If Nothing Else Saves Us

IF NOTHING ELSE SAVES US

by Brett Rutherford

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

We always seem to turn to faith, no matter
what happens. (As if we had a choice!)
All around us is agitated, as in the depths
of our worst nightmares. Some march
as if they had a purpose, and some just run,
sliding down rocks to an ill-remembered shore.
Dawn pulls us on from night, from the black
sepulchre we climb to the songbird’s egg’d nest,
not glancing back at the Hydras that follow
we call what is ahead of us a Halcyon.
The wise are bold, they bolt down corridors
on the new paths we call Revolutions.
Prophets worn almost to nothing by fasting,
o poets with your clarions ever-ringing,
all of you coming, the old and the young alike,
I see you, equal parts Isaiah and Byron,
calling us forth to the supreme goal, always
the same, and always new under heaven;
the word you hurl into the wind is the same
as the one uttered by the undying passer-by;
the low bass of your tragic and superb voice rumbles,
but then in triumph you sing it, tenor, soprano;
you take the word from God and pass it
into the tightly-sealed lips of the lurking Sphinx.
The whole itinerary and anthem of man,
that leaves Zion behind, and passes through
and beyond the glorious gates of Rome,
to the priest who flees or falters, seems a failure,
a fall from a lesser to a greater abyss, your lament
of loss a sublime noise that warns in the night.

Faith in the future! You toll the bell
that makes the traitor tremble,
while with your tocsin you summon
the new brave still willing and able to fight.
Your hymns appear and vanish, and come again,
a stormy swarm of sibylline verses. Pilgrim immense,
in song and dream and thought you support the people,
words flowing out like overturned urns
from which brass rhythms drum and sing.
The day on its four-horse chariot approaches.
The curtains will open of their own accord.
All are compelled to head toward dawn, all,
even those who have turned their back to it.
One walks forward; another steps back, in vain.
The power of stepping-forward accumulates.
The future in this dawning light unveils
a mysterious tower for all to see, obscure
but spangled with new-born stars.
Faith’s stanzas ring out from the dark
as its great black bell-tower comes into view.