Terrible Weather

 by Brett Rutherford

 

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

 

Terrible weather! In this dreary space
where the unforeseen arises,
     and the unexpected wants to come to pass,
my thoughts are a meadow
     given over to random invasions.

 

News reaches me, one fact after another;
blacker they get, and greater in enormity.
Day after day as I write this book,
the clock dictates new miseries
as the minute-hand rises and flees in terror.

Hours, mornings, noon, twilight and night,
how many? The numbered weeks of this Terrible Year
are like so many hydras that Hell creates
in order to fill its own abysses, bottomless.

 

Word of the last calamity wheels over me and passes on;
its claw on my soul, it rolls its fiery eyes,
leaving in my crumpled lines, sad, harsh, and bruised,
the track that one sees when a monster has passed.

 

If you could truly see into my shadowed mind,
you would find it marred with the countless imprints
of all these days of horror, and anger and bored inaction.
I look as if lions had walked all over me.

 

There Was a Woman, Wild in the Woods

 

 by Brett Rutherford

 

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

 

There was a woman, wild with grief, and she was everywhere!

In the untrod forests, whose thickets none can penetrate,
she gave the owls asylum. Softly the worried leaves
whispered into her harried ears, of evil afoot and dark designs.
At her breast the sweet newborn shivered; she swaddled it
and hurried on, for terror must not catch this tragic child.

She knew paths where no paths were visible; branches
parted for her before the growing night,
the sky’s dark tide, the baying threat of the wolf-pack.

Oh! the fierce love of the woman of the forest!

 

Such now is Paris, the mixing-pot of Europe,
Glory, Law, and Art her triple breasts
that feed her celestial child, the Future.
Silver-shod Dawn champs at the bit
in neighing salute around the cradle sublime.
She, once a Chimera, is now
the august mother of our reality,
nurse of the high-flown thinkers’ dreams,
an equal sister to Rome and Athens.
As sure as spring bursts out with laughter,
as sure as the sky that never fails to glow,
Paris is life itself, Paris the joy of living.

 

She is the wild woman still, where once
the woods stood thick. Now she is Paris,
and mother of all Europe, with three breasts
breastfeeds the Future, her celestial child
with the mother-milk of Law, Glory and Art.

At dawn the distant horses neigh
around this cradle sublime …

When the air is pure in the light of day
beneath an unclouded blue firmament,
she rocks and sings to the mighty little god.

 

Each day a festival! She nods to show
to proud and cheerful citizens this dream —
the world to be that, breathless, stutters,
this trembling imago of the new human race,
this giant (no taller than a dwarf today!)
which we dare to call Tomorrow, for whom
a furrow already forms ahead of his path.
Mother Ideal! On her calm and tender forehead
her happy mouth, and in her gaze that fixes you,
evil is denied existence in that radiant smile.

We sense that in this city, hope lives on,
a place that loves and blesses us. But if
a sudden darkness should come upon us,
if the dreaded eclipse comes to swallow us
and intends to shadow us forever;
if panic makes the people shiver, embers die;
if some vague monster tramps about
the horizon line of forts and forests;
if everything that slithers and extrudes itself,
crawling and squinting from some nether chaos,
comes to threaten to divine child, our Future;

oh, then, she is fierce. She stands, she screams,
she becomes the furious Paris. She rumbles and roars,
fierce as any monster, known or unknown.

She stands up, and she who once charmed
the whole known world, will make it shudder!

 

To Those Who Go First

 

 by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, "April 1871"

 

Whether they just are, or are made that way,
some are inclined at all times to say to Nature:
Dark gulf, void, or abyss — whatever
your vastness calls itself, answer me this —
for what do we exist? Believers
or atheists, it is all the same for us.
We pile on top of Prometheus
the labors of the Euclids and Keplers.

Our doubts, our thought-clouds funereal
rise up to the heavens full of darkness,
only to come back down as jabs of light,
the storm-wrath of the ever-jealous one
who sits on a cold slab of ignorance.

 

O brother-brows, on which ideas flame!
At the edge of the abyss, so many lean
from the foothills of the heavens
with telescopic gaze, so many
extended hands reach up to grasp.
Who can read their mysterious looks?
O, the starry pupils of Milton divining,
while from their outer reaches the real stars burn
into the unblinking lens of Galileo.

Dark Dantes, sun-burned from over-seeing,
new stars should come to be where you scaled up.
Dark horses athwart Infinity,
you are the spirits of black Zoroasters.

 

Dare to go up, dare to descend.
Everything is there for you to discover.
Your name will be remembered for what
new thing you found or brought forth:
For Jason the great journey
against all odds; for De Gama
the will of wanting the ever-westward.

 

When the seeker still hesitates,
one eye on night, one holding forth for dawn;
when he at first recoils as the hieroglyph
yields up its secret meaning, the shade of doubt
takes hold, but then the will to know,
that sharp and abrupt hippogriff, [1]
appears in that twilight moment.

 

On such a formidable steed,
with human genius at the reins,
he approaches the unapproachable,
torch-lit, alone, the lute his only weapon.
And when he leaves, his spirit emaciated,
the star of Love, the sun of Thought
shine through the yawning azure
where night’s dark webs spin shut;
and God gave him these two shy stars
to serve as spurs upon the giant’s feet.

 

Great hearts in which the Infinite
creates itself, carve out a space
around themselves from which all others
flee. A sacred curiosity
possesses them in night and mountain waste.

Each new discovery takes the breath away,
as if an abyss lay always beyond.

 

The risk of death? What does that matter?

One plunges in, one suffers the price.

A life lived pointlessly is already too long.

From the insensible the sublime is born.
Declaring it, he puts the abyss behind him.

Columbus with only vague import
struggles toward the sad wisdom of Empedocles.

 

What is beneath the sea? What, in the heavens?

Their secrets shall be revealed.
Each of god’s seekers goes his way
on wingbeats uplifted by infinity.
As green waters part for Fulton’s steam-boat
and in the depths for the silent submarine,
Mars comes into focus for Herschel’s eyes.
Magellan circumnavigates the proven globe.
Fourier, on mere hot air, balloons away.
The crow, ironic and frivolous, denies
the dreamers’ achievements. “The boats will sink.”
“The balloon is forever lost and cannot come down.”
“Blasphemers! Their souls are damned.”

 

Fools! They have found other worlds!

 

[1] Hippogriff. The hippogriff is a mythical animal, half eagle, half horse. It is featured in the epic poem Orlando Furioso.

Downtown and Back

 by Brett Rutherford

I had the foolish idea to sample
the hotel dining rooms downtown.
Back in the Gilded Age, I assure
my friend, they were the best
restaurants in most cities.

You see, “prix fixe,”
as we pass the windows
right on Fifth Avenue, and see
a merry gathering of diners inside.
“We can afford this! Why not indulge?”

We are ushered in
by a dubious waiter. I find,
as I did when we crashed in
upon the Christies pre-auction,
that a fixed smile, a gaze
unblinking, and good shoes
get you admission most anywhere.

The tables are close, so we
are pressed to place
our tightly-wrapped purchase
upon the table between us.

“You needn’t have brought
anything,” the blue-haired lady
beside me observes. “The chef
has ample portions for all of us.”

Assuming this a wry jest, I laugh.
“Oh no,” I assure her. “We’ve just
been antique shopping. A fine
Ming bowl, in blue and white.”

Soup comes. A dark broth
(a hint of lamb), some shreds
of watercress, cilantro. Spoons
rattle, and threads of greens
tangle amid perfect dentures.

“No one knows what is next,”
the dowager confides to me.
“There is no printed menu, you see.
We wait for the chef to delight us.”
“Ah!” I say. “Then we have chosen well.”

“So you are not an initiate?”
the dowager’s young companion
poses. “Our first time here,” I say.
“Ah, we have a nouveau faim!”

Eyes turn to regard us. A chill
then seizes me as I grab
my companion’s arm and whisper.
“If you value your life, smile on.
Try not to blink. Eat anything
that is put before you.”

Outside the window, a frail
old lady in a worn cloth coat
on catching sight of us, presses
her greasy face against the glass.

Her eyes go black. She drools
against the pane and points
toward me until a man
raises and wags an admonishing finger.
I smile harder, show all the teeth
I can. I must have triggered her.

“The poor dear,” another diner says.
“She must be starving. She
hasn’t anyone. Why not
send her out a little doggy bag?
If left alone, she might eat
her poor little fingers off.”

Instead of sympathy, there comes
hard laughter. Heads turn away
from the spinster, who shambles
off and out of sight and mind.
My baffled companion leans in
to ask whatever is the matter?
“We have made terrible mistake,”
I confess. “We are dining amid
a coterie of country-club cannibals.”

Wide-eyed, we smile and smile.
I look at my watch, and say, “Oh dear,
we have so little time before the train!”
“No, no,” the dowager says, a bony hand
upon my forearm. “I just know

“we’re having an eyeball salad next.
What with the hospital down the block
he has the freshest stock in town."
“In salad?” I answer. “So far
we have only had then in soup.”

“The texture,” her companion explains.
“It’s all about the texture. You’ll learn
as time goes on. You’re new to this,
and we must make allowance.”
“Alas,” I say, “we lingered so long
in shopping and I lost track

“of the hour. You see, we have
this blue-and-white bowl,
a perfect match for a charger
our grandmother left behind —”
“And,” interjects my friend,
“we are having his family for dinner.”

Deftly I summon the waiter;
my debit card is taken, returned.
I sign. We stand, we smile, all teeth.
“I hope to make your acquaintance
again, some other Saturday.”

“We’re always here!” “Bon
appetit!” I call back
as we reach the door and out
into the bustling hotel lobby.
Snippets of talk assault us
as we make the slow walk
to the revolving door:

“I do not know what the problem is
with migrants. Washed well,
they are quite delicious.” — “Babies?
Goodness, no. You mustn’t disturb
the food chain by doing that!” “One
must be discreet, you see, until
we have a solid Republican Congress.”

We made it to the train, the cab,
and home. The blue-and-white bowl
is graced with fruit. Friends are over,
and so far no one
     is eating anyone.