Government Issue
Found in a junkshop, nestled in between
Dark bottles and some ill-assorted scraps:
A battered thing, its cover (olive green)
Showed verdigris along the old brass snaps.
The maker’s stamp read 1942.
U.S. was stenciled on the canvas case,
And in the thick aluminum, ARZEW
Then SICILY and ANZIO—each place
The soldier-owner of this small canteen
Had fought was scratched in letters rough and square.
Yet how could he forget where he had been,
Those shrapnel-spitting landfalls of despair?
And then I thought “Three beaches—nothing more.”
There is a grim finality in war.
The Final Checkmate
_No strategy with chessmen
_(Deploy them how you will)
Can stop the Final Checkmate as
_He zeroes in to kill.
_Your knights and rooks and bishops,
_Your pawns in rank and file—
Not one of them can hold him back,
_Nor all your force and guile
_Can stop the Final Checkmate
_From clearing off the board,
And finding you alone before
_His unrelenting sword.
_You sidestep to a corner,
_You zigzag left and right—
You try to hold a candle to
_The fast-descending night,
_But Final Checkmate’s steady
_In his approaching tread.
He leaves no loophole for escape—
_Your king is trapped and dead.
The Wiccan Table
Grant, we beg O Lord, that Thy people may avoid
diabolical contagion.
—Martinus Del Rio, S.J.,
Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex
A parchment strip that bears a charm
To bring an enemy to harm;
A lodestone, astrolabe, and bowls
Of pig’s blood, pitch, and half-burned coals;
Amulets, la main de gloire,
A musty leather-bound grimoire;
Fetishes of withered tares,
Pentagrams and backwards prayers;
The finger of a murdered child,
The Tetragrammaton defiled;
Potions made from noxious plants
To blind or cripple or entrance;
Waxen dolls and sulfur’s smell—
All the panoply of Hell.
Last, a chalice cast in lead
With which the coven toasts the dead,
While near to it, a blood-flecked blade
Awaits the victim to be flayed.
Notes
Arzew, Sicily, Anzio: three beachheads where American troops fought in World War II.
Checkmate: the final move in chess that marks the end of the game. From the Persian words
Shāh Māt, which mean “The king is defeated.”
Wiccan: having to do with the cult of witchcraft and black magic. The modern Wicca sect uses
the name, but purports to be benevolent.
Martinus Del Rio, S.J.: a Spanish Jesuit (1551-1608) who wrote a major text on witchcraft that was used extensively in witchcraft trials and investigations.
Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex: this is Del Rio’s book, published in 1599. The title means “Six Books of Magical Disquisitions.”
La main de gloire: the hand of glory. This refers to the severed hand of an executed criminal, dried and used as a candle holder in the ceremonies of witchcraft.
Grimoire: a book of magical rituals, spells, curses, and enchantments.
Pentagram: a five-pointed star turned upside-down, frequently associated with the demonic arts.
Backwards prayers: saying certain Christian prayers backwards was a standard practice in summoning up the Devil.
Finger of a murdered child: this object was required in certain spells and charms. It is mentioned in “Macbeth” as one of the ingredients thrown by the three weird sisters into their cauldron.
Tetragrammaton: the name of God, written in Hebrew with the four Hebrew letters YODH, HE, WAW, and HE. The tetragrammaton, twisted and defiled, was used in certain rituals performed by witches.
Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide. He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.
Joseph, these are three powerful poems. Each one of them tells an amazing story with a clear and dire conclusion.
The finality of war in “Government Issue” is a stark reminder of battles on Italian beaches and the sadness (in my mind) of finding such a piece of inscribed memorabilia in a junk shop. “The Final Checkmate” is perhaps one of the greatest depictions of our final demise with your correlation to playing chess. It is both relatable and haunting. “The Wiccan Table” is a chilling tale that from your outstanding succinct description educated me to things like a severed “murdered children’s finger” that seems so heinous as to be not only uncivilized, but also inhuman, much as the other blood cults of the past that may still exist in secret.
Thank you, Roy. I deliberately put these three pieces together because they shared a common theme, to some degree. The first was about death in combat, the second about death as a Grim Reaper coming after everyone, and the third about the spiritual death of witchcraft and black magic.
As for “The Wiccan Table,” I intended the poem to be the verbal equivalent of those beautiful 17th and 18th-century still life paintings, where a group of objects is shown resting on a table top. The typical still-life of that time usually included fruit, flowers, a book, a cup or glass of some sort, and small metal objects; and this mix of materials allowed the painter to demonstrate his skill in reproducing things of various colors and textures on his canvas.
The traditional European still-life, as I have written elsewhere, is a symbol of nature tamed and compelled to serve human ends. I wrote “The Wiccan Table” as a way to imagine various frightening and unpleasant objects put together on a table, as a symbol of witchcraft’s desire to serve diabolical ends.