Echoes from the Death of Roland

Bremen Roland : Statue of Roland
in the market square of Bremen, Germany

Dream of the Dead Airman

James Hart

For nearly sixty dark unhallowed years

only my bones draped my empty distance

in sarcophagus of cargo and its broken gears,

dog-tagged in wreckage I once knew as France,

my name enduring slow particle bombardments

of long compression into forgetful foreign soil,

and one ghost in my memory’s machine haunts

me always, roiling smoke and glaring flaring oil.

At last I’m wrapped in time’s unflagging glory

and carried across my homeland’s common field

to rest to Taps and muted eulogies as they bury

me now in Ozarks like Arcadia, my fate revealed

among remembered hills like echoes of a long ago

where soldier ghosts and poets sang of Roncevaux.

(Poem from an unpublished manuscript

entitled Somewhere West of Never)

Bremen Roland is a famous statue of Roland in the market square, or Rathausplatz, of Bremen, Germany. Roland was a knight of the first Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne, and a hero of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, in which he died. Roland became a paladin of Charlemagne’s court, one of twelve warriors found in French literature’s Matter of France.

Roland stands in the center of the town, next to the town hall and the city cathedral. The statue depicts Roland as the protector of the city, as he valiantly holds a sword and a shield with the two-headed Imperial eagle, a symbol of Germany. The shield is inscribed with a declaration translating to: “I manifest your freedom, as granted to this city by Charlemagne and many other rulers. For this, be thankful to God, that is my counsel.”

The Bremen Roland statue is a symbol for freedom and market rights, thus his location is adjacent to the marketplace. 

Battle Monument - Roncevaux