Poetry

George Elliott Clarke

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To All Historians (or “The Bastille Concerto”*

By Julien Benda (1928)

You cite the pure-white statues of criminals—
ruffle-collared gangsters—
Caucasoid murderers—
Conquistadors, quislings, clerks, kings—
as untroubled, as untroubling….

But tethered to every throne
is a coffle of slaves.

If you’re honest intellectuals,
strip Elizabeth I of her Modesty,
her spurious Virginity,
her hymen that’s a cannibal’s “cherry on top,”
her purple robes daubing floors mauve with blood….

Factual Shakespeare and sincere Spengler is Dantean:
Justifications for tides of tears and blood.

Peel off masks!  Peel away camouflage!

Historians, Time persecutes us,
for you refuse to reveal
how the Queen’s velvet robes
were purchased by the toddler’s gang-rape,
or how “Liberal” Constitutions
come across shit-stained
and blood-smeared
and smell like garbage.

Too often, you stroke your own tongues,
or refuse to witness Carnage
and face up to it.

The result?
Musso, Huey Long, Adolf.

[Funchal (Madeira) 18 décembre mmxv]

 

Mao Approaches Nanking                                                              

I.

 Shanghai is smoggy crematoria,
black-smoke factory smelters,
and bellies sprawling fetuses
(frozen, tragic fossils)—
so blood curves against sidewalks….

Thus, I stir up The People
so their blades strike landlords—
and bankers—
with fiery result.

I love seeing the slain bosses set forth
like mackerel slanting from fish-hooks. 

II.

 Through winter shadows, overlapping cool—
rippling frostiness of mountain snow—

through labyrinths of white
or winter rainstorms—

some of us wearing horses—

we move like startled wings:

To tack over iced rivers—
those crackling fissures—

to rescue the carcass of Nanking….

III.

 No longer rats amid rubble—
we’re guerilla nomads—
pace The Long March on short rations—

and now we inch toward incomparable Light

despite cannibalism of our horses—
whenever necessary

or elucidation of Shit
(Theory)—
whenever mandatory.

(Nothing is as occult as Eternity.)

J’avance
a somber hombre, an umber hombre—
a Chinese bronze, khaki-clad Buddha—
as intrusive and as intensive
as a tidal wave.

IV.

 The mountain snow equals a sugar’d threshold—
after the deserts of dust-gilded flies.

I’m no devotee of Doubt
and no chainsaw dictator—
no ghastly civil servant—
but will besiege and sack Beijing—

tolerate gunfight gore—
romantic Carnage

be a bull thundering like a locomotive.

No other way to propitiate Soldiery!

V.

 We’ve weathered Sorrow after Sorrow:
Deserts, hunger, icy plights, thirst, scorpions,
rounds of dread Encirclement, fire, bullets,
and leave our far-flung dead
decorating hysterical maps.

Our victories are aching stories.
We win only as we succumb to bleeding—
and only as the enemy is finally tiring of bleeding—
and flits toward asylum (Formosa).

(Kai-Shek’s hogs must be electrocuted:
The meddler must be cut down like Himmler!)

VI.

 After my troops have taken grass for bed,
or chewed daisies by the roots,
or slogged through furious sunlight,
or died, drowned in dozens, in avalanches,
or reached, at last, shadow-embalmed,
the groaning sea,
we are now the pacific governors….

What has our foe wrought?

Blown-up Kindergartens and fire-charred infants—
atrocities for the gullet,
plus the insane whoopee of machine-gun.

Sight gored horses strewn across the plain.

The New China—
the People’s Republic—
is founded upon

the fathomless otherness
of the endless, useless dead.

[Miami Beach (Florida) 21 & 22 février mmxvi]
 

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