The Thinker

by Brett Rutherford

After Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "June 1871"

IV

Statue, or man? The one who thinks —
immobile as a piece of marble
except for the occasional flash
from his fierce eyes —

does the forest whisper calm him?
Is he taking in the flowers
that spread around him?
Or is his gaze far-off
     somewhere in the heavens?

Is he lost in day-dream
    or deep in philosophy?
He is brow-to-brow with Nature,
which does everything it can
     to appease all humans.
The hills around are covered
    with vines ripening;
the orchard burst with apples.
The busy flies go on
    about their business,
buzzing this way and that.
The birds are a blur, so fast
     the only traces they leave
are glints on the pond’s waters.

The mill absorbs the flow
of the stream, and widens it,
begs the cool waters to stay a while
in the wide shallows.

 

In the water he can see,
     if he will only study it,
two images of everything,
     one up-and-down,
     one down-and-up,
but only a mirror obscure,
as words are
    to the thoughts above them.

 

In this profundity, nothing
    is useless; each atom
has its own task assigned.

The agitation of air and water,
the grain in the furrow striving,
each singular beast with its own
     ego and life and death,
all serving one end, all mass
subject to one magnetic pull.

 

In one immense wave
the infinite grass can surge
as one being, a hive of green.
Everything is in motion;
nothing is still, not even the rocks
in their slow grind of plates,
or the shrug of the volcano.
This planet is a metropolis
     of nests and dens,
flocks so vast no dogs could ever
     herd them to safety.

Stars move and collide,
     unknown to us night’s repose,
but at so slow a pace that next
to the clawing and striving below,
the business of galaxies seems
     an affair of indolence and sloth

That dark vermilion sky
     which rocks our waters to sleep,
and cradles our fruitfulness,
that which we name Life or Creation,
under its own turmoil,
     its Titan versus Olympian
          cosmos-shattering wars,
charms us and pretends to sleep.

Seeming never to come to wrath
the old gods bless our handiwork
with lazy indifference —
     oh, should they wake!

 

Is the thinker aware of this?
     Is he troubled? Who knows?

Does this omnipresent peace
    not dazzle his contemplating eyes?

From all around, from the valley,
    from the meadow to the height,
from the shaded, mysterious forest,
and from the glowing sky,
comes one welcome and soothing
    shadow, Peace,
and with it, a single ray of Joy.

 

Does he see where, across the ravine,
a little girl with eyes divine,
and nimble feet a Greek sculptor
would not scorn to imitate
in trembling clay, runs free,
chasing her goat before her
with a handful of branches —

this timeless moment stirs
and awakens the soul of the banished man.

 

He rises and says, “Alas! Alas! All I might say,
has not been said in full. The work
is not finished and never can be, while
they are digging pits beneath the pavement,
while some officer indicates a wall
where people are pushed
     to be exterminated,
while soldiers say “Yes!”
     to the order to fire,
because fathers and mothers,
     madmen and common thieves,
and those whose only misfortune
     is to be sickly,
          are executed at random,
killing without thought or choice,

and while the dead, still-bleeding bodies,
some only children,
are covered with quick-lime
     to eat the flesh away,
a hasty erasure of identity.

 

He shakes off the dust,
and rubs his eyes free of reverie.

No, he must go on!