Capax Infiniti

Nothing is yours except the essential things – 
air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky.

 ~Cesare Pavese

This lonely windblown instant on the gravelly edge

of a muddy middle-of-nowhere parking lot

right before the storm.

This sweet and sweaty apple-blossomed breeze

drifting dusty-fingered across your skin

ready to be smelled.

Air is yours.

This shadow hair’s breadth sheltering your eyes

extracting exhaustion out of achy muscles

restoring worn-out cells.

This brilliant way to put the world on hold

temporary cessation of suffering

rewarding work well-done.

Sleep is yours.

These fragments of intangible alternative

semi-sublime subconscious tessellations

constructing a way out.

These liquid-mirror tremblesome reflections

thrill-shot with an impulsive oblique shimmer

of something else and other.

Dreams are yours.

This vast, ship-eating rhythm of infinitude

sucking sand from underneath your feet

back to its throbbing soul.

This crushing depth of interstellar density

rocking salt-surf giving you a reason

to reach the other side.

The sea is yours.

This architect of all unanswered questions

star-speckled absurdity of agelessness

glimpse of greater worlds.

This lonely paradoxical iconoclast

never tired of surprising earth-sick eyes

with archaic cloud-patterns.

The sky is yours.

All this is given. In order that you

may remember, may not forget that

nothing is yours except the essential

except the liminal something in your

body that responds, for just as long as

you are able to keep yourself enchanted.

Nothing is yours except what is given.

‘God only gives, and has only Himself

to give.’ Maybe that is what it means?

Nothing is yours except God.

~ by Shannon Lise

Note: This poem was originally published as part of the Utmost Christian Writer's 2012 Poetry Contest
 

June, 1832

These dragging summers scorch our streets

With drought that bakes the cobblestones,

And blisters naked gamin feet

And sears our eyelids in the heat

Of barricaded danger zones.

We find the bullets in the bricks

Of houses that have lost their souls,

In gutted, broken-windowed wrecks

The inauspicious side-effects,

Now riddled full of cartridge holes.

Not long for Paris to forget

Just one more sultry afternoon,

While bodies rot in streaking sweat

And stagnant gutters reek with death;

The panic will be over soon.

The rubble in the Chanvrerie

Which used to be a barricade,

It crumbles to obscurity –

Another disappointed dream

Of men who stayed when no one came.

Their carcasses will not resent

The scavenging of hungry hands

That cannot realize what was meant,

Or recognize the compliment;

They knew we wouldn’t understand.

Elusive like the hazing heat,

The unacknowledged idol of

The comrades of the ABC –

They thought that it was liberty,

They should have called it love.

Our sunburned city wonders why,

And shrugs their tragedy away

But streets that swarm with feasting flies

Are sticky with their sacrifice;

Their blood has blessed this summer day.

Solitary

                    I.

Don't know, but I've been thinking
That maybe I would like to spend a year
In voluntary solitary detention
Somewhere far away from here.

I’d like to make a fence to block the world out

I’d like to build a wall without a window

I’d like to take this web of galvanized wires 

Linking my brain to the rest of my world

This part of me that’s not myself

This artificial stimulation

Emotional connection with omnipotent frustration

I’d like to turn the wires all to spider strands

Floating in the shining autumn air

Slice them with a sweeping paper scimitar

Or a rusty pair of nail scissors

Leave them dangling, dissolving in the dark

(When the electricity shuts off

No more static)

                    II.

Don’t know, but I’ve been thinking
That maybe I would like to go away
From all this very arbitrary tension
Spinning a million reasons I should stay.

I’d like to find a lonely little place

Away from voices, faces, shallow feelings

Lock the door and throw the key away

Out of sight, out of mind, out of reach.

I think I’d like to wipe my memory

Of all the things I wish had never happened

I’d like to recreate reality – alone.
I am three-quarters sick of shadows

Three-quarters made of mindlessness

Indecent incongruity and callousness

I am not even sure you want me

Come away. A voice stuck on replay.

I wish I could (don’t you see?)
Maybe I will (what then?)

                    III.

Don’t know, but I’ve been thinking
That maybe I would like to be quite sure
Don’t look now, but did I mention?
I am foundering in failure.

Is it weakness?

This escapist discontent,

Melancholic addiction to loneliness?

Is it selfish?

This egocentric rejection of normality,

Illogical antipathy toward all things inevitable? 

Or is it the voice on replay?

Come away

Come away

From myself

From the other side of the Void.

Try to forget those monstrous motives

(As if Omniscience could forget)

Try to work it out regardless

(As if Omnipotence could try)

Take me away for a year, I do not ask for more

Lock me up for good – but not for ever

Isn’t that the point?

                    IV. 

Don’t know, but I’ve been thinking
That maybe I would like to make a wish
And keep it like a nova in suspension
Until we learn to play this hit-and-miss.

I am ready to say goodbye, now

Deep-sinking into insignificance

Because the world is dead to me

(At least, it was supposed to be)

Because the corpse in question is the only way of waking

Because the life unlived still has to be the life unwasted

Abstractness is so hard, you know

So this is why I want to go

Bury the face I tried to kill

Find a reason to be still; and know

Run off like a vigilante, traveling higher and further

Decamp and throw my guns away, with the nerve of a deserter

Search the lonely side-streets for the records of a murder

After all this time, I want to go through with it

Aborted assassination attempt

Or was it suicide?

(Do you understand yet?

‘Cause I don’t. Not quite.)

Don’t know, but I’ve been thinking

That maybe I would like to spend some time

In voluntary solitary detention

Learning how to die. 

               

Daytimes Of This World

The sun went out

Like I knew it would

(They say it went down, but I know better

It is out – forever and for good.)

This lingering twilight is our last.

It wasn’t much to mourn, that twilight

Sky-gray flatness like galvanized steel

Not even a touch of trembling mist –

Unromantically dull.

But it was all we had;

And now it’s gone.

(We have begun to forget what color is

Already – and the worst hasn’t come.)

We dread these dark hours ahead.

Maybe we wish they would actually end

Cut us off now, before we get worse

We are afraid of what we will become

Uncomprehendingly blank.

I walk back to the porch

Without even turning round

Across a sinking lawn that we won’t see again;

And then I stop – staring at the ground.

A little white wildflower stares back,

Barely discernible in the deepening dusk

One of hundreds, if it were day again

But right now this is all I can see

And it is enough.

Time goes on. Like I knew it would.

Distracted pupils glaze over,

Tired of straining nerve receptors

Trying to make sense of this lightlessness

Invisible eyes eventually accept invisibility.

Don’t you see?

Sallow skin grows damp and gray,

Too decayed to find itself repulsive

Are we glad we cannot see it?

But wait – what does it mean to see?

Don’t you know?

It isn’t like there’s anyone to talk to

I am stalk-silent. I don’t even care;

Whatever sanity there was in me has died

So there’s no point. But still, sometimes

I wonder what would happen if I tried.

I am immortally tired, yet I survive

Something stronger than sanity sustains this mind

Holding it together, keeping it alive

What would you say if I told you?

It’s a picture of a flower, fast-fading white.

The last thing I saw

In the grass somewhere

(Don’t know where you are, hidden in the dark

But my God! – it is good to know you’re there!)

The House of Christmas

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honor and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the Yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

~ G.K. Chesterton

A Second Childhood

When all my days are ending

And I have no song to sing,

I think I shall not be too old

To stare at everything;

As I stared once at a nursery door

Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs

On all my sins and me,

Because He does not take away

The terror from the tree

And stones still shine along the road

That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,

Men grow too old for wine,

But I shall not grow too old to see

Unearthly daylight shine

Changing my chamber’s dust to snow

Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,

The first surprises stay;

And in my dross is dropped a gift

For which I dare not pray

That a man grow used to grief and joy

But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,

Men grow too old for lies;

But I shall not grow too old to see

Enormous night arise

A cloud that is larger than the world

And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose

The latchet of my shoe

Or shake the dust form off my feet

Or the staff that bears me through

On ground that is too good to last

Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,

Men grow too old to wed;

But I shall not grow to old to see

Hung crazily overhead

Incredible rafters when I wake

And find I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair

Though blackening clouds be plain,

Still I am stung and startled

By the first drop of the rain;

Romance and pride and passion pass

And these are what remain.

Strange crawling carpets of the grass,

Wide windows of the sky

Soon in this perilous grace of God

With all my sins go I,

And things grow new though I grow old

Though I grow old and die.

~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Sehnzucht

So this is what it feels like, and this is what it means

This thing that I cannot explain and you cannot believe.

Colors caught and frozen on a canvas

The last light of the sunset on the sea

Raw aching thrill in tune with strangled instinct

The shadows of an uncreated thing.

Foaming whisper of the wind-wracked ocean

Salty sea-stung air inside your eyes

Coal black outline of a deathless dragon

Scratched on ancient walls before all time.

This is the blinding secret, the world will never know.

I realize I cannot hold on but I will not let go.

Crash of rain and fire-splintered sky

The wide calm of deep places in the dark

Fractious craving of a dim illusion

The story that will break and bleed your heart.

The slicing storm that knocks you in the face

And leaves you with bewildered breathless laughter

The smoking mist that seizes on the day

And stains the summer sky forever-after.

Intangible intensity that burns without a name,

This thing that will not show its face and will not go away.

The dying spirit of the soaring wave

That hangs between two fleeting beats of time

Ecstatic sickness of a stifled brain

Still searching for a thing it cannot find.

A diamond with a thousand gleaming facets

A shadow in a giant’s magic mirror

You wash the glass with tears of desperation

And sell your life to try and see it clearer.

This is the awful promise since before the world began.

You know you have to listen and you have to understand.

Strange sweet smell of blossoms in the darkness

Flash of dancing feet on marble floors

That lilting tune that you cannot remember

You know that it will never let you go.

Echo of long-dead laughter in the dawning

Glancing moonlight on an ancient blade

The half-forgotten heart of bleeding fire

That cast the stars before the world was made.

Is it right for us to wonder, is it wrong to question why?

This thing that it is not within the world to satisfy.

Running till your shattered body breaks

Thirsty wolf lunging behind the sun

A shadow sun forever shifting shape

And none of it will ever be enough.

And every glimpse is burning with desire

Magnetic whirling, crush and suck you in

Flicker of lonely longing, cutting fierce

You want it without knowing what it is.

Lethal virus, just ahead, almost close enough to touch

But you’re going round in circles and you’re never catching up.

You can modify your tactics, turn and run the other way

But there is no neutral zoning so you’ll never get away.

Beneath A Phrygian Sky

Beneath A Phrygian Sky :

The moonlight it was dancing
On the waves, out on the sea
The stars of heaven hovered
In a shimmering galaxy

A voice from down the ages
So in haunting in its song
These ancient stones will tell us
Our love must make us strong

The breeze it wrapped around me
As I stood there on the shore
And listened to this voice
Like I never heard before

Our battles they may find us
No choice may ours to be
But hold the banner proudly
The truth will set us free

My mind was called across the years
Of rages and of strife
Of all the human misery
And all the waste of life

We wondered where our God was
In the face of so much pain
I looked up to the stars above
To find you once again

We travelled the wide oceans
Heard many call your name
With sword and gun and hatred
It all seemed much the same

Some used your name for glory
Some used it for their gain
Yet when liberty lay wanting
No lives were lost in vain

Is it not our place to wonder
As the sky does weep with tears
And all the living creatures
Look on with mortal fear

It is ours to hold the banner
Is ours to hold it long
It is ours to carry forward
Our love must make us strong

And as the warm wind carried
Its song into the night
I closed my eyes and tarried
Until the morning light

As the last star it shimmered
And the new sun's day gave birth
It was in this magic moment
Came this prayer for mother earth

The moonlight it was dancing
On the waves, out on the sea
The stars of heaven hovered
In a shimmering galaxy

A voice from down the ages
So in haunting in its song
The ancient stones will tell us
Our love will make us strong

~Loreena Mckennit

The Waiting

This poem won first place in a national poetry contest this year.

When the Voice first spoke into the heart of Night;

And the first cold hues of chaos swept the sky.

When Time went tumbling out of the deepless dark

And the curtain of the blackness fell apart.

One moment was enough to see the dream

Something too calm and awful to be seen,

A wild, wordless whisper of a song

That bound the ages till the end should come.

The music entered all eternity

And broke its way into infinity

The newborn Light went out and lit the Sun

The Voice alone saw all that was to come.

And long before the making of the curse,

Before the first blood stained the firstborn earth,

It spoke in silence deep within the Night,

The End will come and all will be made right.

This age is ending - God calls home the stars,

The world is plagued with great and little wars

The dying sun is swollen, dim and red,

And things that once were good and green are dead.

We watch the evening twilight fade away,

The ancient earth is weary, old and gray.

The fire has spread across the earth’s dark plains,

The broken world will never be the same.

Now all the living things have shrunk and withered

The mountains tremble and the pale sky shivers

A wind has come from off the northern seas

A storm from hell to shake the shuddering trees.

The thunder of God’s wrath is drawing near

We close our eyes in hopes that we might hear,

In starry hollows long forgot and gone,

The music of that wild, wordless song.

But nothing rises from the deep abyss

No sound of music splinters this silence

We are too deep in blood and treachery

To hear the voiceless breath of ecstasy.

We are the only living ones that know

The curse - tremendous joy, tremendous woe.

Despair is rising like an evil mist

We never dreamed that it would come to this.

And all the summer stars are dim with tears

For all the shattered hearts through all the years

They fade like autumn flowers in the snow

That sink to sunless depths that no man knows.

The raging sea looks up beyond the sky

And lifting up his broken voice he cries,

‘Oh God of Stars, when will you make an end?

When will the judgment of the world begin?

‘Beyond all sundered seas made dark with sorrow

Beyond the sunken shadow of tomorrow

What mercy will we find beneath the sun,

When all is done and said, and said and done?’

And do you think that heaven ever hears

The wail of broken hearts and human tears?

The voices that are shrieking in the night

The stifled whispers of the murdered light.

Has God reversed the cycle of the world

And sent it hurling backwards to the void?

The anguish of existence does not end

We fail and hope and live to fail again.

And shall we somewhere find at close of day

A place to wash all memories away?

But there are things the world cannot forget

And there are things the heart cannot forgive.

The earth is plunging through the pathless void

The Dark is taking hold of the entire world.

And hearts that never wavered split and break

Still screaming that it should not be this way.

The sky above is sickening with fear,

The face of Time is stained with bloody tears

And everywhere we turn we look on Death -

We realize now that we have nothing left.

But deep beyond the barricade of fear

Within the thunder of the storm we hear,

The Voice that called us from the heart of Night

The End will come and all will be made right.

Macbeth

Oh horror, horror, horror!
Dark the thoughts that haunt my waking
Darker still the dreadful waiting
That consumes my tortured sleep.

If it were done when ‘tis done,
It were best it were done quickly
But the question wants an answer
When it’s finished, is it done?

Oh horror, horror, horror!
Dark the dagger I am holding
Darker still the blood is flowing
Through my fingers to the floor.

Time and time alone will tell
If the prophecy is finished
When I wear the crown of Scotland
I will know that it is done.

Oh horror, horror, horror,
Dark the stains upon my fingers
Darker still the wild whispers
From the burning heart of hell.

The witches’ word is answered
And Hecate proven faithful
But the wild wind is shrieking
That the terror is not done.

Oh horror, horror, horror!
Dark the shadows of the midnight,
Darker still the dying daylight
For Glamis has murdered sleep.

There are faces all around me
Pale and bloody in the darkness
But my broken heart is crying
Can it not be all undone?

Oh horror, horror, horror
Dark the empty throne I wanted
Darker still the hallways haunted
By the wraith of ravished sleep.

Now Birnam wood is marching,
The long road to Dunsinane
And the wild wind is shrieking
It is done! It is done!

The Things That Never Happened

The things that never happened,
The thoughts that never were
Things we cannot imagine
Therefore cannot confirm.

The ones that still are waiting
For the thing that never comes
For a story that is fading
In a Time that never was.

Beyond four dimensions dying
There are things we have not seen
No one hears the Watchers crying
For the things that should have been.

If we had not made that promise
If we had not looked that way
If the Road into the darkness
Had not led us to Today.

There are questions that are curses
There are things we must not ask
When the Present moment merges
With the Shadows of the Past.

Somewhere deep within the Earth Time
There was something that went wrong
Now the bloody tears incarnadine
The First and Final Song.

In the moments dark with weeping
We are always looking back,
To a thing that never happened
And a question never asked.

Our broken hearts are weeping
As the sinking sun is dead
Still and silent they are keeping
All the tears we never shed.

Not for things that were before us
Not for things we had and lost
Not for vain and foolish choices
Not for coming of the Frost.

Not for golden summers dying
Not for fruitless loves grown cold
Not for children’s voices crying
Not for valiant strength grown old.

Not for blossomed branches breaking
Not for years now gone to waste
Not for misery of waking
In a dark and desperate place.

Not for things that were forbidden
Not for awful Death incurred
But for things that never happened
And for thoughts that never were.

Drifting

Drifting away, drifting away

Far from the dawning, long past the day

Sink into shadow, slip into twilight

Windlight is passing, glimmer of midnight.

Drifting away, drifting away

Nothing to answer, nothing to say

Waking is over, now comes the dark

Look to the skyline and speak to the stars.

Drifting away, drifting away

Reach for the sunrise, grasping the waves

But darkness has fallen and all else must fade

And I cannot keep you from drifting away.

Lepanto

In the late fifteen hundreds, the Ottoman Empire posed a massive threat to Europe, threatening to conquer all of Christendom, which then consisted of dozens of separate Latin kingdoms, constantly warring among each other and thus inevitably weakening themselves in the face of the Ottoman onslaught.

Christendom suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of the Turks, until in 1571, the tide turned at the Battle of Lepanto.

The Battle of Lepanto took place on the 7th of October, 1571. Commanded by Don John (or Juan) of Austria, a fleet of the Holy League, (that included a coalition of Spain, the Republic of Venice, the Papacy (under Pope St. Pius V) the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights Hospitaller and others,) decisively defeated Ali Pasha and the main Turkish fleet.

The five-hour battle was fought at the northern edge of the Gulf of Patra, off western Greece, where the Ottoman forces sailing westwards from their naval station in Lepanto met the Holy League forces, which had come from Messina. A glorious victory gave the Holy League temporary control over the Mediterranean, protected Rome from invasion, and prevented the Ottomans from advancing further into Europe. (However, such was the resources available to the Empire, that the Ottomans had rebuilt their entire fleet in the space of one year. It is truly a divine miracle that they did not obliterate Christendom in the sixteenth century and completely take over Europe.)

G.K. Chesterton has illustrated this epic battle with a marvelous poem.

Lepanto

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young.

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

Don John of Austria is going to the war,

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold

In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,

Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,

Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.

Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,

Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,

Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.

Love-light of Spain - hurrah!

Death-light of Africa!

Don John of Austria

Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

He moves a mighty turban on the timeless hour's knees,

His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.

He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,

And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,

And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring

Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.

Giants and the Genii,

Multiplex of wing and eye,

Whose strong obedience broke the sky

When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,

From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;

They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea

Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;

On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,

Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;

They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground, -

They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.

And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk may hide,

And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,

And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,

For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.

We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,

Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,

But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know

The voice that shook our palaces - four hundred years ago:

It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;

It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!

It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,

Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."

For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

Sudden and still - hurrah!

Bolt from Iberia!

Don John of Austria

Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael's on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north

(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)

Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift

And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.

He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;

The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes

And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,

And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,

And Christian dreadeth Christ that bath a newer face of doom,

And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,

But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.

Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse

Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,

Trumpet that sayeth ha!

Domino gloria!

Don John of Austria

Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck

(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)

The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,

And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.

He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,

He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,

And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey

Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,

And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,

But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.

Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed -

Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.

Gun upon gun, ha! ha!

Gun upon gun, hurrah!

Don John of Austria

Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,

(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)

The hidden room in a man's house where God sits all the year,

The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.

He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea

The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;

They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,

They veil the plumed lions on the galleys of St. Mark;

And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,

And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.

They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung

The stairways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on

Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.

And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell

Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,

And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign -

(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,

Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,

Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,

Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,

Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea

White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania!

Domino Gloria!

Don John of Austria

Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,

Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade. . .

(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

- G.K. Chesterton