Mourning Upon Mourning

by Brett Rutherford

Translated from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, “March 1871”

Back-to-back. Mourning after mourning.
     Ah! the ordeal redoubles.
So it goes. This pensive man can bear it;
this pensive man appears untroubled.
Certainly, it is good that some are made this way.
When robust pains attack savants,
soldiers and hardened fighters,
tribunes, or apostles,
who have devoted their lives to righteous things,
they remain standing no matter what.
You have seen it, Guernsey,[1] you have seen it, Caprera.[2]
Once a consciousness is fixed,
     then nothing will falter there.
For, whatever the wind that blows on their flame,
deep principles do not tremble in the soul,
for it is in the infinite that their calm fire shines.
For the sinister hurricane, fierce by night
can shake its shadows and dark webs up there,
without once causing the stars
to move or stray in their fixed folds.

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[1] Guernsey. Island in the English Channel where Hugo spent most of his two decades’ exile.

[2] Caprera. Island where Giuseppe Garibaldi, leader of Italian unification, settled for the last decades of his life. He volunteered to help France in its war against Prussia.