.png)
27 Apr 2025
Phil
Vernon
New
Moon
¡No pasarán!
After Zavier Ellis’
No pasarán
‘Today the deliberate increase in the chance of death.
The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder.’
~ W H Auden
Who are – who were – these faces,
staring out at a different face,
in a distant time: Raúl,
Pedro, Ángel, Dolores,
Santiago, Juan, Fidel ... ?
Their photographs are faded –
so much past has peeled away.
What did they mean to say?
Which of them had visions of a City on a Hill
we wish to believe they sang of,
and claim to ourselves we believe in still?
Who joined up for adventure,
who joined against their will,
who joined for the fighter’s daily wage,
or joined to avenge a wrong?
Who simply found themselves
in step with the lesser wrong
of two – or with a friend?
No pasarán: they shall not pass –
shall not by passing take away
the hope – the slender chance.
Ils ne passeront pas: Verdun
Pe aicu nu se trece: Mărăşeşti
No pasarán: Madrid and Cable Street.
How does the slogan sound when sung
by Franco’s Bando nacional, or by –
Sie werden nicht passieren –
Herr SS Hauptmann Wolf? Or Hans,
a child press-ganged to defend
his town, his Rhine, his motherland?
No pasarán: they shall not pass.
But many did, and do.
Behind the poem...
My poem responds to Zavier Ellis’ mixed-media No pasarán, with its faded, torn photographs of soldiers pasted on opposing sides of a chessboard that rests on what might be a bloodied wound. At the 1936 siege of Madrid, ‘¡No pasarán!’ (‘They shall not pass!’) was a Republican slogan – used internationally, then and since, by those on the political left. I was struck by how I’d assumed the photos to be of Republicans, rather than Nationalists. So my poem questions my knee-jerk interpretations: of the image, and of the past. It also quotes similar slogans used by French and Romanian soldiers in WWI.