by J. P. Linstroth
To Our Armed Forces
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| Combat between a Persian (left) and a Greek (right), depicted on a cup at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Credit: Wikipedia |
I.
A vision of armies of men in thousands kicking up dust in white puffs in ordered unison files
Marching forward, beating rounded shields of Athenian owls and Spartan Lambda letters
Their burnished Corinthian helmets, their fierce eyes peering through almond bronze slits
Aeneous and glinting bronze in the sun, horsehair plumes of varying colours, waving from zephyrs
Metallic and muscular cuirasses shining aurulent and golden in harsh sunlight
Emperatori Pars under Darius the Great and his son, Xerxes, the existential threat to Greek isles
Legends, the Athenian General Miltiades at Marathon, King Lionidas at Thermopylae Pass, with no betters
In ancient times from the West, even with acrimony among Hellenes, and all their splits
Moving as one at the Battles of Marathon and Thermopylae and Salamis, against Persian aggressors
With bronze swords drawn, a chiliad of pointing dorata, gleaming helmets behind shields tensed to fight
Cleverness of the Greeks tricking Persians in battle even with their formations across many miles
Outnumbering the Hellenes in the thousands and the weightiness of death in all its bellicose fetters
If it were not for these brave men, then what of Western civilization, and all its benefits
To win the day, again and again, and many times at great loss, the sacrifice of war, and all its tethers
For empire, for glory, for homeland, even with Pars Bozorg (Persian Empire), the Greeks never bowed to their might
II.
And more than two thousand and five hundred years forward a war against old Persia continues
Having become part of Islam and Shia from the martyrdom of Husayn Ibn Ali and following the Imams
Reaching back to the death of Mohammed and at one time British and following the Shah
With all its oil riches and arcane monarchy and then the Iranian Revolution and American hostages in ’79
And the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini and advent of an oppressive Iranian theocracy
And so our past repeats, again and again, from ancient times til now regardless of disparate epochal venues
Every time and place, men in continual discord, even against the House of David, and revenge of Absalom
How soon we forget after unity against Great Persia, Athenians and Spartans brawled in awe
Of brother against brother, Greek to Greek, the Peloponnesian War, how civil wars intertwine
From Alexander the Great, and Napoleon, of voids to the destruction of Republics and Democracy
Can you not see we are the same brethren, those of the reds, whites, and blues
The same from Washington, the same from Gettysburg, but now directives from Jerusalem
Across Zagros and Alborz ranges and deserts, against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and their Allah
To contend with ourselves, and not think Poland 1939, but reverse time, and save our demokratia
III.
For all our technologies and our missiles and our Artificial Intelligence and aircraft carriers
War is no less terrible and spontaneous circumstances no less unforeseen and death death death
Young men struggle for generals’ musings far removed and clash in arms on land, sea, and air
Often far from homelands, for fellow brothers, for fellow countrymen, for the flag under God
And Persia once more erased, once more conquered by armies as powerful as Hellenic hordes
Lest we forget ourselves in conquest and lose our values and our Republic, lest we remove such barriers
For ours a Constitutional Republic and much celebrated, lest we drink from the waters of Lethe
Lest we forget red poppy fields of the Somme, or white crosses of Normandy, and markers en plein air
As our Arlington and Tomb of the Unknown, so many Medals of Honour, so many left abroad
Lest we forget how the Iranians ignored our pleas to avert a day of war by dismissing all our accords
But remember this one and all, we are Americans, our nation is still true, our jets as raptors and harriers
Ripping azure skies, missiles through azuline heavens, across Strait of Hormuz, against Iranian shibboleth
From Mullahs and their enforcement of Islamic law, at the expense of the Iranian populace and its despair
May ours be a road to freedom, away from Shiite clerics, a regime heavily flawed
By waging war in the name of God, supporting Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis, their demise by swords
IV.
And while the thousands marched and thousands more gunned down for their freedom
Lest we forget ours in these uncertain times and living with mendacity and profiteering
At the expense of our dignity of our community of our brotherhood of our common sense
Lest we forget our Independence from tyranny, lest we forget our lacking representation
And we remember Locke and Montesquieu and Rousseau and our Enlightenment
Now some two-hundred and fifty years, from independence to civil war, now extremam corruptiem
Of our leaders to whom we entrust with our lives, but who seem immune from sneering
And directing us toward wars and away from personal investigations and forgetting our tariffed expense
May we uphold the pillars of our democratic oaths by not scapegoating the newest from migration
While understanding hyper-capitalism undermining our social welfare from Neo-Gilded Age Entitlement
To our brave soldiers, brave men and women, who fight for our Republic, not as vassals for a fiefdom
Lest forgetting Spartan might won over Athenian intellect, and protect ourselves with judicial hearings
If necessary and to use our laws and our cameras and checking imbalances in our defence
So, to the breach against armies and foes, now the Iranians, we ask to pray for victims in supplication
Likewise remembering who we are and our history, and not the spoiled life of a political miscreant
To America, to America, forever the brave and the bold
Across the seas from now and remembering times of old
May we remember our fallen heroes always, their fearlessness not to be cajoled
To America, to America, the beautiful and the bold
May we always protect our sea shining shores, may your glories always be extolled
To America, to America
J. P. Linstroth has a PhD (D.Phil.) in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford, UK with several awards for his research concentrating on the Spanish-Basques, Brazilian urban Amerindians, and Cuban, Haitian, and Guatemalan-Mayan immigrants in South Florida. He is an Adjunct Professor at Palm Beach State College (PBSC) and the author of several books: Marching Against Gender Practice: Political Imaginings in the Basqueland (2015, Bloomsbury Books); The Forgotten Shore (Poetic Matrix Press, 2017); Epochal Reckonings (Proverse Publishers HK, 2020, Winner of Proverse Prize 2019); Politics and Racism Beyond Nations: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Crises (2022, Palgrave Macmillan); and Swimming in Blue Shadows: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems (2022, Proverse Publishing, Proverse Supplemental Prize). He was awarded a J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholar Grant (2008-2009) to study urban Amerindians in Manaus, Brazil and he received a Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for his accomplishments toward peace, conflict resolution, and social justice.
