Poetry and Seduction

[tectak]

We were children, short on life. We knew you well, we heard you name.
D’Annunzio! D’Annunzio! We called out like the geese disturbed; and then the soldiers came.
We ran to papa, climbed the steps, in white soap-scented gowns, we leaned
out from our ballatoio of black-cracked iron … to see you leave. We seemed
to sense the air turn thick; the clamour from the crowds fell still. A fusillade!
The clatter threw us back into our shuttered rooms… and there we stayed.

We heard the cheers yet hid beneath the pillows of our beds.
D’Annunzio, d’ Annunzio! What crimes you carried high that day; the Heads
of State were turned away. Then they looked, through eyes of goats, and saw a slit of war.
Our papa stumbled to your side; the stairs were leapt, the call to arms, a roar.
Fiume sucked away our breath, while he your crimson chariot chased;
heaped with flowers, people say, more like a hearse, but for its haste.

The straggled cortege clustered close to “touch the greatness”, mama said.
What good, we thought, had come from this, our father gone, as good as dead?
We thought we heard the church bells chime and knew we’d lost you to Cockaigne.
That night we hugged, how mama cried, we never saw papa again.

D’Annunzio, d’Annunzio! We shed our tears to purge your lie!
Forgiveness waned with learning years;
though words you gave the world in rhyme,
rose high above our infant fears.
I lived in anger, cursed your time,
I curse your name…now I can die.


Tectak
2013