CANTO V: THE GREATEST WAR

Our Sky was scarlet with the falling sun,

and, like an under-storm, the far-off fields

of cloud were curdling into darkness: bleak

and ominous, congealed from cirrus vales

to whipped-up thunderheads—on which Earth marched

to wreck Elysium. In rows now—millions—

countless divisions phalanxed forth, and loomed

their creeping pestilence or insect swarm

like locust-shadows on a harvest Heaven.

And all was hatred and a jaundiced pride

within the faith of men.

But God stood firm;

His Face: a statue-still, aura undimmed…

until—

with all those myriad battalions

of suits and dresses, uniforms and ties

treading Transcendence blithely, careless, wise,

Jehovah as a blinding L I G H T ascends…

All looked in awe, amazed and terrified…

when now, He breaks to brightness—cosmic Light

beamed out, in all directions—endless, sky-filled

(the way a quasar’s gobbled gas and cloud

spew forth the laser of a billion suns

from a black hole)—then summoned Angels to Him

(silent—no: telepathic)

And

They

Come.

Multitude on multitude, up they come!

conjoining arches: arms in vortex swirls

churning in flight—like countless flocks of birds

arising from a cityscape, in arcs

that round the Godhead, Circle after Circle—

He, in the Angel-hurricane: The Eye

(as if tipped cyclones circumscribed). And all

around, bright swarming Seraphim, in rings,

chant haunting Hallelujahs to the LORD…

Earth’s armies slowed, and, coming to a halt,

gazed up in awe and horror at the sight

of T H E E M P Y R E A N now formed. The Dawn,

still sinking through the heavens, now was blocked

completely by revolving of the Hosts,

and darkness—like cloud on the clouds—cast shade

where Holy Light fell shadowed to a form.

The welkin pulsed.

Deep rumbles in the mist

troubled the sky, like seismic pangs—and air,

the air itself, buzzed nervous like a flame

as the weird songs of the Seraphic gyre

groaned from the Wheel like a hypnotic dirge

and frighted all Elysium.

…At last,

the Holy Will of God at core conveys

what acts He’d see accomplished by His Prince

of Angels—Michael (swirling innermost)—

and what decrees of Providence performed

to exorcize rebellion from mankind.

These deep directives (learned like whispered thought)

thus treasured up, he doesn’t disobey—

but breaks the swiftest orbit of the Rose,

and hurtles spark-like from the swirling Blaze

a meteoric Angel—to the front.

Just like an osprey, when it eyes its aim

in subtle lakebeds far below, and dives

sheer down in falling flight until it arcs

the swift parabola of its descent

at watertop (to tear a fish away

in talons, glistening)—like that, the Seraph,

plummeting down, turned up his feathered sails

to catch the air, and eased his lightning-fall

to foggy ground, and foggy plumes of vale…

Mankind just watched, standing unsure in hordes

as the Archangel, fanning forth his wings,

erects himself in towered might before them,

flushed with divinity—and brandishing

a sacred saber from its sheath:

“BEHOLD”

he bellowed—once the murmurs of the crowd

(which stretched from Faust and Job through regiments

into horizons of the heavens) lowered

to hear the messenger: a silhouette

of Herculean strength and dactyl feathers

before the fiery circuit of the LORD.

“BEHOLD” He flares again. “YOU HAVE TRANSGRESSED!

AND COME TOO NEAR A HOLINESS WHICH MAN

CANNOT ENDURE. RETURN, AND PRAY HIS GRACE

ABSOLVE YOU OF THIS PRIMAL BLASPHEMY.”

He glowed a radiant crimson at the last—

like embers or the dry, red heat of coal:

“GO! FOR THE PLACE ON WHICH YOU STAND ACCUSED

IS HOLY GROUND!”

at which the Seraph rose

into the air with billow-beats of wing

and clutched his monstrous saber savagely.

But Faust was uninspired…

And so, one gaze

upon his fleet he cast… another back

to Michael… out he draws a pistol, cocks,

then blows the brain out of the ruined Angel!

Down in a heap the crumpled Seraph falls,

vast wings collapsing—clattered mail and arms

crushing the bones, as ichor dyed the vanes

and the ripped plumage, gnarled into a death.

“Yes… mea culpa,” clucked the Doctor, snide,

as all behind him slowly woke from shock

to flush with realization at the deed:

the flesh was able

and the Spirit weak!

But, high within the bright Empyrean,

did Godhead gape? amazed? dumfounded?—wild

for once with an amiss surprise, or rage

at this unprecedented injury?

For all the Seraphim there—turning (as

ordained)—let slip their even symphonies now

to an arrhythmic dissonance…

then silence.

Elysium fell mute.

Some war had come.

All eyes had witnessed what could not be done…

And so

He strikes!

Like the implicit pact

a body has with all its disparate parts—

spurring the molecules to mobilize

for clot and suture at the trauma-point,

while throbbing arteries with blood en-route

pump all their efforts to the wound—so God,

unspeaking, orders legion Hosts, in plume,

decouple from the whirling Rose and spill

themselves on mankind’s hemorrhaged mutiny.

They do! descending swarm-like—all at once—

as, under oceans, fluid in their shape,

enormous schools of fish or krill change course,

conglomerated, and confound our sense

of ‘multitude.’

Downward they fly! and skim

the mile of cloud which separates mankind

from Heaven’s soaring citadel—as God,

enthroned in air in Glory, looked below.

But terror had already struck, as now

man’s armies, staring up at the bright swarm,

changed confidence for wild alarm, and shook

seeing this Empyreal front soar forward.

Faustus alone stood calm, and, with it, steered

the worldly will to quicker wisdom: “DIG!”

he cried, and as some did his tapped defense

then dominoed to all the regiments

behind them.

Mist and fog flew up like dirt now

as Ground was delved in for their barricade.

A million men, dew-soaked and sweaty, heaved,

and dug, and drew Foundation from their feet

as the invasion of the Angels threatened

and bore down heavy from the LORD’s Cathedral.

Then, from the sinking trenches, Faust’s grim means

to counter Heaven’s legions was revealed:

For now

the cannon comes.

Ten thousand stands

to prop ten thousand sleek machineguns nest

upon the fresh hole’s lip: elaborate arms

men mass-compiled from factory-iron parts,

which engineers and grim industrialists

contrived through Faustian alchemy and science.

Now, all at once, they’re set in even places,

dotting the steep ravine like rivets, or

steel gems upon a band—each propped and aimed

with crosshairs on the charging of the Angels.

For on they came, undaunted: taking note

of Earth’s strange arms and engines, undeterred

(uncertain of their worth…

—yet confident

in Heaven’s ancient strength, and the sure code

of noble chivalries in Christendom).

So on they charged with faded swords and blades

against industrial artillery,

and made for slaughter—mechanized.

At last,

Seraphic clouds in range, “NOW!” looses fire—

setting the Skies ablaze with such a light

it humbled the Empyrean’s.

Sharp bursts

in clanking rattle riddled wing on wing—

piercing their neck and arms—tears faces off

God’s soldiery, to shred white robes and skin—

bodies repulsed, and punctured head to knees—

grated—exploding—puffing mists of red—

till down the vanguard of their murder falls

like crows the power lines electrocuted.

Their comrades fill the void—but meet the same:

bloodshed on bloodshed—endless streams of steel

and shrapnel hammering; till the vast brood,

peppered with metal, drop their corpses down,

already broken, to the rising heap

of shattered bones and ruined carrion

who were the Hosts of God.

Yet still they come!—

relentless as Infinity—as row

on row, and tier on eager tier, swept forward,

fearless, replacing the already-slain

for slaying—surging forth with simple blades

into an execution. Then, cast down,

and torn like rags, they stack the mounting carnage,

coating more dead like polyps on a reef:

all armies of Elysium shot-through

as humans decimate, and turn their stream

a waterfall of rushing Seraphim.

And all was death.

But Gabriel could sense

a slaughter. Rendered chief by Michael’s murder,

he deems their charge catastrophe, and calls,

at once, for their immediate retreat:

to muster order from the multitudes

and reinforce.

They do, turning as one

away from the harsh blare still downing—death

and showered bullets, indiscriminate—

while still men’s dark munitions sweep the field

and fill the backs of hectic Angels, shot

regardless of their helplessness to flee.

So guns blare on, and fell a wake to trace

the Angels’ trail in their defeat—unstopped,

until no holy thing lies still in range

then

quieted…

to ghostly silence…

chains

and shells coming to halt

till only blood—

the blood of Angels—could be heard, as pools

soaked deep into the sopping clouds and foamed

beyond the trench.

VICTORY!

Heavens cowed

and Angels fleeing! Who could now dispute?

Man’s metal could outstrip the thunderbolt!

And yet,

no gleeful battle cries rose out

from trembling trenches. Pale, and terrified,

and shaking with their conscience’ blot (like boys

the mangled beaks entrance, when daddy’s gun,

in secret, sweeps a chirping nest from boughs

to glut the curiosity of youth),

they wonder at their potent hands and dread

assumption of divinity.

Not Faust.

Nor any scientist, or mechanist,

or Ford (Faust’s soulless famulus). They know:

man’s time is short—that, presently, in hordes,

indignant Angels will return in rage

and seek complete annihilation. So

they set to work.

Marshalling crews of men,

their dig into the Fundament resumes

with cold efficiency, as hand on hand

mine deeper—to the chemical—for core,

disturb the surface of Elysium,

seeking life’s crude, inchoate Elements

for warping into arms.

At last, they hit

a vein then plan immediate extraction…

My God…I still recall the image of them

(gazing on Heaven’s fields of clouds of carnage

while clutching tightly to my harp within).

For there, below, they seemed to form their own

Empyrean—a vast, mathematical

design—yet shorn of feeling… All became

a cog: mere cogs in clockwork of destruction,

as each with simple, patterned steps performed

the songless dance of their assembly line.

Human on human, like the links in chains,

drew out the elemental ore—each making

some fine adjustment at the prodding script

of scientists—until (these: PROCESSED, done…)

all labor’s confiscated up by Ford

for darker purposes, destroying Heaven…

But farther off on the vast fog of fields,

retreating Angels come to halt: some wings

frayed by barrage; some scuffed; some bruised; some bleeding—

all wearied by the harsh attack—and all

confused: how lesser mortals could confound

their strength, and question Deity… mock Truth…

Their leader, Gabriel, assesses each

as millions of the Seraphim regroup,

then hovers over all—to monster will—

once every Angel, Seraph, Throne, and Cherub

throbs in a flock to guard Elysium:

“THRONES! DOMINATIONS! PRINCEDOMS! VIRTUES! POWERS!

AND ALL HIGH HIERARCHIES OF THE SPHERES:

BE STRONG, MY FRIENDS REMEMBER NOW YOUR VALOR!

REMEMBER NOW THE BLOWS WE DEALT TO DAMN

THE MORNING STAR, AND WREAK A FALL ON HIM

WHO DARED DEFY OMNIPOTENCE TO ARMS!

SUCH MIGHT WE BROKE, SIFTING LIKE BRITTLE CHAFF

THE IRON STAFF OF WOULD-BE GODS. FEAR NOT, THEN,

MATERIAL MAN. HE BUCKS AND BRAYS, AND HOWLS

WITH DISCONTENT AT PARADISE, BUT IS

NO MORE MAJESTICAL THAN DUST-IN-CLOTH:

A DIRTY RACK OF FLESH THAT CANNOT STAND

ILLUMINATED BEING. SOMETHING LESS

THAN ANGEL, DO NOT TREAT HIM LESS THAN ANGEL,

BUT VENT THE FIERY WRATH OF INJURED RIGHT

ON FRAGILE FORMS NO LESS THAN MERITED

TO DEMONS CLAD IN MAIL! HE LOWERS GOD

TO WAR WITH HIM; LET’S MAGNIFY THE MAN!

AND SHOW TO HIM A GREATER RECKONING

TO MATCH A RECKONING OF GREATER PAIN!”

So Gabriel incited all the Hosts,

beaming new brightness by the Ire of God:

he raised his sword. Then, turning fiery eyes

behind to Angel fronts, he wildly roars:

“FOR THE ETERNAL GOD!”—and surged ahead:

to break the deep defensive front of men

by force of mass and courage over arms.

So on the barren stretch of cloud they charge

incalculable—gushing in one great spume

all strength and means of Heaven towards the trench,

that, from the citadel, their flowing jet

of blended light and cloth in halo’s feather

seem, as a whole, turned liquid-like, and stream

a molten spew of Seraphim —or stars,

if all a sudden such a galaxy

as ours stretched out, black-emptied to a hole,

and all the Milky Zodiac whirled forth

to its destruction. So their legions on,

poured from the spigot of Elysium,

as God, their power’s Fountain, looked below.

But then—

EXPLOSIONS

All their ocean arms—

thought out of range—now suddenly throw up

large parts of charging fronts, sporadically,

in blood and smoke!—as unexpected blasts

butcher their legs away in savage bursts

and hurl up mangled remnants like a rain.

The Angels reel—but hurry boldly on

through devastating minefields men have laid

to winnow them: fresh means and cruel inventions

wrought in the cold precision of their mines

and mock-Empyrean. So legs and arms,

flesh, cloth, muscle, eyes and ears, and parts

of lung and thick intestine, bowels, bones,

and hearts in spattered pieces spew their chunks

from burns, mess all the punished field, and fleck

the novel wasteland of the Heavens

with shattered Spirits as the dauntless Hosts

sped on.

Mankind just watched—(though some fell sick

in seeing Angels inside-out, and folded,

vomiting). Still, onward their legions come—

determined—dodging obstacles of blood

and organs of their friends, and fresh explosions—

all for their God,

For God!

—God…

God and Purpose.

How could they know a greater evil waited?

Gas.

In a sudden cloud it overtakes them,

shot in their midst as canisters and cans,

suffusing ghostlike: mists of putrid green

enveloping eruptions on the field

and opened bodies, mutilate.

At once,

entire waves are downed to it, as fumes

in noxious chlorine nebulas enshroud,

constricting eyes and throats. And the blown haze,

like vapor from a lake, breathed up pollutants

in emerald specters, suffocating.

Gas.

In a thick fog of phosgene it attacks—

burns lungs to acid and asphyxiates

the gasping legions of the LORD: man’s worst

—until the greatest triumph of his work

in brutal alchemy and science fouls

the field: for now

sulfuric mustard pours.

In toxic billows, in a yellow cloud,

it spreads its thick contagion, phantom-like,

and eats them all. Angel on Angel fall

in agony, and clutch their eyes—puss-bled

and seared to blindness—as their ruined skin,

crackling in plague and blister-boils, breaks down,

chemical-burned, to slough away in crusts

or yellow bubbles, festering.

The crowd

of chemists from the trenches looked away…

They do not see the stunned and dazed mowed down

or have their chests eviscerated. How?

How come? —why should they? All have done their part.

Why call them from their hiding to survey

the devastation of experiments

and little things they microscoped with smiles

turned larger than all God’s Elysium?

But others do.

With bug-eyes and their trunk

of tubes, a million faces, still as grass,

stand staring through the gas-masks on the fields

where thirty million Angel corpses lie,

or fall, or choke, or spasm, or cry for God

through such atrocity. Machinegun-fire

lights up their goggled staring through the tint,

that all of them appear depraver doctors

in their bird-suits, gazing on pyres of plague

a ravaged Europe’s pestilence stacked up

when similar apocalypse swept through

and made grim prophets whisper

of an End.

Indeed, it is enough of triumphing

it goads some hubris from them. Slowly, death

by death, they grow more confident in hopes

of taking Heaven, till—made drunk with fire—

and deeming each a god, invincible—

whole scores leap up from trenches—gunning—shriek

in wails in mimicry of savage Powers

and hurl themselves to fore.

The Angels!—God

himself!!!—ELYSIUM ENTIRE!!! is theirs

(they think) for utter subjugation, rape

and ruin, as the Heavens meet their fresh

and potent overlords!

Yet such vain reach

is quickly checked. For on the wasted field

their phantom glories

fail:

victims at once

to their own dark means—when the mines, and gas,

and spraying bullets of their own machines

pummel their backs, rob each of air, or blow

their high-aspiring hearts to pieces.

Man

on man

fall dead:

self-slaughtered by their dreams

of stealing Thunder, and apotheosis

to savage Lords.

“Pull back! Pull back!” yelled Job,

but too-late heard through endless blaring guns,

and the thick fog, green with their gas, of smoke

and smother rolling. So some million fall,

strewn on the craters of a broken world,

and glaze the Angels’ offal with their own

as, over them, munitions’ music plays

a grating dirge for men, and requiem

for slaughtered Angels…

Yet, the Dawn—its piece

now ending (rest impending as it neared

the final bar of the Horizon)—bled

still deeper crimsons on the field, as night,

its death, crept close. Chill nipped the air, and winds

unfelt before in Heaven blustered through

(though deafening cannon, engines, mines and flares

of light still mocked the day, and made its end

seem artificially prolonged for murder).

But—

as dawnlight’s dregs soaked in to mountains, and

the dreaded omen of a night in Heaven

fell—then still-fighting Seraphim looked up…

looked out on all their shattered casualties

for nothing, and, with doubt

—with doubt and wonder—

fled.

As a wave of in-drawn pebbles breaks

and falters on the watermark to tide

(which, broken, scatters backwards on the beach

when sea reclaims it), so the Angels broke—

at last—their ranks along the line, and left,

confused and horrified for Heaven. All

was lost.

But Gabriel alone screamed hoarse,

and flung rebuke on all those fleeing spheres

of Holy Ones. With reddened face and sword

unsated since unpowerful, he cries:

“YOU WIND! YOU GHOSTS! ABANDONERS OF GOD!

SO FALLS ANOTHER THIRD OF HEAVEN’S STARS!

BUT I, FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, WILL BLAZE, AND BURN

AND BURST MY LAST EXPLOSION OVER THEM—

TO TAKE AS MUCH OF REBEL EARTH INSIDE

MY GLORY TILL I BREAK AND, DARK AT LAST

IN ANGRY SPACE, SUBSIDE TO NOTHINGNESS!”

So wept the only Angel to remain,

and, with a final roaring, ran headfirst

into the cannon-fire.

And yet, what for?

What was it worth? What was this madness’ meaning?

For there, at once, his face is torn away

by heavy shelling, and stampeding sprays

of metal, dribbling gut. His body falls,

clanging to Heaven clutching worthless arms

of prior centuries, and stains the edge

of trench and line, one drop descending in—

high-watermark of the Angelic siege:

whose blot means what?

It is already gone.

Again men’s guns fell silent, Seraphim

retreating to the Walls, where, high above,

Almighty stares…

stares off, unblinking—face

a cryptic hieroglyph of God-Enigma:

riddle on riddle painted eerie in,

and Meaning in the eyes: inscrutable.

Yet those who dare to look on Him take calm

in vagueness, comforted by Mystery,

that plan in this catastrophe might rear,

revealing higher wisdom—this the God

(they reason), after all, who blessed His Son’s

destruction with the world…

But night

has come,

darkening Paradise in dreary pall

and buying truce with shadow. Darkness veils

the dead, and Faust, and Job, and millions—men

and women, artists, scientists, and all

the souls invested in emancipation,

all fiercely ‘modern men’ (and those who follow)—

all these, in countless, wearied regiments,

abandon now their guns, and move

to sleep…

(though trembling hands prove newest enemies

to pitch a tent.)

So tense armistice spreads,

and the obligatory smile: victory theirs!

…yet, for the words, the sentiment expressed

lacks any sense of triumph.

Through the fog,

the human camp burns blurry amber: dots

of light which signal settling, sleep, and time

to gather bodies from the fields of Heaven.

Warring must wait.

Unfinished lies the game.

And God, with a concluding look, walks off

into the lonely echoes of his Chamber

from forty million bodies on the plain.

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