Charles! Charles! O My Son!

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted and translated from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, March 1871.

Charles! Charles! O my son! O Death, what now?
My son has been taken from me.
All, flying away from me, everything,
     to make me know that nothing can last!
Into the great clarity obscure to us,
     you have vanished in an instant.
I, in my sunset, see Charles, my east, perish.
How we loved one another, father and son.
A man, alas, creates and dreams, and smilingly binds
     his soul to other souls. He tells himself
it shall be always thus, and goes about his way.
Commencing his own descent in years,
he lives, he suffers, the price of being,
and suddenly in the palm of his hand,
he holds nothing but ashes.

It seems but yesterday
     when an emperor proscribed me.
Two decades, hemmed in by the seas,
I stayed away, my spirit bruised.
Fate reaches down to each and all,
striking for reasons all his own.

God took away my homeland.
I have only one son,  one daughter left.
Here I am almost alone in this shadow
within which I walk forward.
God ekes my family away from me.

Oh! stay, you two who still remain with me!
our nests fall down, but your mother blesses you
out of dark death, and I, in bitter life, bless you.
Yes, in the manner of the martyr of Zion,
I will go on and complete my struggle,
and I will continue the harsh ascent
     which feels more like the fall.
Following the truth is enough for me,
seeing nothing but the great sublime goal.
I walk, in mourning, but proud.
Behind duty I march straight to the abyss.