Making Puppies

by Brett Rutherford

Banned from our basement

chemistry lab, we boys

huddled to wait

until whatever it was

going on the dark

was over with.

 

Mrs. Avampato

wants puppies, we are told.

Her dog is in there,

thrust in the dark.

Another dog after,

hurled in, confused

and barking.

 

Wise as we are

beyond our twelve years,

able to make those jars

of rocket fuel, adept

at double decomposition,

stink bombs and smoke,

we have no idea what

is supposed to happen

in the dank dark

beneath our workbench

and its condensers

and retorts. Faust

offers no answer,

nor does my reading

in ancient alchemy.

 

Eight small feet run

this way and that.

There is much barking.

Then, a loud whine.

"Ma! He's hurting her!"

Sonny shouts up

to the women above.

"I'm going in!"

 

"Don't you dare!"

Mrs Avampato calls back.

"No one is allowed

to see! Just mind

your own business!"

 

The whining abates,

then all we hear

is the extended pant

of two canines.

 

Who knew

that if you wanted puppies

two dogs in the dark

would find a way?

 

Look Away

by Brett Rutherford

I escaped from one of those.

It was the worst day of my life;

I nearly smothered.

 

If one presents itself,

I turn away with a shudder.

Who in his right mind

would go in there?

The Frailty of History

 by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l”Année Terrible, “May 1871”

 

The centuries belong to the people,
and yet each moment they possess
the people can snatch away.
Relentlessly they tear bits
from History, a struggle strange
and self-defeating. If deeds and facts
hang on a tree for all to regard,
one comes along to trim a branch;
another follows, and with a noise
a whole millennium comes crashing down.
No, matter, they say: the trunk
of a bare tree tells a better story.

 

Like this, the shards of brass are pried
from our Roman column; like that,
fragments of marble are hammered off
from the proud arch of memory.
Names and dates, faces and arms
fall to the ground as rubble.

What would they say of Venice
if Saint Marks’ drove away its lions?

 

Now at the deathbed of glory,
sits History, an enfeebled nurse,
embaring her arms to show her scars.
Perhaps, expiring, poor Glory sighs,
“Whatever one thinks of France —
      of the France that we once knew —
looking out at this tough army,
     this ever-proud people,
taking in all that in this century
     I, in its third glory, had dreamed of,
     the good we wished for and strove
            to make happen —
oh, this was illustrious!”

 

So why with hammer and petrol
     do you come to erase the past?

What have you done else for the suffering,
     for the shattered workers?
Have you shut down the penal colonies?
Oh, chronicles will be shorter now,
an easier task for the lecturers:
but give me the names
     of all those new schools you opened —
          I’ll wait for your reply.

Out in the streets, mobs come to destroy
all record of Marengo, Lodi,
     Wagram, and Arcole;
along the way did they make pause
to establish universal love? I thought not.

 

Does the man who was starving a year ago
now have a roof above him,
a hearth, a loaf of bread, some salt?
Have we honored the renunciation of war
by indulging in mad and sinister bloodshed?

Have the laws been re-done
     in the image of what is right?

Did I somehow miss the grand opening
of the new temple where clarity distills
into reason, and the result is freedom?

 

Has the child a right to school,
     the woman the right of her own person?
Have the acorns of the tree of truth
     been planted in men,
so as it grows within them, they
grow stronger and less prone to error?
Has the slow train of Progress
resumed on its narrow track,
from which new branches grow ever out?

 

No! Just ruins. Nothing. And so it is.
And as for me, I truly doubt
the murmuring people will be satisfied
when you protest: “Don’t look at this!
Don’t trouble yourselves with misery.
We don’t accomplish much, but what a show
we make of demolition!”

 

By the Number

by Brett Rutherford

knocked down to size

by thirty-four verdicts,

what shall we call him?

 

not forty-five,

those numerals kerned

into a near swastika,

 

not even the ever-

diminishing length

of what, to him,

meant "huge"

 

now he's just two,

the number,

child's signal

of toilet urge

 

and then just one,

an amorphous heap

of tangerine excrement

The Two Monuments, Part 2

 

The second part of Victor Hugo's protest against plans by The Paris Commune to destroy the Arc de Triomphe and the Napoleon column at the Place Vendome. (The column was toppled, but the Commune, unknown to the poet, chose to defend the Arch by placing cannons on top of it.)

by Brett Rutherford

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

2

O fratricide! For brother to kill brother
there must seem to be two sides. Is it
to be the arch against the column?

Must one stand, then, and the other fall?

We live in strangely sinister times,
a hammered hand smashing here,
and the whirling shell that falls from above.

 

But this is still France! For what, fellow citizens,
this overturning tumult, while an enemy
remains standing on the black horizons!

The great France is here! What does this little
Bonaparte matter when all is said and done?

Do we see a king when we think about Sparta?

Take away this latest Napoleon,
     and just like that, the people reappear.

One tree cut down, the forest makes new oaks.

 

Read the bronze plates’ ekphrastic tale,
follow the column’s spirals up and around:
great fighters crowd there in bas-relief,
filling the fields, the towers, the admiral’s boats,
dare over wall and bridge, wade ditch, wild
rivers ford, arms high in evil marshes,
all these are France in the assault for progress.

Justice! Take Caesar from his place if you will,
but put there the glory of Rome’s Republic
that is the dream behind our dream.

 

Put at this summit a people and not a man;
condense into a statue at the top of the pillar
the crowded people who live in this Paris,
knight, avenger of rights, conquering ferocious lies!

May the colossus tower here, and laugh
at the bullets’ laughing ricochet.

 

Make this statue of such pure alloy
that we no longer think vague or fatal thoughts;
embody the crowd, and embody the elite;
and may this giant fashioned after them,
provoke like a pillar-monk the distant ideal;
may it light the way, self-lit by the star
on his own forehead, the glint of sun
from the sword he always holds in ready.

 

On both monuments, the soldiers strive
like giants in some Titanic struggle.
Nothing matched their size and power.
As sculpted on the Arc de Triomphe,
the Revolution rumbles in their hundred battles.
War-crying Marseillaise stands petrified,
a fearsome spirit from the old, darkened world,
with the open-mouth call that never fades.
Both monuments sing in accord: “Deliverance!”

 

Why do I see this horror even when my eyes are closed?
Someone is coming! Tell me it is not our own hands
that do this? I am pulled onward by surging crowds.
The throw themselves against the double monuments!
This double-trophy the Teutons envied, surged now
with raised clubs and petrol-laden torches. Someone
is coming, with hammers and black powder. Blows
once aimed at soldiers now strike at statuary.
The glory of human art and beauty cracks apart.
We break it from above, we break it from below.
Cries echo from the Arch to the Column. It falls!
It resists! More powder! A battering ram! A bomb!

While all this goes on, the Prussians are watching;
oh, they are witnessing this, as they hold the sword
that was surrendered to them, their trophy, our shame!

 

These are the ones who make others carry crosses.
We shudder when Reichshoffen[6] is mentioned
     as though that could erase Wagram.[7]

Marengo’s glory fades out[8]
     before the shame of Waterloo.

The page of disaster overlays in lurid hues
the faded newsprint of former triumphs;
the blood-stained soiled thing outlives
the thing that shone resplendent once.

To assume we approve of Forbach’s loss,[9]

one must pretend we never won at Jena.[10]

These pygmy Emperors today;
     in the past, one giant.

And now, insult upon our injury,
I hear that MacMahon[11] and his cannons
have fired from afar upon the Arch,
a rain of lead and fire and iron!

 

Shame, then, to have a German flag fold out
above our heads; Sedan, not Austerlitz.
Where are the long-gone warriors? Have you
no madhouses, France, no asylums to empty
of elders and lunatics with rusty sabers
ready to sally forth to terrify old nemeses,
Brunswick, Cobourg, or de Bouillé?[12]

Must the graves open to yield us up
some veterans of the better wars?
To whom can we turn
if we wish to see again a vanished dawn?

 

Imagine, after a never-tiring life,
breaking the blockade of ancient evil,
to be expelled from history just like that;
a finger snapped, and they are gone, they
who held out against Popes and kings,
daring the black shadows of banishment
     and excommunication,
enduring capture and prison, assured
from within of their ultimate success; they,
the victorious fathers, banished by whom?
By us, their vanquished sons!

Alas! after such misery, this final blow,
amid the two bleeding ulcers we call peace’
after the vain fights of Avron, Bourget, and l”Haÿ!
After letting Strasbourg burn,
    and after the betrayal of Paris!
Is France not close enough to death?
If an enemy had done this to us, if Prussia,
accustomed to its savage pride, black flags
in keeping with black weather, its heels
upon the neck of Paris had said,
“We want to cancel all your past.
Frenchmen, these two proud monuments
annoy us, this pilaster of brass, this arch
of stone that survived our cannoning.
We want a scaffold where the pillar stood.
We want to see the blasted arch gone.
So do us the favor, will you?
    Demolish one, machine-gun the other.
Consider that an order. Let it be done!”

If Prussia had ordered this, o, fury!
What would our answer have been?
Let’s suffer! Let’s fight! This is too much!
Rather would be die a hundred times!
Our death will be our celebration.

We would have said, “Never! Never!”

And now we go and do it, unasked.

---

[1] Tagus to Elbe. From Portugal to Germany.

[2] Nile to Adige. From Egypt to northern Italy. The two map allusions suggest a comparison of Napoleonic Europe to the Roman Empire.

[3] Battle of Austerlitz, 1809.

[4] Versailles … Paris. The National forces based in Versailles were called the “Versaillais,” as opposed to the National Guard militias under the control of the Paris Commune.

[5] Carybdis and Scylla. Greek mythological monsters associated with dangerous rocks on both sides of a narrow channel.

[6] Reichshoffen. The Battle of Reichshoffen, also known as The Battle of Worth, 5 August 1870, was a decisive Prussian victory over Napoleon III’s French army.

[7] Wagram. In the Battle of Wagram, 5-6 July 1809, Napoleon I’s forces defeated the Austrian Empire.

[8] In the Battle of Marengo, 14 June 1800, the forces under First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte drove the Austrians out of Italy.

[9] The Battle of Forbach, 4-6 August 1870 led to Forbach being folded into the ceded provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

[10] The Battle of Jena, 14 October 1806, was Napoleon I’s crushing and unexpected victory over the Prussian army.

[11] Marie Edme Patrice Maurice de MacMahon (1808-1893), the failed leader of Napoleon III’s army, placed in charge of the Versailles forces against the Commune. He would serve later as French President.

[12] Three enemies of Napoleon I and the French Revolution in general: Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, an ally of the Duke of Wellington against Napoleon; Prince Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg (1785-1851), commander-in-chief of the Austrian forces on the continent; and François-Claude Bouillé (1739-1800), a royalist general who opposed the French Revolution.

The Two Monuments

 

The National government from Versailles surrounds and bombards Paris. The rebellious Paris Commune threatens to destroy the Arc de Triomphe and the Napoleon column at the Vendôme. Hugo writes in defense of the two national monuments, and protests the civil war. The Commune later decides to defend the Arch and place cannons on its top, making it a primary target for the incoming army. The Napoleon column is toppled by the Commune.

THE TWO MONUMENTS

by Brett Rutherford

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

1

People, this century stood witness
to your superhuman works. Your hands
kneaded Europe like a pliant dough,
which swallowed up the nothingness
of scepters, and folded in the crowns,
making and unmaking throned lands.
With each of your steps, the speed
of change accelerated. You strode,
sowing with both hands the seeds
of new ideas that frightened the globe.
Your legions pushed overflowing waves
of progress, swelling so high they swept
one peak to another, unstoppable.

The Revolution plowed the row;
one hand sowed Danton in Germany,
the other, Voltaire in Spain.
Your glory, O people, walked with dawn
and day rose up wherever you passed.
Just as they once said in awe, “The Greeks!”
they now acknowledged, breathless, “The French!”

Where evil fed on vice, and horror on hell,
you smote the Middle Ages dead. As by
and earthquake the Holy Office was riven.
Superb, you fought against all harmful things.
Night ran off blinded by your bright clarity.
For once, the entire planet was bathed in light
(o to be free of kings and torturers!).

While you ascended your star-led path,
the desperate admired you, even when you failed.
Sometimes, soaring, you dared the distance,
so that even the galaxies were dazzled
when, for twenty years, from Tagus to Elbe,
and from the Nile to Adige, you were
the prodigy. Then everything vanished —
ah, History, remember, names graven here,
the giant leader who compelled a titan people.

The arch of victory, the pillar of power —
these are two monuments of the people’s glory.
Both are yourself, o sovereign people.
[The one, in granite, was three decades’ labor
to honor the armies of Revolution and Empire,
the names of warriors and battles solemnly inscribed;
the other in memory of Austerlitz, where France
brought Austria and Russia to their knees.
The column’s winding bronze bas-reliefs
were made from enemy cannons, melted down.]

It is good to be reminded, passing by,
that we were once a victorious nation.
Oh, these two monuments, feared
by a hostile Europe, we must protect!
Both day and night we must watch over them,
assured against harm by our somber affections.
Each is a witness from a better age;
     each is in spirit an avenger.

Do we not need more than ever now
this haughty marble, this haughty metal?
We draw from them the ardor to punish.
Not only by name but by sight as well
we watch with a melancholy eye for those,
the veterans, Sons of the Republic.

For the hour of falling is a time for pride;
defeat increases, as the people mourn,
the resplendence of these two monuments;
their fiery glow gives warmth to our souls;
when great things still stand,
     the small are comforted.

We will internalize these monuments —
behold the arch in me, the column! —
but still we must make them eternal, too.
They were built by those whose work,
     extraordinary, lives on.
Those powerful dead once thundered by us.
The drum-beat of their march is echoing still.

Those living today, tenebrous and pale,
are less like beings of light than things of the grave.
Listen! Someone breaks up the pavement there.
The pick-axe shatters the curfew silence. Listen!
A bomb! Does it go off of its own accord?
No! Someone arrives to do the demolishing.
And who is that, Paris? Why, Paris itself!!

All I can do is shudder, a thinker forlorn,
like old King Lear addressing, admonishing
the storm that roars around his head.
What frightening signs! Is it the end of days?
Do they mean to abort the future?
How far can the murder of posterity go?
Does this century die because the birth
of the Nineteen Hundreds was averted?
Topple a calendar, not a column!

Like Lear, we swoon in vertigo.
What force has come to prey on Paris?
One power divides the city in two.
    the other strikes it dead,
thus one Sahara sandstorm pummels
     another, each with a will to strike,
each with a destroying power.

O People, choose! Both kinds of chaos
    are wrong, the firmament above
in tyrant rage, the trembling earth
     pulling us down to rubble.

It’s one or the other, two baleful foes.
One has the force of tradition behind it,
     and the name of the law,
the other a sense of indomitable right.
Versaille has the aura of bells and parishes,
Paris the Commune’s light and clamor,
yet over and beyond these two contenders
     there is only one France.
Right now, when a consoling shoulder
     is what everyone needs,
is this the time to sink to cannibal rage?
Who watches while we fight one another?

O fratricide! On one side all the frenzy
of grapeshot, mortars, bombs, and cannons,
on the other, the wild melee of vandals.
Fleeing the grind of Carybdis,
     one is smitten by Scylla,
two dooms rolling down cobblestone alleys.

(more to come)...