru,
Destroys Man’s mute concepts of time & space,
Whose mind alert enough to feel the Jew
Must face the fury of the Master Race;
If in their hands,
They had the bomb as well,
The world shall understand naught but ‘Gott in Himmel!’
Heart-skipping to the mercedes,
Arm-hugging his Yankee guest,
Mouth-speaking amidst garden trees
Of the e’er enticing West,
When wistfully Albert agrees
To leave the nuptual nest…
“When?” he furrows his Newtonian brow,
Kisses his darling wife & whispers, “now!”
With liquid eyes & drought-dry throat
One most emotive day,
Thoughts all afloat he boards a boat
Bound for the USA,
Those realms of milk & honeydew, three thousand miles away.
Antwerp
November
1932
Yin & Yang
My strength is the strength
Of ten young things: I am with you:
In that first moment of delight
Roethke
Oer Berchtesgaden Ribbentrop arriv’d,
Found Hitler waiting at the Wachenfeld,
In whom the simplest of solutions thriv’d
Express’d in simplest terms – the two just gell’d –
The Nouveaux Riche,
The Circus of the Brawls,
Stitch’d in a sick pastiche – &, as evening falls,
It ends with an invitation,
“Do visit us in Dahlem…”
‘Twas a mental liberation
When he left the ‘Us’ for ‘Them’,
Cultivated conversation
Off-syphon’d caustic phlegm,
As Ribbentrop did ably demonstrate
The table manners of a man of state.
Ammelies was quite delighted
To meet her husband’s guest;
Who converted, nay, devoted,
Upon his wife impress’d
Herr Hitler was the antidote to Deutschland dispossess’d!
Berlin
1932
Breath of Evil
I chewed all my dreams
In the fragile bowls
Of our independences
Charles Ngande
Freya Von Moltke ador’d her husband
As Germany his famous ancestor,
A soul conceptually enlighten’d,
Quite unlike this fright’ning man before her;
Wild animals
Surround him in a pack,
As cinematix swells, breath burns into her back.
Beside a sibbilantine blaze
Stood the district magistrate,
Helmuth onlisten’d with amaze
“Leave the Nazis to their fate
Let inefficience stem their craze,”
Splurts Helmuth, “they’ll create
Dystopian catastrophes of doom!”
In burst his wife, like panic, to the room.
“I saw him in the cinema,”
“Saw whom?” “Herr Hitler!” “Him!”
“Our eyes did spar, his dreadful tar
Did coat unquiet, grim,
Dim orbs as dull as stormclouds after sunset on the rim.”
Berlin
January
1933
Chancellor Hitler
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables the drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
Al Purdy
The old ones in the Reichstag share their fears,
Kabbalic nest of arch-intiguerie,
The Nazis know their day of glory nears,
But not quite yet, no clear majority;
Arms magnate meet,
“That man most warlike seems…”
“Aye, let us fund his feet, & permeate his dreams.”
Charming all the right-wing parties,
‘The front of the Harzburger,’
Plus money from the industries
& Mussolini’s lira,
All of Germany criss-crosses,
Rallying each burgher,
On every side the SA’s numbers swell,
‘Tis better than the jobless carousel.
Soon into power Hitler sworn,
His cause célèbre won,
Tho’ wintry morn chills to the bone,
He seems a shining sun,
Some prophet like Ezekiel, God with a gatling gun.
Berlin
January
1933
Unter Den Linten
The zealot’s flame deep in the hot brown eyes
That glowed with strange and holy whisperings,
And searched the stars, and caught angelic wings
Alan Sullivan
Hitler breakfasts by the Wilhemstrasse,
Watching the wheels of his private army,
For who possesses Berlin control Prussia,
& those controlling Prussia, Germany!
Beside the flag,
Luddendorf whispers, “This
Accursed man must drag us all down the abyss!“
Men drank until the sunset made
A berth for the Evening Star,
Forming a happy cavalcade
Beneath Brandenburger bar,
As if with Bismark to parade
The Kaiser’s spoils of war;
Into the city, under the lime trees,
Ribbons of torchflame flicker’d in the breeze.
“Seig heil! Seig heil! Seig heil! Seig heil!”
Der Fuhrer close to tears,
His stoneface veil torn by love’s gale,
Arms jerk up to the cheers,
“We must build up a Reichland to endure ten hundred years!”
Berlin
January
1933
(AA) Canto 7: Ravenswarm
Imperial Hypocrisy
At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
William Stafford
The Japanese drop bombs upon Shanghai,
The flooding blood of innocence is shed,
The League see a glint in their slinty-eyed
Members, summon’d to answer for it’s dead;
The crux has come
When empires young & old
Shall totter up the sum of all their stolen gold.
The bespectacl’d Yosuke
Rails the Trans-Siberian
Thro’ Moscow’s hospitality
To the shores of Lake Lucerne,
Hectors crumbing fraternity,
“Who shall cast that first stone?
To civilise China good soldiers died
But condemn’d here as Christ was crucified!”
Cast was the ostracizing vote,
Yosuke disinclin’d
Donn’d his dark coat, & clear’d his coat
“We terminate this bind!”
Scrunch-scrapp’d up piece of paper, left the world bestunn’d behind.
Geneva
February
1933
Pilgrimage
Age & decrepitude can have no terrors for me
Loss & vicissitude cannot appal me
Not even death can dismay me
Elizabeth Hayson
A holiday to feel alive & free,
To visit the Communist templeground
Anatoly ushers his family
Onto the train for Moscow Central bound;
As Russia spread
Forever, seemingly,
Their borodinsky bread graz’d, gazing dreamingly.
In the wake of private enterprise,
Cos there aint no I in team,
Utopia the common prize,
As their statehood reigns supreme,
the towers of the kremlin rise,
Some magic mythomeme,
But, cold & bleak, the cobblestones speak drear
As like a winter’s mist, all sides, hangs fear.
“Is that him, father?” “Yes Sergei –
Dosia! Konstantin!
Come see…” some sigh, some groan, some cry,
Some let the angels in,
Gazing at the glorious immortal leader, Lenin.
Moscow
1933
Anti-Semitism
An unhappy, evil nation
Treats its victim’s self-oblation
In unworthy fashion
Adam of St. Victor
At the heart of European Jewry,
Fair city of the Rotheschilde’s high finance,
Miff’d Moses Grunfeld dismiss’d from duty,
His former friends purpling with arrogance;
A hiss, a jeer,
“Go scum, go spread the news,
Your kind will not work here, you & your filthy Jews.”
He walk’d (they forced him from the tram)
Into the Jewish boycott,
His heckles up, hands all a-clam,
Some cassirean gauntlet,
Trying to purchase bread & jam
Abuse was all he got;
Up oer orizon swept a storm of tears,
He went to sit with father & his fears.
Gone mournful thro’ the cemet’ry
Between the Jewish graves,
On bended knee, in misery,
Tears streaming down in waves,
His parents’ tomb some spiteful, scarlet hakenkreuz enslaves.
Frankfurt
1934
A New Dictator
with apologies for the inconvenience,
they carefully wrapped barbed wire
round the wrists of the political prisoners
Frank Chipasula
On the dreaded Sturmabteilung men point
Black pistols to their brains, the triggers pull
& spray their brains out wallwards to anoint
The National Revolution from the skull;
That list of doom
Was tick’d off name-by-name,
For these there was no room in Hitler’s grander game,
Where stands he all supreme, the lone
Arbitist of Germany,
Commanding legions from his throne
With a frantic fealty,
Right arms rais’d high they’ll set in stone
Most precious loyalty –
“We swear obedience by holy God,”
Der Fuhrer took each promise nod-by-nod
& christens himself ‘Grand Marshalle’
Lord of all the forces;
Of shot & shell, Alf Nobel’s gel,
Uniforms, field horses,
Tanks, planes, U-Boats, mine-fields, E-boats, fortresses & soldiers.
The Third Reich
August
1934
Death of Anatoly Stiltski
Va! meurs! la derniere heure est le dernier degre.
Pars, aigle, tu vas voir des gouffres a ton gre;
Tu vas sentir le vent sinsitre de la cime.
Victor Hugo
As Phoebus prick’d the dusty harvest haze,
Stalin’s lapdogs surrounded quaint Moshny,
Amid this bastion of the old ways,
Anatoly fear’d for his family;
Ring of cold steel
His wee home’s scape-proof mesh,
Machine-gun muzzles wheel & lacerate his flesh.
While wife & daughter wail & gnash,
His sons weep & thrash in vain,
All toss’d aside like filthy trash,
‘Brethren’ burning long-grown grain…
By slaughter’d cow, like human rash
They stagger’d thro Ukraine
To this city of cold, modern concrete,
Where hunch’d, hungry man-shadows stalk the street.
While pondering in pity’s square
Her kids beg with a song,
Old merchant’s stare soothes their despair,
“Your boys look fit & strong –
Come work for me!” her family timidly tag along.
Kiev
1934
Gleichschaltung
Doth someone say that there be gods above
there are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you
Euripedes
The scent of sweat & leather wets the air
Certain men stood silent; gazing sadly
At swastikas demanding everywhere
Mental attention glamourised madly;
Children shatter
Eardrums of all they meet,
Shrieking out, “Heil Hitler!” to narcotize the street.
In the grip of exultation,
From the forests’ ancient roots,
Watch the old gods reawaken
Thro’ crude staccato salutes;
Jesus Christ has been forsaken
& all his angels’ lutes –
The tribes are rising, formally reborn,
Whose supreme chief the dragonsteeth hath sewn.
“The Bolsheviks, Novgorod’s bear
Must by us halted be!”
Defending their primeval lair
A race collectively
Embracing Hitler’s righteous cause have set the wyvern free.
Germany
1934
Dictators
The Chancellor met his flashy idol,
Most dashing in medals, fez & dagger,
Together tour’d the stunning Grand Canal
Whose conversation in a gondola
Passes under
The famous Bridge of Sighs,
Where men watch with wonder & glory in their eyes!
Benito speaks, in Adolf’s tongue,
& spirit, of alliance;
“Let’s carve ourselves, before too long,
Spheres of Fascist influence
Together, then, & friends, & strong,
Great Britain test, & France –
& if the world would ever come to war
Let our bold Axis pierce the planet’s core!”
Der Fuhrer’s turn, Il Duce bored,
As monologuing long,
Hitler outpour’d, from spittle gourd,
A game of great Mahjong,
Fearless of steering gondoliers into a billabong!
Venice
June
1934
Prosperity
Not in the clamour of the crowded street
Not in the shouts & plaudits of the throng
But in ourselves are triumph & defeat
Henry Longfellow
Herr Stemmler clock’d off from the factory,
Proud to collect another working wage,
By S-Bahn trundles thro’ this great city
Sunk deep into Mein Kampf’s numinous page;
Sacraliz’d tome
Of Germany reborn,
Preaching in town & home under a crown of thorn.
Max buys a clutch of books & toys,
Then sprints off home for dinner
Gives out the gifts to his glad boys
& pale autistic, daughter,
His wife turns up the wireless noise
Belching propaganda –
Stealthily increasing by decibels
Minds being poison’d slowly by Goebells.
They went out to the silver screen
To gaze on holy face,
Whose angel sheen, strong yet serene,
Shone blithe & full of grace
Berlin
August
1934
Oaths of Loyalty
It grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind
Those ample virtues which it did inherit,
Has lost. Once thou didst loathe the multitude
Guido Cavalcanti
Heavenly Vale of Operatic Hearts,
Hemm’d in by behemoths huge, hewn from stone,
Those cool, majestic mountains of the Harz,
Witness a soldier of the Aesir born;
An eagle flings
His wings to airy dawn,
As ev’ry treetop sings for chandelier’d dawn.
On receiving the Reich leader
He dismiss’d der Fuhrergaurd,
Offers men of the Third Jager,
Lords of La Haye Saint’s courtyard,
“I have made my men a soldier
Enough to hold Asgard!”
Appeal made to militarizing creed,
Not hopeful gesture… but resolute deed.
Awe trembles as his soul’s captain
The Honour Guard inspects,
Hitler has won his devotion,
Aft’ solemn oath extracts,
His ear is pinch’d & in that instant Rommel’s all accepts.
Goslar
1934
(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 