Slowly they nosed ahead, while under the chill North-wester
Nervous the sea crawled and twitched like the skin of a beast
That dreams of the chase, the kill, the blood-beslavered feast:
They too, the light-hearted sailors, dreamed of a fine fiesta,
Flags and their children waving, when they won home from the east.
Vague as images seen in a misted glass or the vision
Of crystal-gazer, the ships huddled, receded, neared,
Threading the weird fog-maze that coiled their funnels and bleared
Day’s eye. They were glad of the fog till Galdames lost position
– Their convoy, precious in life and metal – and disappeared.
But still they held their course, the confident ear-ringed captains,
Unerring towards the landfall, nor guessed how the land lay,
How the guardian fog was a guide to lead them all astray.
For now, at a wink, the mist rolled up like the film that curtains
A saurian’s eye; and into the glare of an evil day
Bizkaya, Guipuzkoa, Nabara, and the little
Donostia stepped at intervals; and sighted, alas,
Blocking the sea and sky a mountain they might not pass,
An isle thrown up volcanic and smoking, a giant in metal
Astride their path – the rebel cruiser, Canarias.
A ship of ten thousand tons she was, a heavyweight fighter
To the cocky bantam trawlers: and under her armament
Of eight- and four-inch guns there followed obedient
Towards Pasajes a prize just seized, an Estonian freighter
Laden with arms the exporters of death to Spain had sent.
A hush, the first qualm of conflict, falls on the cruiser’s burnished
Turrets, the trawlers’ grimy decks: fiercer the lime-
Light falls, and out of the solemn ring the late mists climb,
And ship to ship the antagonists gaze at each other atonished
Across the quaking gulf of the sea for a moment’s time.
The trawlers’ men had no chance or wish to elude the fated
Encounter. Freedom to these was natural pride that runs
Hot as the blood, their climate and heritage, dearer than sons.
Bizkaya, Guipuzkoa, knowing themselves outweighted,
Drew closer to draw first blood with their pairs of four-inch guns.
Aboard Canarias the German gun-layers stationed
Brisk at their intricate batteries – guns and men both trained
To a hair in accuracy, aimed at a pitiless end –
Fired, and the smoke rolled forth over the unimpassioned
Face of a day where nothing certain but death remained.
PHASE TWO
The sound of the first salvo skimmed the ocean and thumped
Cape Machichaco’s granite ribs: it rebounded where
The salt-sprayed trees grow tough from wrestling the wind: it jumped
From isle to rocky isle: it was heard by women while
They walked to shrine or market, a warning they must fear.
But, beyond their alarm, as
Though that sound were also a signal for fate to strip
Luck’s last green shoot from the falling stock of the Basques, Galdames
Emerged out of the mist that lingered to the west
Under the reeking muzzles of the rebel battleship:
Which instantly threw five shells over her funnel, and threw
Her hundred women and children into a slaughter-yard panic
On the deck they imagined smoking with worse than the foggy dew,
So that Galdames rolled as they slipped, clawed, trampled, reeled
Away from the gape of the cruiser’s guns. A spasm galvanic,
Fear’s chemistry, shocked the women’s bodies, a moment before
Huddled like sheep in a mist, inert as bales of rag,
A mere deck-cargo; but more
Than furies now, for they stormed Galdames’ bridge and swarmed
Over her captain and forced him to run up the white flag.
Signalling the Estonian, ‘Heave-to’, Canarias steamed
Leisurely over to make sure of this other prize:
Over-leisurely was her reckoning – she never dreamed
The Estonian in that pause could be snatched from her shark-shape jaws
By ships of minnow size.
Meanwhile Nabara and Guipuzkoa, not reluctant
For closer grips while their guns and crews were still entire,
Thrust forward: twice Guipuzkoa with a deadly jolt was rocked, and
The sea spat up in geysers of boiling foam, as the cruiser’s
Heavier guns boxed them in a torrid zone of fire.
And now the little Donostia who lay with her 75’s
Dumb in the offing – her weapons against that leviathan
Impotent as pen-knives –
Witnessed a bold manœuvre, a move of genius, never
In naval history told. She saw Bizkaya run
Ahead of her consorts, a berserk atom of steel, audacious,
Her signal-flags soon to flutter like banderillas, straight
Towards the Estonian speeding, a young bull over the spacious
And foam-distraught arena, till the sides of the freight-ship screen her
From Canarias that will see the point of her charge too late.
‘Who are you and where are you going?’ the flags of Bizkaya questioned.
‘Carrying arms and forced to go to Pasajes,’ replied
The Estonian. ‘Follow me to harbour.’ ‘Cannot, am threatened.’
Bizkaya’s last word – ‘Turn at once!’ – and she points her peremptory guns
Against the freighter’s mountainous flanks that blankly hide
This fluttering language and flaunt of signal insolence
From the eyes of Canarias. At last the rebels can see
That the two ships’ talk meant a practical joke at their expense:
They see the Estonian veering away, to Bermeo steering,
Bizkaya under her lee.
(To the Basques that ship was a tonic, for she carried some million rounds
Of ammunition: to hearts grown sick with hope deferred
And the drain of their country’s wounds
She brought what most they needed in face of the aid evaded
And the cold delay of those to whom freedom was only a word.)3
Owlish upon the water sat the Canarias
Mobbed by those darting trawlers, and her signals blinked in vain
After the freighter, that still she believed too large to pass
Into Bermeo’s port – a prize she fondly thought,
When she’d blown the trawlers out of the water, she’d take again.
Brisk at their intricate batteries the German gun-layers go
About death’s business, knowing their longer reach must foil
The impetus, break the heart of the government ships: each blow
Deliberately they aim, and tiger-striped with flame
Is the jungle mirk of the smoke as their guns leap and recoil.
The Newfoundland trawlers feel
A hail and hurricane the like they have never known
In all their deep-sea life: they wince at the squalls of steel
That burst on their open decks, rake them and leave them wrecks,
But still they fight on long into the sunless afternoon.
– Fought on, four guns against the best of the rebel navy,
Until Guipuzkoa’s crew could stanch the fires no more
That gushed from her gashes and seeped nearer the magazine. Heavy
At heart they turned away for the Nervion that day:
Their ship, Guipuzkoa, wore
Flame’s rose on her heart like a decoration of highest honour
As listing she reeled into Las Arenas; and in a row
&n
bsp; On her deck there lay, smoke-palled, the oriflamme’s crackling banner
Above them, her dead – a quarter of the fishermen who had fought her –
Men of the Basque country, the Mar Cantabrico.
PHASE THREE
And now the gallant Nabara was left in the ring alone,
The sky hollow around her, the fawning sea at her side:
But the ear-ringed crew in their berets stood to the guns, and cried
A fresh defiance down
The ebb of the afternoon, the battle’s darkening tide.
Honour was satisfied long since; they had held and harried
A ship ten times their size; they well could have called it a day.
But they hoped, if a little longer they kept the cruiser in play,
Galdames with the wealth of life and metal she carried
Might make her getaway.
Canarias, though easily she outpaced and out-gunned her,
Finding this midge could sting
Edged off, and beneath a wedge of smoke steamed in a ring
On the rim of the trawler’s range, a circular storm of thunder.
But always Nabara turned her broadside, manœuvring
To keep both guns on the target, scorning safety devices.
Slower now battle’s tempo, irregular the beat
Of gunfire in the heart
Of the afternoon, the distempered sky sank to the crisis,
Shell-shocked the sea tossed and hissed in delirious heat.
The battle’s tempo slowed, for the cruiser could take her time,
And the guns of Nabara grew
Red-hot, and of fifty-two Basque seamen had been her crew
Many were dead already, the rest filthy with grime
And their comrades’ blood, weary with wounds all but a few.
Between two fires they fought, for the sparks that flashing spoke
From the cruiser’s thunder-bulk were answered on their own craft
By traitor flames that crawled out of every cranny and rift
Blinding them all with smoke.
At half-past four Nabara was burning fore and aft.
What buoyancy of will
Was theirs to keep her afloat, no vessel now but a sieve –
So jarred and scarred, the rivets starting, no inch of her safe
From the guns of the foe that wrapped her in a cyclone of shrieking steel!
Southward the sheltering havens showed clear, the cliffs and the surf
Familiar to them from childhood, the shapes of a life still dear:
But dearer still to see
Those shores insured for life from the shadow of tyranny.
Freedom was not on their lips; it was what made them endure,
A steel spring in the yielding flesh, a thirst to be free.
And now from the little Donostia that lay with her 75’s
Dumb in the offing, they saw Nabara painfully lower
A boat, which crawled like a shattered crab slower and slower
Towards them. They cheered the survivors, thankful to save these lives
At least. They saw each rower,
As the boat dragged alongside, was wounded – the oars they held
Dripping with blood, a bloody skein reeled out in their wake:
And they swarmed down the rope-ladders to rescue these men so weak
From wounds they must be hauled
Aboard like babies. And then they saw they had made a mistake.
For, standing up in the boat,
A man of that grimy boat’s-crew hailed them: ‘Our officer asks
You give us your bandages and all your water-casks,
Then run for Bermeo. We’re going to finish this game of pelota.’
Donostia’s captain begged them with tears to escape: but the Basques
Would play their game to the end.
They took the bandages, and cursing at his delay
They took the casks that might keep the fires on their ship at bay;
And they rowed back to Nabara, trailing their blood behind
Over the water, the sunset and crimson ebb of their day.
For two hours more they fought, while Nabara beneath their feet
Was turned to a heap of smouldering scrap-iron. Once again
The flames they had checked a while broke out. When the forward gun
Was hit, they turned about
Bringing the after gun to bear. They fought in pain
And the instant knowledge of death: but the waters filling their riven
Ship could not quench the love that fired them. As each man fell
To the deck, his body took fire as if death made visible
That burning spirit. For two more hours they fought, and at seven
They fired their last shell.
Of her officers all but one were dead. Of her engineers
All but one were dead. Of the fifty-two that had sailed
In her, all were dead but fourteen – and each of these half killed
With wounds. And the night-dew fell in a hush of ashen tears,
And Nabara’s tongue was stilled.
Southward the sheltering havens grew dark, the cliffs and the green
Shallows they knew; where their friends had watched them as evening wore
To a glowing end, who swore
Nabara must show a white flag now, but saw instead the fourteen
Climb into their matchwood boat and fainting pull for the shore.
Canarias lowered a launch that swept in a greyhound’s curve
Pitiless to pursue
And cut them off. But that bloodless and all-but-phantom crew
Still gave no soft concessions to fate: they strung their nerve
For one last fling of defiance, they shipped their oars and threw
Hand-grenades at the launch as it circled about to board them.
But the strength of the hands that had carved them a hold on history
Failed them at last: the grenades fell short of the enemy,
Who grappled and overpowered them,
While Nabara sank by the stern in the hushed Cantabrian sea.
* * *
They bore not a charmed life. They went into battle foreseeing
Probable loss, and they lost. The tides of Biscay flow
Over the obstinate bones of many, the winds are sighing
Round prison walls where the rest are doomed like their ships to rust –
Men of the Basque country, the Mar Cantabrico.
Simple men who asked of their life no mythical splendour,
They loved its familiar ways so well that they preferred
In the rudeness of their heart to die rather than to surrender …
Mortal these words and the deed they remember, but cast a seed
Shall flower for an age when freedom is man’s creative word.
Freedom was more than a word, more than the base coinage
Of politicians who hiding behind the skirts of peace
They had defiled, gave up that country to rack and carnage:
For whom, indelibly stamped with history’s contempt,
Remains but to haunt the blackened shell of their policies.
For these I have told of, freedom was flesh and blood – a mortal
Body, the gun-breech hot to its touch: yet the battle’s height
Raised it to love’s meridian and held it awhile immortal;
And its light through time still flashes like a star’s that has turned to ashes,
Long after Nabara’s passion was quenched in the sea’s heart.
1 The episode upon which this poem is based is related in G. L. Steer’s book The Tree of Gernika about the Spanish Civil War.
2 In italics are the words of Walsingham after the sea-battle between English and Basques in 1350.
3 Cf. Byron’s comments upon ‘Non-Intervention’ in The Age of Bronze:
Lone, lost, abandoned in their utmost need
&n
bsp; By Christians, unto whom they gave their creed.
The desolated lands, the ravaged isle,
The fostered feud encouraged to beguile,
The aid evaded, and the cold delay
Prolonged but in the hope to make a prey: –
These, these shall tell the tale, and Greece can show
The false friend worse than the infuriate foe.
Spring Song
Floods and the voluble winds
Have warned the dead away:
In swaying copse the willows
Wave their magic wands.
The sun is here to deal
With the dull decay we felt:
In field and square he orders
The vague shadows to heel.
The licence is renewed
And all roads lead to summer:
Good girls come to grief,
Fish to the springy rod.
Our thoughts like sailplanes go
To and fro sauntering
Along fantastic cloud-streets
On warmer currents’ flow.
A larger appetite,
A tautening of the will,
The wild pony tamed,
The common gorse alight.
Now the bee finds the pollen,
The pale boy a cure:
Who cares if in the sequel
Cocky shall be crestfallen?
Night Piece
Down the night-scented borders of sleep
They walk hand in hand, the lovers
Whom day abashed like the cross
Eye of the rheumatic keeper.
They are laid in the grass, and above
Their limbs a syringa blossoms1
In brief and bridal white,
Under whose arch of moonshine
The impotent is made straight,
The ice-queen delighted,
And the virgin loves to moan,
And the schoolboy finds the equator.
Here too the dark plays tricks
On some of accredited glory.
The chairman’s forgot his speech:
The general meets his victims,
And the pale wounds weep once more:
The archbishop is preaching
Stark naked: standing alone
Among his people, the dictator
Glares round for a bodyguard.
All the fears cold-shouldered at noonday
Flock to these shades, and await
In displeasure those who ignored them.
1 See note on Father to Sons (Pegasus) p. 514
The Three Cloud-Maidens
Says winding Trent
Complete Poems Page 22