Written by
Larry Levis |
--The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
--for my brother
Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck
In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.
But the city was hours away, beyond the hills
Shaped like the bodies of sleeping women.
Often I had to slow down for herds of goats
Or cattle milling on those narrow roads, & for
The narrower, lost, stone streets of villages
I passed through. The pains in my stomach had grown
Gradually sharper & more frequent as the day
Wore on, & now a fever had set up house.
In the villages there wasn't much point in asking
Anyone for help. In those places, where tanks
Were bivouacked in shade on their way back
From some routine exercise along
The Danube, even food was scarce that year.
And the languages shifted for no clear reason
From two hard quarries of Slavic into German,
Then to a shred of Latin spliced with oohs
And hisses. Even when I tried the simplest phrases,
The peasants passing over those uneven stones
Paused just long enough to look up once,
Uncomprehendingly. Then they turned
Quickly away, vanishing quietly into that
Moment, like bark chips whirled downriver.
It was autumn. Beyond each village the wind
Threw gusts of yellowing leaves across the road.
The goats I passed were thin, gray; their hind legs,
Caked with dried ****, seesawed along--
Not even mild contempt in their expressionless,
Pale eyes, & their brays like the scraping of metal.
Except for one village that had a kind
Of museum where I stopped to rest, & saw
A dead Scythian soldier under glass,
Turning to dust while holding a small sword
At attention forever, there wasn't much to look at.
Wind, leaves, goats, the higher passes
Locked in stone, the peasants with their fate
Embroidering a stillness into them,
And a spell over all things in that landscape,
Like . . .
That was the trouble; it couldn't be
Compared to anything else, not even the sleep
Of some asylum at a wood's edge with the sound
Of a pond's spillway beside it. But as each cramp
Grew worse & lasted longer than the one before,
It was hard to keep myself aloof from the threadbare
World walking on that road. After all,
Even as they moved, the peasants, the herds of goats
And cattle, the spiralling leaves, at least were part
Of that spell, that stillness.
After a while,
The villages grew even poorer, then thinned out,
Then vanished entirely. An hour later,
There were no longer even the goats, only wind,
Then more & more leaves blown over the road, sometimes
Covering it completely for a second.
And yet, except for a random oak or some brush
Writhing out of the ravine I drove beside,
The trees had thinned into rock, into large,
Tough blonde rosettes of fading pasture grass.
Then that gave out in a bare plateau. . . . And then,
Easing the Dacia down a winding grade
In second gear, rounding a long, funneled curve--
In a complete stillness of yellow leaves filling
A wide field--like something thoughtlessly,
Mistakenly erased, the road simply ended.
I stopped the car. There was no wind now.
I expected that, & though I was sick & lost,
I wasn't afraid. I should have been afraid.
To this day I don't know why I wasn't.
I could hear time cease, the field quietly widen.
I could feel the spreading stillness of the place
Moving like something I'd witnessed as a child,
Like the ancient, armored leisure of some reptile
Gliding, gray-yellow, into the slightly tepid,
Unidentical gray-brown stillness of the water--
Something blank & unresponsive in its tough,
Pimpled skin--seen only a moment, then unseen
As it submerged to rest on mud, or glided just
Beneath the lustreless, calm yellow leaves
That clustered along a log, or floated there
In broken ringlets, held by a gray froth
On the opaque, unbroken surface of the pond,
Which reflected nothing, no one.
And then I remembered.
When I was a child, our neighbors would disappear.
And there wasn't a pond of crocodiles at all.
And they hadn't moved. They couldn't move. They
Lived in the small, fenced-off backwater
Of a canal. I'd never seen them alive. They
Were in still photographs taken on the Ivory Coast.
I saw them only once in a studio when
I was a child in a city I once loved.
I was afraid until our neighbor, a photographer,
Explained it all to me, explained how far
Away they were, how harmless; how they were praised
In rituals as "powers." But they had no "powers,"
He said. The next week he vanished. I thought
Someone had cast a spell & that the crocodiles
Swam out of the pictures on the wall & grew
Silently & multiplied & then turned into
Shadows resting on the banks of lakes & streams
Or took the shapes of fallen logs in campgrounds
In the mountains. They ate our neighbor, Mr. Hirata.
They ate his whole family. That is what I believed,
Then. . .that someone had cast a spell. I did not
Know childhood was a spell, or that then there
Had been another spell, too quiet to hear,
Entering my city, entering the dust we ate. . . .
No one knew it then. No one could see it,
Though it spread through lawnless miles of housing tracts,
And the new, bare, treeless streets; it slipped
Into the vacant rows of warehouses & picked
The padlocked doors of working-class bars
And union halls & shuttered, empty diners.
And how it clung! (forever, if one had noticed)
To the brothel with the pastel tassels on the shade
Of an unlit table lamp. Farther in, it feasted
On the decaying light of failing shopping centers;
It spilled into the older, tree-lined neighborhoods,
Into warm houses, sealing itself into books
Of bedtime stories read each night by fathers--
The books lying open to the flat, neglected
Light of dawn; & it settled like dust on windowsills
Downtown, filling the smug cafés, schools,
Banks, offices, taverns, gymnasiums, hotels,
Newsstands, courtrooms, opium parlors, Basque
Restaurants, Armenian steam baths,
French bakeries, & two of the florists' shops--
Their plate glass windows smashed forever.
Finally it tried to infiltrate the exact
Center of my city, a small square bordered
With palm trees, olives, cypresses, a square
Where no one gathered, not even thieves or lovers.
It was a place which no longer had any purpose,
But held itself aloof, I thought, the way
A deaf aunt might, from opinions, styles, gossip.
I liked it there. It was completely lifeless,
Sad & clear in what seemed always a perfect,
Windless noon. I saw it first as a child,
Looking down at it from that as yet
Unvandalized, makeshift studio.
I remember leaning my right cheek against
A striped beach ball so that Mr. Hirata--
Who was Japanese, who would be sent the next week
To a place called Manzanar, a detention camp
Hidden in stunted pines almost above
The Sierra timberline--could take my picture.
I remember the way he lovingly relished
Each camera angle, the unwobbling tripod,
The way he checked each aperture against
The light meter, in love with all things
That were not accidental, & I remember
The care he took when focusing; how
He tried two different lens filters before
He found the one appropriate for that
Sensual, late, slow blush of afternoon
Falling through the one broad bay window.
I remember holding still & looking down
Into the square because he asked me to;
Because my mother & father had asked me please
To obey & be patient & allow the man--
Whose business was failing anyway by then--
To work as long as he wished to without any
Irritations or annoyances before
He would have to spend these years, my father said,
Far away, in snow, & without his cameras.
But Mr. Hirata did not work. He played.
His toys gleamed there. That much was clear to me . . . .
That was the day I decided I would never work.
It felt like a conversion. Play was sacred.
My father waited behind us on a sofa made
From car seats. One spring kept nosing through.
I remember the camera opening into the light . . . .
And I remember the dark after, the studio closed,
The cameras stolen, slivers of glass from the smashed
Bay window littering the unsanded floors,
And the square below it bathed in sunlight . . . . All this
Before Mr. Hirata died, months later,
From complications following pneumonia.
His death, a letter from a camp official said,
Was purely accidental. I didn't believe it.
Diseases were wise. Diseases, like the polio
My sister had endured, floating paralyzed
And strapped into her wheelchair all through
That war, seemed too precise. Like photographs . . .
Except disease left nothing. Disease was like
And equation that drank up light & never ended,
Not even in summer. Before my fever broke,
And the pains lessened, I could actually see
Myself, in the exact center of that square.
How still it had become in my absence, & how
Immaculate, windless, sunlit. I could see
The outline of every leaf on the nearest tree,
See it more clearly than ever, more clearly than
I had seen anything before in my whole life:
Against the modest, dark gray, solemn trunk,
The leaves were becoming only what they had to be--
Calm, yellow, things in themselves & nothing
More--& frankly they were nothing in themselves,
Nothing except their little reassurance
Of persisting for a few more days, or returning
The year after, & the year after that, & every
Year following--estranged from us by now--& clear,
So clear not one in a thousand trembled; hushed
And always coming back--steadfast, orderly,
Taciturn, oblivious--until the end of Time.
|
Written by
William Topaz McGonagall |
'Twas in the year 1715, and on the 10th of November,
Which the people of Scotland have cause to remember;
On that day the Earl of Mar left Perth bound for Sheriffmuir,
At the same time leaving behind a garrison under Colonel Balfour.
Besides leaving a force of about three thousand men quartered in different parts of Fife,
To protect the people's property, and quell party strife,
The army along with him amounted to three thousand foot and twelve hundred cavalry,
All in the best of order, a most pleasant sight to see.
The two armies bivouacked near Sheriffmuir during the night,
And around their camp-fires they talked concerning the coming fight.
The Duke of Argyle's English army numbered eight thousand strong,
Besides four hundred horse, posted in the rear all along.
And the centre of the first line was composed of ten battalions of foot,
Consisting of about four thousand, under the command of Clanranald and Glengarry to boot;
And at the head of these battalions Sir John Maclean and Brigadier Ogilvie,
And the two brothers of Sir Donald Macdonald of Sleat, all in high glee.
The Marquis of Huntly's squadron of horse was also there;
Likewise the Stirling squadron, carrying the Chevalier's standard, I do declare;
And the Perthshire squadron formed the left wing,
And with their boisterous shouts they made the welkin ring.
The centre of the second line consisted of eight battalions of infantry,
And three of the Earl of Seaforth's foot, famous for their bravery;
There were also two battalions of the Marquis of Huntly,
Besides the Earl of Panmure's battalion, all men of high degree.
And those of the Marquis of Tullibardine, commanded by the Viscount of Strathallan,
And of Logie Almond, and likewise Robertson of Strowan;
Besides two squadrons of horse under the Earl Marischal,
And the Angus squadron was on the left: these include them all.
During this formation, the Duke of Argyle was watching all the time,
But owing to the ground occupied by them he couldn't see their line,
Which was unfortunately obstructed by the brow of a hill,
At the thought thereof the Duke's heart with fear did fill.
The hill was occupied by a party of Earl Mar's troops looking towards Dunblane,
Which the Earl of Mar no doubt resolved to maintain;
Then the Duke returned to the army, and ordered the drums to beat,
But an hour elapsed before his army were ready Mar's to meet.
As soon as the Earl of Mar perceived Argyle's line was partially formed,
He gave orders that Argyle's army should be instantly stormed.
Then Mar placed himself at the head of the clans, and led forward his men,
As a noble hero would do, which no one can condemn.
Then he pulled off his hat, which he waved in his right hand,
And when he arrived within pistol-shot the Highlanders made·a bold stand,
And they poured in a volley upon the English infantry,
And to the dismay of the Highlanders the English returned fire instantly.
And to the horror of the Highlanders Alan Muidartach was wounded mortally,
Then he was carried off the field, a most pitiful sight to see;
And as his men clustered around him they stood aghast,
And before he died he told them to hold their posts fast.
While lamenting the death of the Captain of Clanranald most pitifully,
Glengarry at this juncture sprang forward right manfully,
And throwing his bonnet into the air, he cried, heroically,
Revenge! revenge! revenge to-day ! and mourning to-morrow ye shall see!
No sooner had he pronounced these words than the Highlanders rushed forward, sword in hand,
Upon the royal battalions with the utmost fury, which they could not withstand,
And with their broadswords among the enemy they spread death and dismay,
Until the three battalions of Argyle's left wing instantly gave way.
Then a complete rout ensued, and the Earl of Mar pursued them half-a-mile;
Then he ordered his men to halt and rest a while,
Until he should put them into order right speedily,
Then follow the enemy at the double-march and complete the victory.
Then the Highlanders chased them and poured in a volley,
Besides they hewed them down with their broadswords mercilessly;
But somehow both armies got mixed together, and a general rout ensued,
While the Highlanders eagerly the English army hotly pursued.
The success on either side is doubtful to this day,
And all that can be said is, both armies ran away;
And on whichsoever side success lay it was toward the Government,
And to allay all doubts about which party won, we must feel content.
|
Written by
William Topaz McGonagall |
'Twas near the Begum Kothie the battle began,
Where innocent blood as plentiful as water ran;
The Begum Kothie was a place of honour given to the 93rd,
Which heroically to a man they soon did begird.
And the 4th Punjaub Rifles were their companions in glory,
And are worthy of their names enrolled in story,
Because they performed prodigious wonders in the fight,
By killing and scattering the Sepoys left and right.
The 93rd Highlanders bivouacked in a garden surrounded by mud walls,
Determined to capture the Begum Kothie no matter what befalls--,
A place strongly fortified and of enormous strength,
And protected by strong earthworks of very great length.
And added to these obstacles was the most formidable of all--
A broad deep ditch that ran along the wall,
Which the storming party not even guessed at before;
But this barrier the British soon did climb o'er.
But early the next morning two batteries of Artillery were pounding away,
And the fight went on for the whole day;
And the defenders of the building kept up rattling musketry fire,
And when night fell the British had to retire.
Next day the contest was renewed with better success,
And the 93rd in all their beauty forward did press,
And moved on toward the position without firing a shot,
And under cover of some ruined buildings they instantly got.
And here for a few minutes they kept themselves under cover,
While each man felt more anxious than another
To attack the merciless rebels while it was day,
Because their blood was up and eager for the fray.
Still the enemy kept up a blazing fire at them pell-mell,
But they fired too high and not a man of them fell;
And the bullets whistled around them again and again,
Still on went the unwavering Highlanders with might and main.
But when they reached the ditch they were taken by surprise,
By the unexpected obstacle right before their eyes;
But Captain Middleton leapt into the ditch and showed them the way,
And immediately the whole of the men were after him without delay.
Leith Hay himself was among the first across,
And gained a footing on the other side without any personal loss;
And he assisted in helping the rest out of the ditch,
While the din of war was at the highest pitch.
'Twas then the struggle commenced in terrible earnest:
While every man was resolved to do his best;
And the enemy barricaded every entrance so as a single man could only pass,
Determined to make a strong resistance, and the British to harass.
But barrier after barrier soon was passed;
And the brave men no doubt felt a little harassed,
But they fought desperately and overturned their foes at every point,
And put the rebels to flight by shot and bayonet conjoint.
The Sheiks and the Horse Guards behaved right well--
Because beneath their swords, by the score, the Sepoys fell;
And their beautiful war steeds did loudly neigh and roar,
While beneath their hoofs they trampled them all o'er.
And as for John McLeod-- the pipe-major of the 93rd,
He kept sounding his bagpipes and couldn't be stirred--
Because he remembered his duty in the turmoil,
And in the battlefield he was never known to recoil.
And as for Major General McBain-- he was the hero in the fight;
He fought heroically-- like a lion-- with all his might;
And again and again he was met by desperate odds,
But he scattered them around him and made them kiss the sods.
And he killed eleven of the enemy with sword in hand,
Which secured for him the proudest of all honours in the land,
Namely, that coveted honour called the Victoria Cross,
Of which many a deserving hero has known the loss.
And as for brave Hodson-- he was a warrior born,
And military uniform did his body adorn;
And his voice could be heard in the battle afar,
Crying-- "Come on my boys there is nothing like war!"
But, in a moment, a volley was discharged at him,
And he fell mortally wounded, while the Sepoys did grin;
Then the Highlanders closed with their foes and made them retreat,
And left them not till every rebel lay dead at their feet.
Then Sir Colin Campbell to his men did say,--
"Men, I feel proud that we have captured Lucknow this day;
Therefore strike up the bagpipes and give one hearty cheer,
And enjoy yourselves, my heroes, while ye are here."
|
Written by
William Topaz McGonagall |
Ye sons of Great Britain, I think no shame
To write in praise of brave General Graham!
Whose name will be handed down to posterity without any stigma,
Because, at the battle of El-Teb, he defeated Osman Digna.
With an army about five thousand strong,
To El-Teb, in the year 1884, he marched along,
And bivouacked there for the night;
While around their fires they only thought of the coming fight.
They kept up their fires all the long night,
Which made the encampment appear weird-like to the sight;
While the men were completely soaked with the rain,
But the brave heroes disdained to complain.
The brave heroes were glad when daylight did appear,
And when the reveille was sounded, they gave a hearty cheer
And their fires were piled up higher again,
Then they tried to dry their clothes that were soaked with the rain.
Then breakfast was taken about eight o'clock,
And when over, each man stood in the ranks as firm as a rock,
And every man seemed to be on his guard --
All silent and ready to move forward.
The first movement was a short one from where they lay --
Then they began to advance towards El-Teb without dismay,
And showed that all was in order for the fray,
While every man's heart seemed to feel light and gay.
The enemy's position could be seen in the distance far away
But the brave heroes marched on without delay --
Whilst the enemy's banners floated in the air,
And dark swarms of men were scattered near by there.
Their force was a large one -- its front extended over a mile,
And all along the line their guns were all in file;
But as the British advanced, they disappeared,
While our brave kilty lads loudly cheered.
Thus slowly and cautiously brave General Graham proceeded
And to save his men from slaughter, great caution was needed,
Because Osman Digna's force was about ten thousand strong;
But he said, Come on, my brave lads, we'll conquer them ere long!
It was about ten o'clock when they came near the enemy's lines,
And on the morning air could be heard the cheerful chimes
Corning from the pipes of the gallant Black Watch,
Which every ear in the British force was eager to catch.
Then they passed by the enemy about mid-day,
While every Arab seemed to have his gun ready for the fray
When a bullet strikes down General Baker by the way,
But he is soon in the saddle again without delay,
And ready for any service that he could perform;
Whilst the bullets fell around them in a perfect storm
That they had to lie down, but not through fear,
Because the enemy was about 800 yards on their left rear.
Then General Graham addressed his men,
And said, If they won't attack us, we must attack them,
So start to your feet, my lads, and never fear,
And strike up your bagpipes, and give a loud cheer.
So they leapt to their feet, and gave a loud cheer,
While the Arabs swept down upon them without the least fear,
And put aside their rifles, and grasped their spears;
Whilst the British bullets in front of them the earth uptears.
Then the British charged them with their cold steel,
Which made the Arabs backward for to reel;
But they dashed forward again on their ranks without dismay,
But before the terrible fire of their musketry they were swept away.
Oh, God of Heaven! it was a terrible sight
To see, and hear the Arabs shouting with all their might
A fearful oath when they got an inch of cold steel,
Which forced them backwards again and made them reel.
By two o'clock they were fairly beat,
And Osman Digna, the false prophet, was forced to retreat
After three hours of an incessant fight;
But Heaven, 'tis said, defends the right.
And I think he ought to be ashamed of himself;
For I consider he has acted the part of a silly elf,
By thinking to conquer the armies of the Lord
With his foolish and benighted rebel horde.
|