My coin for the Armistice Day 1918 (11/11/11), a little poetry I wrote long ago.

~~~~

I WANTED WINGS

Just before the crash I laughed at myself. I laughed because the flightless crate in which I was occupying the back seat was heading straight to a church tower and since Jack sat lumped lifeless in front of me and I could not affect the controls, I tried to rock the crate to alter the direction of shallow dive. I bet I could have done that but the mass of dead Gnome in the nose won my pathetic attempts to change the balance. In the last second I just tried to move the heavy camera from my lap as our dragonfly with twisted upper wing in V-form hit the church roof and the whimper and banging like failing sail in the wind ended.

~~~~
In a plateau of bright green grass where horizon is a line
Without mountains, without trees or forests
Under running fluffy clouds and bright blue skies in the sun
I have arrived into a garden party like at home
Pavilions and marquees and long tables are up
Glasses, cups, plates, forks, knives, spoons, napkins upon white tablecloths
And look, mother’s Staffordshires I so much feared as a child that I should slip and break them and I did
A memory hurts me like a lightning
but the skies are fluffy and clear
~~~~

Three seconds of impact. Not as bad as hitting the tree in winter slope of ’12 but boy is there crashing and breaking. Jack’s head rests now back. I can’t see his face but I think he has taken the Gnome into his lap. I have moved a bit and that caused the lightning of pain on my left hip and right side ribs. I carefully raise my right glove covered hand to try the rib and deserve another lightning. The leather coat is intact and I’m afraid to open it. Supposedly the camera has crushed my left hip, the apparatus rests in my lap useless, it’s eye downwards. Removing goggles I raise my eyes. To the immediate left is the church tower, I don’t think we made so much as a dent into its side, but the roof we are sitting on certainly lost a few tiles as we lost our wheels. The roof is not too steep but I feel something of a rocking. Or then it’s my head. I start to hear again. I smell smoke and hear distant rifles and heavier guns. Only then I realize the surroundings this side are murdered landscape. Stumps of trees among the holes in the ground, big and small, water filled. No living or dead to be seen. I’m on the church roof at the desecrated and abandoned ground. I try to laugh but darkness is eager to my eyes as is the powerful stinging and rushing pain. Did I hear horses?

~~~~
‘G’Day laddie, we have arranged something for you!’
Is that my first flying Captain?
‘You are dead?’
‘Don’t mind that lad. They gave my pipe back!’
‘I’m glad for you, Sir.’
‘Pff…I’m not that glad for you, young man. Pff…You’re going to be forever young, what say?’
‘I don’t understand it, Sir.’
‘Hurmph! And see the weather, can’t wait for your wings, eh?’
‘I did want wings, Sir.’
‘Yes you did. And you got wings:
Straight into the Fokker Scourge!
What an unfair turn!
You and me and myriad of dreaming boys,
riding the clouds and taming the wind.
You wrote it yourself, boy.’
‘As far as I’m concerned, you or nobody else should read it’
‘Oh, but they are going through your belongings very soon’
‘I can’t see why? Is there anyone else here? I’m thirsty…’
‘’Ere you go laddie, have port, ‘ere.’
~~~~

Against the gray sky I can see a funny face, it is straight from the war posters at home. Long thin whiskers and a high decorated helmet. Curious dark eyes go around the wreck I’m stuck within. My gloves cover the camera but he has no interest there as he turns towards someone else down at the ground. ‘Etwa hilfe, bitte! Verdammt maschine fällt!’ I give up the camera and carefully touch the shoulder. The German turns quickly to me, his other hand probably at his sword or gun.‘Ruhe…Wir setzen alles.’ ‘Alright, but don’t rock the boat, if you please.’ I don’t think he hears me. I realize something is wrong with my face as well. Not that I can feel it. I feel the hip and the rib. The whole setup creaks as the German changes his position. The same moment he realizes he cannot leave without the whole grim setup of a wreck following him, I recognize his outfit from my books: ‘Uhlan…You are a bloody Uhlan?’ The German is now nervous and somehow holding the delicate balance and wondering what is so funny in thought of German horse soldier holding a wrecked British flying machine on the roof of a Belgian church. I am so amused to a degree of pain it darkens again.

~~~~
My Captain went away
Where is everyone?
Am I so forgotten in the middle of nowhere?
But look, there is my cousin Mary, fresh and pretty
though smashed under the rubble of a London ammunition factory
She’s here
but upon seeing me she turns sad and walks away
A bit nuisance that stinging feeling, so I look at my side
I wear the parade uniform but there is something sticky in my side
Why is there a camera in my left pocket?
I choose to drop it and it turns five times bigger
Sticky as well
~~~~

The Uhlan is smoking as I open my eyes. Seeing me awake he offers me a couple of inhales and the substance makes me wonder about the dark gray cover running over us. We left the aerodrome in sunshine.
Before this mess I wished to travel and now I’m at a nice foreign church with a camera. The Fate is certainly laughing somewhere. Why does the wind in the torn wing fabrics sound like marquee back home?

~~~~
Oh no, it’s great-uncle Carstairs
Garden seats fly all directions
as he swims among them towards me
and fingers his invisible Victoria Cross, eager to explain to me once again
how he earned it at Rorke’s Drift
He was never at Rorke’s Drift
He got a blow into his head at
Isandhlwana
‘Boy, I told you those things won’t fly
There’s no Pegasos,
Cetshwayo told me, haa haa!’
He died the same day I hit the tree
in the winter slopes of ‘12
~~~~

The remnants of wings are giving up from the church tower, along the tearing sound. The Uhlan looks more than worried. ‘You should go. There is nothing for you anymore. Go to thee horse, my friend. But thanks for trying.’ I don’t know if he understood but he starts to withdraw carefully and upon noticing that our wreck does not immediately follow, he descends out of sight. I hear only dropping tiles. Then a distant rumble begins and ends. I start to hear a train as the Germans shout each other and hoofs start hitting the ground, moving away. I hear my previous friend muttering aloud in the edge of roof. The first shell falls hundred yards away but the next ones approach the church with a series of quakes, the last smashing to the ground on the other side of the tower. My crate tilts right and starts sliding sideways. The German horse soldier is on its path. His eyes are plates and mouth opens a bit, then we are over the edge. Is this a cathedral, falling taking a year? I feel sorry for the helpful chap as his face remains just a feet from mine when the wreck smashes to the ground, right wings holding nothing but squashing into a tangle of fabric and cables and my section with the camera frame squashes the poor Uhlan.

~~~~
‘That was not fun at all’
‘No one said it would’
He talks English now
I think but he replies
‘You talk German?’
‘Apparently we talk Human’
‘You like philosophy?’
‘No, it just came into mind, you into a parade as well?’
‘It would seem so, though I miss my horse’
‘I think he was not coming’
‘Maybe it is good. Look, there’s a garden party; you are my guest, then’
‘Why? That’s my Mütterchen there, see’
Actually, it is my mother but
it is all about the Point of View
‘Hello Mother. Not certain if glad to see you
Are you dead?’
‘No, my dear. I am merely dreaming you in our sunny garden’

‘I thought I am dreaming’
‘Yes but I am told you will not wake up,
and I will wake up in tears’
‘Mother, I’d like to introduce you my friend,
he tried to help me’
‘I see no one, my child’
The horse soldier is there and he talks to the invisible
With the Sleeping and with the Dead
He goes quiet and a child in sailor clothing
So do I
‘Are we getting back to the womb?’
‘That would not be inappropriate upon these circumstances.’
~~~~

I see he is in pain. ‘Can you reach the flask? Or cigarettes?’ I try to gesture him at the same time. I’m against the edge in my crate, the Uhlan is under us against the grass. Next to him is a headstone and I almost congratulate him not hitting it but I change my mind. He seems not paralyzed and produces cigarettes. The flask is apparently somewhere amidst the graves. We cough blood at the same second. Then we have cigarettes in our mouths. ‘How about some..?’ I start. He continues ‘…feuer!’ and laughs, trembling with spatters of blood. He has a box of matches, with one hand he pushes it open against the edge of mass we are trapped under. I pick a match and scratch it against his box. It fails. It takes three matches until his cigarette is smoking. He falters with the box and it drops to the green cemetery. Instead he lights my cigarette with his own. We laugh. As much as we have blood left to spit around. An English airman in his broken crate and a German horse soldier broken under the crate. He looks pale. I think I’m looking pale as well, I’m cold. ‘Well, I guess this is it, old chap. Thanks again for trying.’ A whisper replies: ’Bitte.’

~~~~
We jump up and down on the grass of the plateau, two little boys
Without any restrictions of the adult or military
We are both just kids with little sailor clothing
He waves his hand to my family
For him it’s his family, under the marquee
I wave as well
My mother, my cousin Mary, my great-uncle Carstairs
and my Captain, wave back and sip their drinks
saluting my upcoming Wings
‘I shall get the Wings, where’s your horse?’
I laugh to my mate in death
He’s strangely as glad as I am
‘Look!’ he says
And indeed, into the blue sky appears a small beautiful cloud
Descending to my mate
I gasp as it is The Pegasos
‘It is not fair,’ I yell to my mate ‘Where are my Wings?’

‘You have them! Fly with me!
My mate ascends with his valiant Pegasos
I think of flying and then think of the collection of feathers
going back and forth in my back
We rise to the blue, laughing to each other
Playing like fools on the free space
Through fluffy white into deep blue
I remain envious of his Pegasos
And follow him to the Eternity.
# # #