Holy Water Like a Hail of Stones

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "June 1871"

IV

Was it something I said?
When from my house I offered up
the concept of clemency,
I brought upon myself this town’s
idea of a serenade.
What a sweet romance they bring me,
a chorus whose boisterous refrain
is “Kill him! Kill him now!”

 

The morning news is full of it,
the priestly journals especially
fill columns with a frightening mess
of hateful invective — This man,
who calls himself a poet, of all things,
dares to take pity on a fleeing enemy!

 

The audacity! He takes
our own Christian welcome literally.
He dares us! The ones above
are angry over this;
even the middle class gets riled
(foam bubbles forth
     from their clenched lips).

 

The squires and sacristans
run in the streets like dog-packs.
A waving censer becomes a David sling;
its missile cracks my tiles.
They pray, and from the ends
of bottle-brushes the Holy Water
descends on me like hailstones.
I am so thoroughly exorcised
that they have almost killed me
(or so they would have it,
imagining me belly-full
of demons and mortal sins).

 

In short, and by the grace of God,
I am expelled. To make their point,
the rabble are now shouting
“Get out of town!” adds to the rain
with paving-stones hurled hard
against my closed-up window shutters.
So— man stones! So many styles,
a mason’s gazetteer of Brussels.
I am dazzled as the projectiles fly —
not since the Crusades
has the sky been so assaulted
with rock and point and pike!

 

My name is called, repeated.
When I do not show myself,
an alarm bell rings incessantly
but fails to summon a single
constable. More crowds arrive.

“Brigand!” they shout.

(Has this hand ever threatened another?)
“Incendiary! Arsonist!” they howl.
(It is all I can do to light a fireplace!)
“Assassin! Assassin!” — that hissing lie.
(No death has ever come from my hand!)

 

Now they are gone,
     and we are safe inside.
The notable battle colors us:
they, so true and good, as white
     as a murder of crows, and me,
as black as a solitary, gliding swan.