219 words

For Henri Joseph Fenet, and the Men of the Charlemagne Division — “Loyal To The End”

Your knighthood was bestowed

In the reign of fire

And phosphorous,

The weight of judgement

Already a Damocletian sword.

Thinking of home,

But now there is no home –
Only orphaned men

In a broken land.

No glasses raised

Or ballads sung,

Only Berlin’s fiery

Gotterdammerung.

A different fire consumed you

As you defended the rubble

Of Wilhelmstrasse;

White flame of Spirit-

Alchemy’s art,

In black sun forming,

Transmutes into Light.

You lived now only to fight.

In smoldering cellars

Of charnel flesh,

The whited sepulchers

Of hollow eyes bore witness

To the danse macabre.

The blood-grimed faces

Frozen in silent supplication

Of men that had known

Long years of travail.

Soon, Old Testament law

Would prevail.

In the damp cell that bled

Memory and longing,

You took the beatings –

It was understood.

Harder to take was the

Children’s hateful glare.

The years at the front had

Hardened the Will and

Burned out the dross;

Inured you

To pain and loss.

Amidst Europe’s

Via Dolorosa,

A sacred cause united

Men of race.

Perhaps the monarchs

Of a forgotten age

Would render you homage,

And honor your names.

The Republic would shun you;

You’d stand alone –

You, the brothers in arms

Of Saint Joan.

February 10, 2014