The Flight of Eagles

By Jeremy Moczarski

A poetic tale of Napoleon's captive bloodline, Bonapartes, Habsburgs and Kostrovitskis.

Upon the rocks of St Helena, the Eagle sat in chains,
Empire reduced to mould and wind-swept rains.
Yet whispers echo of a moving shadow,
Escape from exile into fading light,
Leaving history to record a faux bedridden death,
While the Emperor breathed a free, clandestine breath.

Meanwhile, in the gilded halls of Vienna's court,
His young son, now Franz, King of Rome, found his freedom cut short.
A reduced captive of his mother's line,
Bound by Austrian design, fearful of his early promise,
The Habsburgs kept the Duke of Reichstadt caged, protected from his father's name,
Lest a martial France should rise again.

Yet blood is a river that walls and lies cannot contain,
And for the fruit of Franz's secret love,
Beyond Austria's formal glare,
Rome offered its discreet care,
Before the next to follow flew,
Onward to the grand salons of Paris.

From this hidden, tangled vine, in part the Vatican's design,
Stepped a child of the new century, a man of fierce agility, a poet for the age,
Who tore the rules of art apart.
A friend to Picasso and Braque, moving through the avant-garde,
He coined the words of Cubism, a brilliant, untethered bard.
The great-grandson of Napoleon, though the world knew not,
He carried the Emperor's fire, turning canvas into flame.

For a hundred years the hidden Eagles kept their silent flight,
While Europe's autocrats ruled with heavy dynastic might.
Habsburgs, Romanovs and Hohenzollerns held the world in hand,
Controlling every narrative across their fractured lands.
Alongside, dancers moved, like brilliant Fanny Elssler's grace,
Bringing beauty to a century locked into a ruthless race.

There came years of devastation, nineteen hundred and eighteen,
Empires vanished from the scene, and in the smoke of war and plague,
The last true Eagle succumbed to fate, without imperial pride, only his particular visage and bones remain to tell us of his genes' domain, his mellifluous voice silenced before he could freely speak of a bloodline that outlived its day.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B09T365XH9
• ISBN13: 9798419335103
• Release Date: February 2022
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 210 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"