To France, Abandoned

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "December 1870"

VII

No one is for you. They are unanimous. This one,
named Gladstone, said “Thank you” to your executioners.
This other one, named Grant, insults you, and this other one,
his German Minister, Bancroft, insults you, too.
One thinks himself an apostle,
the second a soldier, the third a judge and a tribune.

Beware the priests as well:

your blood, poured in great floods, is not enough
to satisfy them, whether from North or South,
who pass, and seeing you crucified
     stop only to spit in your face.

Alas! what then have you done to these nations? You came
to those who were crying, with these divine words:
Joy and Peace! — You buoyed them with: — Hope! Joy!
Be powerful, America, and be free, O Greece!
Italy was once grand and whole; she must be one again.
France wished all this for you! — She gave this one her gold,
to that one her blood, to all, the light.

You defended the rights of men,
     devoted and dutiful.
Alas, as the ox returns no longer thirsty
from a too-accustomed watering trough,
the men returned to the stable step by step,
sated with you, formidable big sister,
forgetting who protected and fought for them.
Ah! to show oneself ungrateful is to prove oneself small.
Not a kind syllable! not one of them knows you.
Their crowd, whooping and mocking you,
at this very hour when your greatness is crumbling,
laughs at every hammer blow that falls
on you, naked and bloody and nailed to the gallows.
They pity their own sons whom bitter fortune
condemns to rediscover their true mother
and cast in shame this shameful renunciation.
You can’t just die, poor France, and that’s the sorrow.
You bend your radiant forehead into night;
The eagle of the shadow is there;
     it eats away your liver daily,
the one who denies the vanquished; and gives joy
to plundering kings, like the bandits of Adrets,
Kneel if you will at the feet of the eagle,
charm Europe and please the world! ... — Ah! I would like,
if I weren’t French already, to be able to say
that I choose you, France, and that, in your martyrdom,
I proclaim you, you whom the vulture gnaws,
as my homeland and my glory and my only love!