The Anatomy of Reprisals, Part 2

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

2

And what of those condemned
to the prison transports I have written of,
dying at sea in those smothering
between-decks, borne down
by the enormity of the fleeing ship?

They cannot stand. They reel
as the floor tips at insane angles.
They eat with their fingers
     from a common tub,
drink one after another
     from a rusty can.

They roast, they freeze.

 

A howling hurricane
     torments their dungeon.
The water roars, and should one catch
a glimpse into the sky above,
there is nothing there but a cannon
extending its neck in silhouette
into the storm’s black eye.

 

Have pity if they die,
at latitude and longitude unknown,
for should they land
at the place of their intended
banishment, what then?

 

Thinking of them, I swoon
in despair and mourning.
It suffocates the self to bear
so much concern, and for so many.
If we knew their actual number,
it would numb the soul.

 

No one is bad, I tell myself,
yet how much evil our hands accomplish!

 

There is a registered list somewhere
of those who shiver on the sobbing sea,
whom even the weeping sky pities —

O land of brutal exile! —
O, to be dashed instead
     against unyielding rocks!

One man — is it you, or me? —
is thrown there, sad and worried,
     trembling and naked,
a random figure
     among a howling crowd.
Mists! Storms! Wave upon wave,
smash upon smash until no breath
remains that is not salt and spume.
Eyes in a gray mist unable to know
what is near, and what far away
in an empty, gray, falling tide.

 

One lives! He stands upright!
He has made it through Hell’s ocean.

Sands slide tormentingly;
a distant sun throbs. Sea birds
call out in no known language,
their welcome? Their mockery?

 

This is the exile’s dawn.
What if no one comes?
What if no one helps?

What if all that one owns
is the broken thread of love?