Four Renaissance Portraits i, by Bob Elliott

            So who provokes us now ?
                                That jaw insists
action's fierce purity
across the thick end of five bursting centuries
.                               Those  eyes rule out
across the sights at Bogside, Wounded Knee,
gash Sharpville dust;  slice Homs: rip Budapest.
Nostrils that curl the fumes of Drogheda,
Katyn, Amritzar, Sedgemoor and Ma Lai.

      Those lips and shoulders, strong and smooth as stone !
      How many ghosts ago did you, my lovers,
      dressed in your own blood,  surge up from the black valley
      grinninning among the stallions ?

  My sons are borne on a tide of potent corpses.

I, motive-wright, loot-embalmer,
at Loos and Alamein pleasure the guns
that leap and flower within the sky's dark skull.
My bayonet draws red lines at Quatre Bras.
My shield rings Tours.  My sword strokes Neville's Cross.

  That old sow, with her half-blind leer
  never stopped rooting in the gutter
  as they passed through, captains and captives,
  garlanded, all of them garlanded
  with shit and vomit.
  Burnt eyes, stitched mouths, steadily, firmly passing,
  while piglets skittered and shrieked among their boots.

I, action-smith, breastwork-moulder,
rouse rabble emotions, as I stack
between us barricades of maimed generations.
I keep watch, disturber of the faith,
along this street which scars eternity.

Name ?  Legion.
Rank ?  The first.
Number? Countably infinite.
        I convene the dead.