Paris Blockaded, Reborn (September 1870)

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible

September, 1870

IV. 

You, Paris, shall bring proud History
     to kneel at your feet once more.
O City, whose beauty is in bleeding now,
     whose victory comes from dying:
Cease! No martyrdom here! Rise up!
     Your may be bleeding now,
but those who saw Caesar
     mocking your flacid arms,
will be astonished
      when you walk from the fire.

In the admiration of all peoples,
     and in awakened glory
you shall gain, Paris,
     much more than you have lost.

Those who besiege your
    downcast and mournful state,
those you shall yet overcome.

You were drugged by the slow death
     of low and false prosperity.
You fell down mad and gay,
     mired in your own blood.
You will go forth now,
     who heretofore had lulllaby’d
     the venomed empire to sleep,
you shall cast off that old
     and hideous contentment.
Waking up chaste, you shall shake
from your bedclothes the leering satyr.
The threat of martyrdom
     will make you a warrior maiden,
and in honor and beauty,
     truth, and the sense of right,
the better half of you shall be born again
while the base thing you had nearly become
     withers away and dies.