The Pigeon Post

 

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, “January 1871”

XX

Down there on earth,
he sees an enormous abyss of shadow where nothing shines,
as if some form of molten night had been poured there,
which seems like a black lake;
as a spot in the sky, it is gazing downward.
Strange lake, made up of waters? No,
     it is made of roofs without number,
here bridges like in Memphis,
     over there towers like in Zion.
Some heads turn upward,
     some far-sighted looks lock upon him,
     some voices call, but indistinctly — oh vision!

Whispers rise from this stagnation of darkness,
and this lake lives, an enclosure walls it,
and on it one seems to see the frightful seal of hell.
The dark lake is the city, and he, the black dot, is a mere bird.
Like some heraldic eaglet ripped
     from shield or tapestry,
he flies for the sake of phantom people,
one species come to the aid of the other. An almost nothing,
a mere atom amid the clashing armies, this small one
comes in the shadows to help the colossus.

He may be an ignorant bird, not much of a fighter,
yet through this spacious network of cloud and wind,
ever afloat he flies. He has his goal, the thing he seeks,
the goal which he discerns above rivers,
trees and bushes, his remembered landmarks,
mapped on the roundness of pale horizons.

He thinks of his female, of her sweet brood,
of the nest, his roof-house, down there somewhere,
of the tender cooing, of the charming month of May;
he drops by stealth amid the flying bullets,
and yet, at the bottom of the firmament,
unwittingly, he drags along a human shadow;

And while the instinct toward his roof, that one,
that only, brings him back, and his small soul
shall be devoted to husbanding, he is more
than you think. Beneath his humble pinions,
rolled and rolled into a single quill,
a microfilm with hundreds of messages —a hand
on which he lights will remove it, and oh!
it is all about the black drums and bugles,
the count of grapeshot in many volleys,
the whispers from all of France and Germany,
the battles, the assaults, the vanquished,
     the victors, perhaps, as well,
a few mysterious whispers from heart to heart,
faint ink in microscopic lettering, which eyes
must strain to read beneath a glass.
At stake is the vast future which, fatally,
envelops the destiny of Europe in the fate of Paris.

Oh! vastnesses around us, ever-working!
How is it that some force unknown
makes a seed sprout despite the rock
that presses it down and chokes it?
Who holds and handles and mixes the winds,
the waves, the thunders, the sea
where valiant balloons, aloft,
and weighing almost nothing,
     may lose themselves?;
who brings new life out of dying things,
having infinite time to attend to its business;
who, being all-powerful, fails yet to avert
fault, misery, and evil; who would dig out
a dungeon to torment a swallow;
yet who, with a mysterious tide of force,
creates a lily, or compels a bud to swell,
or pushes a leaf through the armored bark;
who seems indifferent to the melting flood
the shrug of his cold snows abandons,
who holds above all the frost’s dark urn
which is always ready to drown the skies,
letting harvest or hunger depend on how
his whim tips a trembling fulcrum;

who balances all on a reed, a chance,
     an airy breath,
who marches out Titans when a pygmy would do,
exhausting his prodigious energies for naught,
why, god of wrath and anger, spew fire and smoke,
maker of giants, Vesuvius, Etna, Chimborazo;
who in distraction lets a world be saved
by letters carried on the wing of a bird!