While the Sea Roars

by Brett Rutherford

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

 

While the sea roars and the waves roll,
and on the horizon tumults collapse
upon themselves in warfare wild,
one watchman, the poet, sits bound
as though imprisoned there, atop
the tower of his agony and exile.

One can watch chaos in its endless
variety, and never be tired of it,
yet what he craves is for harmony
to finally takes its turn, the still calm
when wind and tide are in perfect balance.

 

In dark times, he has been here before,
doomed by the earth’s curve to never see
the place of his birth and of his triumphs;
but then, in times much like the ones
we suffer now, the pensive poet sought
the company of men to disarm them,
to pour out to them his heart;
he loved the vanquished, but no hate
for the victor poisoned his days.
Armies heard his pleas, and paused.
When he petitioned, sometimes
    the cities heeded, mellowing.

When the living walked blind
to the civil war’s drumbeat, his lines
called some back from the brink of murder,
just from the simple clarity of truth
he mustered as his sword and armor,
and this solitary man, aged now
beyond his days with grief and shock,
battered by the inexorable, still sought
to be the messenger of peace.

 

If one Prometheus complains
for all except himself, who hears?
“When does inflicted pain suffice
to call itself a surfeit? What drop
of shed blood is the penultimate
for the soul sickens
     at the next sacrifice?
If you are tired, why not be good
instead of gathering spite
    for tomorrow’s manhunt?

If on this rock he calls to everyone,
Peace! Pity! Grace! — who hears?

 

He knows his duty. To stay, not leap,
to channel the voice within him always,
to be the humble bulrush that floats
atop a tidal wave, held up
by heart that cannot stop its beating.

He wishes for all to live, for all
to enjoy continuous creation.
The sacred and unknown abode
above us, emblazons eternal sweetness
by its sheer and azure beauty;
Poetry with its luminous brow,
by being the sister of Harmony
is the sibling of Clemency, as well.

She affirms a great truth
    (the one that anger most denies),
the truth of underlying hope
and kindness bountiful;
if Art shines any ray at all,
its greatest sunbeam is Fraternity.

Hatred, in its nettle-bed,
serves only to aggravate.

Oh! If one could lend an ear to Gehenna,
or make sense of the Babel of Hell’s obscurities,
could one make sense of the clanging of iron?
Is there a clear chant amid this howling chaos,
some argument poor hearts can utter
     from mouths already damned?
Can tears sing out when wrath
convulses amid such endless evils?
They sing! One dark chorale emerges:
Just let us be, to love each other!

What serves the hurricane,
     the ocean, and the storm,
what point the abyss
    and the people hurled into it?
Is the Sublime itself appeased
by all this violence?
Does the abyss itself not yearn
to take a spouse — does it not turn,
losing itself to give the earth a kiss?

For nothing is frenzied, unbridled
     and terrible,
nothing is free, convulsive and mad,
without a counter-weight to balance it.
Winds, seas, and continents
are all contained within
the four points of the compass.
The waves, indignant now,
     will not continue so;
the furious foam is not eternal;
the wild north wind
     goes sputtering away;
deep darkness seeds itself
    with a presage of dawn,
and there! the sun!

 

Heads bowed, eyes shut
against the thunder-torrent,
hands clenched to hold
the sea battered rocks —
now comes the end
of the titanic struggle.
The storm is gone. It ends
as every tempest does
with this solemn pardon,
azure-crowned.