Classic Poem

(Some notes for Calliope)

Muses of Homer, attend: I speak new names for Olympus.

Supermarine Spitfire—dihedral, elliptical outline,
slim, low-wing monoplane and powered with a Rolls Royce Merlin—
Swim to the substratophere, aluminium eagle with eight guns;
stoop Alpine precipices of air, avalanche to release death,
spit your cone to the target, as entrant wingtip or airscrew
strips out vortices, icy parabolas, even as Homer's
war wheels on Troy plain stirred white dust eddying onward,
or ski trails in snow turn, broadening, high on a mountain.
Scan those thin minuscules, white heiroglyphs cut in azure:
Britain above mankind engrosses a promise on heaven.

 Names have I other beside to oppose to the Catalogue heroes.
Three times round Troy wall fled Hector pursued by Achilles
So far, so many times, in one minute, Hurricane headlong
sweeps on his adversary, Ju 88, Henschel, Arado,
Dornier, Blohm und Voss, or what else Germany boasteth.
Honour is yours many times, o Hurricane eight gun fighter,
but to the corpse half headless, in hand with death coming earthward,
miles five hundred an hour in a power-drive full throttle open,
we give thanks with an oath to repay which shall be accomplished.

 He, city after city, saw mankind, gat cunning of them,
agile in peril, he unblinking in ambush, Ulysses,
great navigator of old, to his homeland safely returning
after the ten years journey. But our nightbomber twin engined,
or flying hull, huge, four engined, dreaded U-boat hunter,
daily through hairbreadth menace accomplishes Odyssey mileage;
nameless, along night blind avenues, he steers adamantly,
eastward against red Moloch in whose mad fires perish infants,
stubborn he enters amidst white furnaces open in hatred
where the deformed high priest most fears for his uncouth idol
riveted in crude fancy bedewed with red sacrifices,
reared to usurp God's name and keep mankind from his angels.
Folk, bound slave to the axle, appeal from blood livid altars,
old tribe abracadabra, the merciless incantation.
But British hands with a hammer of high explosive assault it,
smite its hinges of iron and probe inflammable oilcells.
Europe, alas, far blazing, echoes as an anvil afflicted.

 Ramparts Cyclopean of old King Minos's empire
make little haste to be gone, though thrice the millenium urged them;
yes, but a wall to deter winged armies in echelon o'erhead
diving at eighty degrees with a bomb load ready to let go—
Yet that down rush of air, the crescendoing engine, have I heard
low down end in a sigh like girl in a silk dress startled:
two miles high the balloon barrage had netted a hostile,
down it roared revving high, turned over, then into the water,
thanks to the thin steel cable, our loved one's aerial aegis.

 Destiny, and great wounds and ever the climaxed moment
spring, summer, autumn or winter prolonged in furious ordeals
ten years, turned not aside Agamemnon King of Achaeans,
till Menelaus had honour avenged of Paris's outrage.
Her little houses in endless array or scattered in acres,
once insignificant but now unavailingly humble,
faces of homes, horrified wait their dread Visitor, instant
and manifold demolition; alas our babes, women, old men!

 This strange folk terrorised shudders and sets shoulder to harness,
such shudder as might pass in a hero's muscular torso
through fair flesh; he, rapt in his arms, sacrifices his own blood;
dear flesh, kindly to flesh growing into the lesion, allays hurt:
dear homes, kindly to homes, must take in fugitive homeless.

“Faith, Pity, Love, Good Will, make room: Horror, elbowing Horror,
banshee, wailing, approaches, an indweller never long absent.
But we've stomach enough, and these shall be for a token:
Spitfire and Beaufighter, the Hurricane and the Defiant,
Beaufort, Whitley, Blenheim, and whale-like Wellesley-derivant,
Hereford, in far places an old bi-plane Gladiator,
Swordfish, Roc, Skua, Walrus, a Fairey, an Avro Anson,
There our will maintains, these are our gauntlet in heaven.
We will rescue again old liberties hatefully plundered;
let perish whoso offends.” So speaks this people of England.

Muses of Homer, admit these names to the roll of Olympus.