The Anatomy of Reprisals, Part 5

by Brett Rutherford

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

5.

Imagine there’s an ocean
     with infinite depths

into which all troubles, cast,

close the book of destiny —
done, gone, and disappeared.

Let the ever-renewing waves
sweep clean the shore.

The tide keeps folding over
whoever is thrown into it.
Sea-maws open for new victims,
two hungry flaps for doors.

 

Hurl in the criminals!
If the innocent go, too,
punished in the confusion,
so what? It’s over now!

Judges rebuke historians
with gavels raised:
“Now, let’s not dwell on the past.”

 

To men of ice who never thaw,
always on the sharp edge
     of justice, impartial
to the to point of punishing all,
it is a matter or triage:
to cure a wound, cut off the limb.

 

Convenient it is,
to sentence men en masse.

New-minted justice
     could be order’s foundation,
but no! like fish thrown back
unwanted come to the net again,
those spared one horror
     have another in store,
their tick-marked names
up on one list and down
     on another.
All are cast into the same abyss.

 

Irrelevant: the facts, the doubts,

     the losses we all suffered
      together as a people,
the moil of the reckless men
and the brothers and women
     who followed them;
the child who took up
     the paving stones
or mocked the soldiers
      in lewd gesturing’

the crime of merely being
in a place where crimes occurred.

 

Instead we are told to believe
that everything was saved,
ills, tears, and turbulence,
not cut by a scythe, but swept
aside as though a broom

God wielded would sweep them all,
     storm-drain to sewer,
          and river to sea.
Look! The city! Open for business!

 

Smugly, you ask me to approve of this.
     What can I say? You are wrong.
The screams still echo.
The fear is palpable. The blood,
     the charnel pits, the grapeshot,
the sea so sick of justice
     it would vomit back your dead!

 

Since I stand here blaming you,
     next it is all my fault,

because I have something inside,
     that ticks and beats, and which
     you seem to be lacking.

How many more times
can lightning strike
     the blind and poor?

 

I shudder. Not to mention
the future harvest of revenges
your every action sows.

“Working for the best,” your
outcome is the worst possible.
If this in a state is wisdom,
     how does it differ
         from dementia?

 

That which flows out,
     tides back anew
with the force of the moon
     behind it.
Suffering and Hatred are sisters.

In darkness, one assumes
     the raiment of the other.

 

Now, even if I, whose guilt
    might be called a naïve innocence,
might return to that austere absence,
to the harsh and dreary isolation
    from which these last twelve months
    seemed as white as dawn,
even if some shadow, inexorable,
     called me back to my high cliff —
wretches without hope, you have
     one friend in me,
          and I will not be quiet!

 

People, you have the night
    and me, as your witnesses.
The law is dead. Hope has fallen.
Let it not see said that France
     fell into a total eclipse,
and no one said a word of protest.

I am calamity’s best friend.

 

To those who have been damned, I saw:
In Hell I walk beside you. I want to be —
to take this part, the best, to stand
beside the one who has never done evil
and whose cry will not be heard.

Your leaders led you astray; and I,
     at least, have told you history.

 

What poet would not prefer
     a golden victory?
Now I must take the part of the fallen.
My solitary march is not
     toward the flag of victory,
but somewhere off
     where the shrouds are gathered.

 

I open the grave of the common man.
And now your jeering rains upon me,
the shrieking of prostituted souls,
sarcasms paid for by the line,
gratuitous lies, the likes
of which Nonette and Maupertuis
tormented Voltaire,
     the same raised fists
which chased Rousseau away,
cries blacker than the winds
    of some Libyan sirocco,
more vile than that whip
     with leather straps
they used to scourge, in flight,
     the coffin of Molière,
the idiotic irony
     of your fierce anathemas,
the ring of dried saliva
     around the mouths
which had only yesterday spat
on the pale Christ’s forehead,
you flying stones
    eternally thrown at all
         who have been proscribed,
keep at it, fiends!

 

Outrages as yet unheard of,
     I welcome you.

I wear your insults as a badge.
The higher the affront
     against the people,
     the higher the glory.