Vulgata: Hannibal part I

"Hannibal, the grace of Baal as his name ran in his own tongue." - G.K. Chesterton

To a mother’s womb He sent me
A demon at that time unknown,
He had too much pride to Himself abide
The stench of flesh, so I went alone.
Like a black fish vomited from the Styx
Still spuming and snorting gore,
I left off Hell’s own sacraments
And with a soul still on my lips
Went to settle earth’s little war.

To Carthage great Baal sent me,
That splashing sink of newer sins,
Where every useless bauble’s barked
From streets with leering idols parked,
And men eat grubs and gods eat meat
While dogs drink wine at rich sluts’ feet,
And the ash of flesh snows in the street
From the crockery of dark gods.

For the land snored in a patch of peace
Like a sow in her patch of slime,
But now terror-shrieks beyond the foam
Of the Carthage-killing eagle Rome,
Sweated the grim grey gargoyle brow
Of Punic war veterans at the plough.

For as a man in love with the moon
Is fooled by its image in a river,
And kissing it falls in and drowns
His skull a cave for fish by winter;
So Rome sank onto a bed of sighs
And a wistful smile would show,
For love of the thought of Carthage hanged:
A great scarlet mess licked by a crow.

Now with clotted glory her Legions marched
And sun-gold shields numberless
As the insects of a summer’s day
Struck all who saw their ranks with blindness
As a million mirrors of the sun’s last ray;
But as Rome put forth every last cohort
Her foe sought recruits of a different sort.

In Carthage they brought pretty doll-like babes
To the Temple to howl in a pretty blaze,
To save their nation with a dear-bought grace
Amid the orgy of drums that marks the place
Where at Baal’s whim, while mothers hymn
Babies burn, and God hides His face.

“O Baal, have you eaten our children yet?”
They cry: “Do you hunger for more?
Buried in jars like walled-up stars
Or pried from the womb like a strangled hare,
And no cry to make the Furies roar?”

For Carthage is the sacred colony
Of the Canaanites cursed to die
Sprung up like a tulip in Spring-time
From the socket of a corpse’s eye.
Over sighing seas where winks no star
The foam-frothing Canaanite crew,
Came here in dark ships long ago
To flee the unrelenting Jew.

For the zeal and wrath of Joshua
Struck them in hole and hill and moor:
“Men of Canaan who drink hog’s blood,”
He said, “With you we will drink war.”
“To war, pass the flagon of murder round,”
Canaan cried, “Till the moon’s got a blackened eye.”
“Drink with me,” roared Israel, giving no ground,
“To war, though the sun should die.”

And the cheers, the howling, the snap of bows
The eerie scream from a head that’s cracked;
The calm starlight on a brain newly exposed
The morning frost on an army half-hacked:
Vultures like demons, marking all this
On thermal winds falling, croaked out their bliss.

But when Joshua smelled certain children
On their infanticidal god’s sighs,
And heard all about him the buzzing
Of the priests of the Lord of the Flies,
Then in a God-intoxicated zeal
To pluck and burn their beards in Hell
He rose and blew such a note of war
It shattered his horn in two, and bore
The madmen without a breath to plea
But with bright blood to empurple the sea.

Turned adrift, the devils were homeless
Too harried to weed the newborn,
So with pathos to redress this
Baal came in charity to the forlorn.
As a wheeling bat-swarm blots the moon
Dripping blood from a thousand throats,
The Canaanites rose from their dark swoon
Ate the dead, and fled in swift boats.

To Carthage, where Aphrodite walked
In the first morning of the world,
Spilling golden dews from pearl hands,
At which all growing things unfurled.
And when Lucifer to the Outer Dark
Sped like a word of hate,
At Carthage he made a last desperate stand
St. Michael to berate.

Saying: “Now that God is vulgar
Yoking each angel to a man of flesh
Will you be a little goblin’s keeper,
Or kneel to God in a creche?
Proud spirit with the dregs of matter
Ought not to weight its wings,
But in this land I will shatter
Men's love and all mortal things.

And you who rejoiced to see Him
Shut up like the Sun in a box,
God on fresh straw as a baby
Will wince to see the red rocks.
For the rocks of this garden will thirst no more,
And the white rose will turn red:
For that blasphemy of the unborn Christ
Here I’ll dash every baby’s head.”

So Carthage became a promised land
For a people set apart,
Who fleeing there from Canaan came,
Dear to Beelzebub’s heart.
And he built them tall ships like castles,
And made the seven seas their moat;
The great draw-bridge of their empire fell
Wherever their shadow smote.

Greece as their toy and Egypt for bread
To Carthage fell, and did not strive;
But Spain and Gaul long resisted, fighting
Like a dog being skinned alive.
And the world fell before Carthage
As nothing had fallen since Adam fell;
But when Carthage falls, the wise say,
It will be like Satan into Hell.

And in its last stand of Latin fury
By Carthage yet ungored,
Roaring in language loud with fight
That unto devils she would not render
The tattered flag of human nature,
Rome fought with a broken sword.

Therefore great Baal has sent me
As war's very wizardry,
For the last free fortress of heathen men
Still keeps its humanity.

For although the world grows old, grows old
And Hell is loosed by my father’s art;
Before Rome is wrecked upon the plain
Some humanity may yet remain
For the Galilean to reclaim
And Baal shall know fear in his heart.