Critics and Theorists

by Brett Rutherford

 

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, “July 1871”

 

VI

So long as its branches spread wide and green
above the marshy ground, so long as it becomes
the most enormous dome of the forest,
does the oak even notice below itself
the hideous water in which its roots abide?

 

Termites and carpenter ants, insects of horror,
creep up through the brush toward it, drawn
by its mass and its seeming immobility,
but to it, as to the marble giant, august
and mutilated, to it, as to the granite sphinx,
sinister in its own roseate light, to it
the machinations of wood-lice mean nothing!

 

When night’s dark winds convulse
    and make the palm trees quiver,
the Colossus does not doubt himself;
hands on his knees, thoughtful and calm,
he waits to make its speech at dawn.

If slugs at his base track drool and slime,
he ignores it. If dank toads congregate,
and make a council against him,
he is unaware that such beings exist.

 

If some learnèd worm comes inching up,
intent to take lodge on his visage,
he never acknowledges affront
with either nod or sigh. He stays mute,
holding within the deep resonance
of his frightening mystery.
Let legions come, make festival,
bleat their own names at his expense,
thousands resplendent with honors
and festooned with scrolled diplomas —

not one of them comes back from Memnon
with affirmation or prophecy. It was
as though they had never come and gone.

He waits the appointed sunrise,
and the suddenly ruddy glow it casts
upon his features, and only then
will his formidable voice come forth,

and he will never mention them.