Langston Hughes and ancient warriors

"Horatius died a suicide, in some philosophies".

That line, from my "gee, did I write that?" work "TRIUMPH" has found its way into more than one "famous quotes" collection. It's a good line...and even out of context, it has message, which is really nice.

For those of you unfamiliar with who Horatius was, he was a Roman soldier who, dependng on which ancient writer you believe, either single-handedly or with two companions defended a narrow bridge against oncoming armies while ordering it be cut and burned down beneath him. One account has him surviving this act of heroism and being rewarded with "all the land he could plow in a day" but most end the story with his plunge to his death (many later historians believe his exploits were exaggerated and his survival and reward added later to the story to serve as spur to future heroes, just as the one minister(!) made up the story of George Washington and the cherry tree, in order to inspire people to be truthful).

The line in the poem is making the point that actions are always placed in the context of other people's views and values. At that point in the poem, the narrator has revealed his plans to stand upon or return to the battlefield where all his comrades have fallen and unleash all he has in his arsenel to the point of winning the battle, although he knows he will be amoung "the fallen" at the end of the day. It is left to the reader to discern or interpret whether the fall is his death or having lost his moral compass in the name of victory or a cause.

All in all, it is a grim work with a strange genesis to it.

I was in Los Angeles. Well, Century City to be more accurate, sitting at my desk. I was seized by what I would have described at a cataleptic fit (one of three I suffered, by my count, during this time). I was tired and worn down, having been months away from my children, deserted by my lover, financially ruined by my own hand in signing over my fortune in the divorce, and in failing mental health (this was during the period of time between the Panther and Brigit, and I had not yet discovered how important intimacy was to my mental and physical well-being.)

In my mind's eye I saw the wall across from me flicker, and an emerald-hued, lozenge-shaped object, burst throught he wall like an artillery shell, coming at me. I snapped out of the paralysis and began to write...as always, one take...one draft. That poem I wrote, in about ten minutes, was "TRIUMPH". I still have the original manuscript around here, someplace.

I believe now it was the stress overwhelming the meridian in my mind and the "Goblins in My Attic" smashing down the walls to allow me to, through creative catharsis, vent some of the pain and sorrow I was feeling. In any case, I have always held it to be one of my best works.

I pulled it from two different books previously, when it would not fit in page width and publishers wanted to "wrap" it. I finally manipulated fonts and it went into INVOCATO this past Spring. I read it at most of my public readings, and a reading of it is available on my iTunes podcast "The Romantic Poet of the Internet" - it's there, right after "from out of the city"...

Note the starting lines in each stanza...and the final line of the poem is reference to Langston Hughes' great short poem "Dreams". Yes, I say "barren with snow" rather than "frozen with snow", but that is my twist...frozen is not a bad word to me, my take on the universe, but barren? Barren is irreparably negative.

Oh, and this poem a good basis for an essay, term paper or read for class, kids...think of it as a it of homework help for English or Lit class. You can always grab the text of the poem...below...sorry for any linewrap, I have adjusted the font to try to compensate for page width...

TRIUMPH

Carry back the fallen, they are now no more than obstacles and eyesores on the battlefields,
worthy hearts that met their fates as fodder to a purpose yet obscure and oblique, seeking no
validation for their immolation in the fireflower field that sealed their epitaphs in eclectic blue and red,
steady hands on the rudder of the boat that sails the River Styx and picks its way through carrion
feeding the lampreys of lethargy and the lachrymal leeches that bloat on their own poisons flowed
like rows of roses mowed down in a mad gardener's harvest of slash and burn horticulture.

Carry back the fallen, for they deserve proper burial away from the emotions of this carnage,
this new age of children playing make-believe around the grieving truths that emasculate dreams
in the sad, seamless shroud of a religion of the damned. We are the vanguard and the residual force,
the dessert course for the ghouls that pick their way through the bazaar banquet tables of the dead.
Heroes have fled to lick their wounds and toast their victories, leaving us to save what we can
of the sanity we possessed before Odin chose to wrest from us the wisdom traded for a single eye.

Carry back the fallen, for in this season we possess not the reason to understand their sacrifice,
pain raining down like the tears of hungry children we'd rather buy a book of lies than feed for our need
is so selfish, our pain so intimate, our terror so consummate, our dreams so delicate they will shatter
with the first touch of a gloved hand, standing without legs in a room without a floor in a world without God,
getting even with the odds we set when we wet our whetstones and honed our sharp tongues to lance
like a poignard into the heart of the matter that will shatter and scatter us like the debris of freedom.

Carry back the fallen, for they need not see what next I do. For the victory is of more import than my life.
Where blades have bent, I have sent them back to the fire to be reforged as steel, not pig-iron, tempered
by the winds I call in necromancies dark and deadly, I said we would triumph, and so we shall. Hide
your face from the light I call, for I will not take responsibility for your soul, crusaders come and go and
slowly we have earned every inch of our position in this game of rogues and wizards, but only one song
will be sung when the histories are recited tonight around a bright bonfire of sacred woods and thistles.

Carry back the fallen. For then will I be alone, without the staring eyes of the dreamers locked forever
in a hidden instant. Incant me the words I swore to take to war if love and fear would ever go sour, the power
is not a madman's riddle, but the middle of the sphere where nearly all of us hide our chitinous mantras,
enchanted with our own venoms and vindications, paying reparations for a trail of abominations we would
tell lies to hide from the child inside us, growing on our virtues and our sins to be stillborn as we have torn
our own amniotic sacs to force our way into a world where few get out alive, striding in baby steps.

Carry back the fallen. And I will be amoung them. And there will be no songs tonight, no dances to mark
this victory. For in triumph, we are all victims of our own basest natures, fated to mate with the incubi
and succubi of our own vanity. The only war worth fighting is in our own hearts and souls. Horatius died
a suicide, in some philosophies. Think what you please, dream what you will, say what you must, but dust
still dries a poet's tongue to the point that the words are only words and the word I heard a lifetime ago
must now ultimately sleep or perish, beneath a metaphor'd field I once heard of...barren with snow.


William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

This also formed the tentpole for the other "big 'T'" poems...TRANSCENDENCE, TEMPEST and, of course, TESTAMENT.

Massive sub-referencing in this work (Dennis Miller would be proud of me)...I count no less than eleven references to other of my works, and half a dozen references to other writers...and let's not forget the mythological allusions to the River Styx, Odin (and his one eye traded for wisdom), incubi and succubi (the plutal forms of incubus and succubus)...you get the picture. You can watch a whole season of "Walker, Texas Ranger" and not get as much quotable material.

All my writings are my children. And in this one, I am, to steal a line "well pleased".