The Anabasis of Godspeed
Ishion Hutchinson
1 Above deck, ice-scarred, off to Albion. ___ Let it be named so, for the dynastic furies combed into heads, pressed into lines of boys shouting ‘here, sir,’ and ‘not here, sir’ at devotion or on the parade ground, leaping over shadows as the sea broke with their names interred in the same roster, fidgeting with oceanic sorrow. Happy Grove. They climbed the sea-charged cannons. They looked up the school’s purple and gray walls. They chattered like parakeets in the breeze. Then their scurrilous voices crossed strict waves, bound by an ardor to move while standing hidden in the open, an infantry stalled in the holy metal of the sun. Flecked dust and heat. Melting vellum. Lament. ___ A boy struggled with the flag, crack-lashing from his hands like a fer-de-lance. Scorched, turned and watched charcoal burners; shipwrights; tailors; clerks; fishermen; motor engineers; blacksmiths; cooks; mechanics as it whisked away in the grass. Laughter broke across ranks. The chased earned him his name: Godspeed. Godspeed! A khaki blitz chorused their mute, fettered pain, the future’s fata morgana raging sargasso eyes bulge as if a mirror lapses time: Jesus of Lübeck? Braunfisch? No: iron twins Karlsruhe and Dresden, incandescent drift amid reefs at sunset rumoured to be wedding-torches to puncture these poppies blackened with the unknown names stung to their chests each morning like courtiers of empire, primed to rake the play field small wars erupted noon: “A Ras! a Ras!” aimed at the Zion-haired boy, who mirrored the sound, that broken water place gurgled from poppies: the dread Arras. Through bells he heard this, mouths gashed with ringing, fell in ordered rows, tilted like ships in the glare. So many, sugar; rum; cocoa; coffee; rice; logwood; bauxite; oranges, lime
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