The Pigeon Post

 

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, “January 1871”

XX

Down there on earth,
he sees an enormous abyss of shadow where nothing shines,
as if some form of molten night had been poured there,
which seems like a black lake;
as a spot in the sky, it is gazing downward.
Strange lake, made up of waters? No,
     it is made of roofs without number,
here bridges like in Memphis,
     over there towers like in Zion.
Some heads turn upward,
     some far-sighted looks lock upon him,
     some voices call, but indistinctly — oh vision!

Whispers rise from this stagnation of darkness,
and this lake lives, an enclosure walls it,
and on it one seems to see the frightful seal of hell.
The dark lake is the city, and he, the black dot, is a mere bird.
Like some heraldic eaglet ripped
     from shield or tapestry,
he flies for the sake of phantom people,
one species come to the aid of the other. An almost nothing,
a mere atom amid the clashing armies, this small one
comes in the shadows to help the colossus.

He may be an ignorant bird, not much of a fighter,
yet through this spacious network of cloud and wind,
ever afloat he flies. He has his goal, the thing he seeks,
the goal which he discerns above rivers,
trees and bushes, his remembered landmarks,
mapped on the roundness of pale horizons.

He thinks of his female, of her sweet brood,
of the nest, his roof-house, down there somewhere,
of the tender cooing, of the charming month of May;
he drops by stealth amid the flying bullets,
and yet, at the bottom of the firmament,
unwittingly, he drags along a human shadow;

And while the instinct toward his roof, that one,
that only, brings him back, and his small soul
shall be devoted to husbanding, he is more
than you think. Beneath his humble pinions,
rolled and rolled into a single quill,
a microfilm with hundreds of messages —a hand
on which he lights will remove it, and oh!
it is all about the black drums and bugles,
the count of grapeshot in many volleys,
the whispers from all of France and Germany,
the battles, the assaults, the vanquished,
     the victors, perhaps, as well,
a few mysterious whispers from heart to heart,
faint ink in microscopic lettering, which eyes
must strain to read beneath a glass.
At stake is the vast future which, fatally,
envelops the destiny of Europe in the fate of Paris.

Oh! vastnesses around us, ever-working!
How is it that some force unknown
makes a seed sprout despite the rock
that presses it down and chokes it?
Who holds and handles and mixes the winds,
the waves, the thunders, the sea
where valiant balloons, aloft,
and weighing almost nothing,
     may lose themselves?;
who brings new life out of dying things,
having infinite time to attend to its business;
who, being all-powerful, fails yet to avert
fault, misery, and evil; who would dig out
a dungeon to torment a swallow;
yet who, with a mysterious tide of force,
creates a lily, or compels a bud to swell,
or pushes a leaf through the armored bark;
who seems indifferent to the melting flood
the shrug of his cold snows abandons,
who holds above all the frost’s dark urn
which is always ready to drown the skies,
letting harvest or hunger depend on how
his whim tips a trembling fulcrum;

who balances all on a reed, a chance,
     an airy breath,
who marches out Titans when a pygmy would do,
exhausting his prodigious energies for naught,
why, god of wrath and anger, spew fire and smoke,
maker of giants, Vesuvius, Etna, Chimborazo;
who in distraction lets a world be saved
by letters carried on the wing of a bird!

 

 

Elegy for Charixenus

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Meleager, The Greek Anthology, vii, 468

Not eighty, not sixty, not forty,
not thirty even, fit age
for marrying, not even twenty!
Eighteen, Charixenus, dead!
Dressed in your chlamys
by your own mother, not
off for a prize, not off to a war,
     not off to a wedding day:
instead a woeful gift
     to hungry Hades.

I swear the earth shook,
     the stones groaned
as all his best friends
bore out his body
and all the house wailed.

So grieved were they
     who carried him,
their sobbing shook
the emblazoned bier.

Led by the baffled priests
    his parents chanted
a song of mourning,
a plea for swift passage
to a blessed place.

No one glanced up
as though to see the shame
of the indifferent sky
would drive all mad.

Alas for the mother’s breasts
that suckled in vain,
for the father whose line
might now be extinguished.

Did some old oath
    bring Furies here,
three evil maids
who revel in death?
Or, born of Night
    and Erebus
did Fates foredoom
this unhappy youth?
O Fates implacable,
barren yourselves you spit
to four winds the love
of mother for her first-
    and only-born.

How can the morrow
resemble the yesterday?
Friends, parents,
(and one, an unknown
lover, who pines for him),
their futures canceled.

Who will not hear
this tale and pity
the left-behind?
Grief pulls all down
to a common grave.

 

They Killed My Russia (1918)

 

by Brett Rutherford

     adapted from Fyodor Sologub, 1918

They have killed my Russia already,
and placed her in an unmarked grave.
Here I must choke back my weeping,
feign happiness amid the evil crowd.

Sleep in your grave, my Motherland,
until, in some long-awaited spring,
lightning will shoot from sunken loam,
and in a flood, our dreams will live.

How long must these funereal vigils
go on, disguised as celebrations?
How can we not betray our sadness
as the parade of triumph rolls on by?

The Story of Niobe, Parts 4 to 6 (end)

A royal suicide. Seven daughters killed in twilight by all-but-invisible arrows. The weeping Queen Niobe turns to stone.

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Book VI of Ovid's

4

Nothing moves swifter than the knowledge of death.

King Amphion, Niobe’s consort, had spied the cloud

and shivered as he stood beneath it, powerless.

He could not make out in the tumult below,

just who was slaying whom and why, for his eyes

with age were failing him. The shouting and screams

roared into the palace, up stairs and into his rooms

where he was wont to linger with laws and testaments.

The one who told him could not get the words.

“How many dead?” King Amphion demanded.

“All seven, sire!” — “All seven what?” — “Your sons!

All dead in the span of minutes from vengeful arrows.”

“No man can bear such grief and live!” cried Amphion,

and taking the messenger’s own sword, he slew himself.

 

Enter Niobe, to the blood-stained chamber

where she hardly noticed her perish’d consort.

At the heavens she raged, inconsolable.

The women veiled themselves in pity

as the disheveled Queen removed herself

to the corpse-ridden playing field. None envied her

now, and all who had exalted her, averted their faces.

One by one, she threw herself upon the bodies

of her seven sons engored; with blood she smeared

her raiment, and it stained her face and hair.

Each pair of dead lips she kissed with her own,

last echo of a mother’s first infant blessing.

She lifted bruised arms, all bronzed with gore

to the never-moving storm-cloud, then turned

her face toward where Latona’s temple stood,

hurling her imprecation so loud the very walls

of Thebes were shocked, and trembled.

“Feast now upon my grief, Latona, cruel

beyond the imagination of Tartarus,

feast and glut your heart with my sorrow.

It is endless — it will feed you forever!

Seven sons now I must burn and bury,

sevenfold my suffering. Exult, victorious

only in hatred. Your named shall be cursed

as the by-word for cruelty. Feast then,

and fill your empty heart with my sorrow.

 

“But, ha! your victory is not a victory.

My misery is greater still than your contentment

off in that place where no one knows your name.

Who will come to your temple now? Doors boarded

up, its walls leaning every which way, in years

to come it will be a ruin, a chicken-coop.

“After so many deaths, I triumph still!

Seven sons gone, I still have seven daughters!”

 

5

The day advanced, and dusk drew near. Cut trees

and timbers carried forth from the city took shape

into seven hastily-made biers, and the seven sisters,

robed in black, their faces smeared with weeping,

gathered around the scene of horror. All heard

the sky-shaking throb of the bowstring on high,

and one, while drawing out the arrow from inside

her brother’s raven-torn innards, toppled dead

before any saw that a missile had stricken her.

Some thought she merely fainted, but others saw

the pulsing flow of blood beneath her.

Another as she stood next her grieving mother

was cut down just as suddenly. Dim light

and enfeebl’d sight made some assume

the daughters were passing out with grief.

 

Latona’s daughter died before her, lips clenched,

without a word of reproach or a farewell cry.

One tried to flee, hoping her robes of black

would vanish into twilight. So she fell too,

and her sister, hard upon her, tumbled down

and both, in a heap, were arrowed, expiring.

One hid, but from the overarching cloud

there was no shelter; she fell,

defiant, until the angry shaft toppled her.

 

Now six had suffered wounds, and bleeding,

died. Niobe raced to her last daughter’s side.

The girl crouched, and Niobe tried to drape

her blood-stained robe to cover her.

Niobe screamed to the heavens again. “Latona!

Or you who come to slaughter in Latona’s name!

Just leave me one, the smallest, she is nothing

to you, my last vestige on earth. The littlest

one I beg you to spare me! Just one!” Yet even

as she prayed for the mercy of the implacable,

another shaft fell, sure aimed, rending her robe

and killing the hidden, crouching girl beneath it.

 

6

Now sits Niobe, childless truly, amid the gore

of fourteen slaughtered children, the sons on biers,

the daughters scattered in bloody pools

as wolf and dog, crow and raven, red-eyed

begin their death caw, the taste for flesh

that attends every battlefield. None dare to move,

except to melt away to their darkened homes,

where, hearths extinguished, the Thebans sat

sleepless and transfixed with terror.

Niobe sees the bier she had not noticed:

the self-slain Amphion from whom no sons

or daughters more could issue, fate sealed

upon Niobe’s curse forever. Silence was all

amid the creeping night, the ominous wingbeats

of carrion seekers. What horror at dawn

when the night’s feasting would be revealed!

 

Sun rises on the unpeopled field of Mars.

The birds are at their business. A wary wolf

circles the motionless Niobe.

Her hair, a mass of blood clots, does not move.

There is no breeze to stir it. Her face grows pale

as though her own blood had gone to ground.

Her eyes are fixed on nothing, She does not stir.

Aside from her, the picture is void of human life. Eyes

frozen, tongue locked in roof of mouth, teeth

clenched on final horror, she weeps. She weeps.

She wills her neck to bend — it disobeys;

she orders her arms to move, but they will not.

Her legs and feet are frozen. Slowly her heart,

the proud heart and all her innards, petrify.

She is nothing but a rockpile in woman’s form,

but still she weeps, tears of their own accord

flow out and down the semblance of face.

 

During the night that followed, some gods

took pity and lifted the weeping Niobe on high

dropping her back to a hillside in Phrygia,

where she weeps still, and forever,

a perpetual spring in a wall of limestone,

 

Who learns not from the lessons of punished Pride

must pay the toll of sorrow and extinction!

 

 

 

Old Scholar Under Autumn Trees (Anniversarius 48)

Translated  by Brett Rutherford

     From a Chinese Painting and Poem by Shen Chou, 1470 CE.

Gone, gone, gone. Gone to the west
wind, the leaves have fled. Still, there is
sun, still some shade under half-
disrobed maples. I loosen
my collar, I just lean back
and read my book. No clock, no
appointments, all idleness.
It is a long book; I have
all the Autumn ahead
To read, or to gaze on up
at the sky that pulls on me.
Here below -- or on up there --
who knows what I shall do next?

Op. 1050, January 19, 2020, from a 2006 FB post.

Dance of the Witches' Sabbath - A New Translation

This poetic description of a Witches' Sabbath in a ruined monastery was published in 1825. Five years later, Hector Berlioz composed his Symphonie Fantastique, whose last movement is a depiction of a Witches' Sabbath, with church bells ringing out at midnight against a Witches' round dance. Did Berlioz read the Hugo poem? It is likely. Another Witches' Sabbath known at the time was that of Goethe in Part 1 of Faust.

The only other version of this poem I have found in English is inadequate, from almost 100 years ago -- one peek and I never looked at it again. I have done this in my own un-rhymed manner and I have embellished a bit, since this is after all my Gothic territory. The poem has a refrain which I repeated a few times. It can be omitted after the first two occasions if it becomes tiresome, or it could be replaced with a musical bridge passage (Berlioz?). So, this is a brand-new translation, made without reference to any other English version. There are no doubt a few excesses here that might horrify Hugo, or maybe he would smile.


by Brett Rutherford

          Translated and adapted
          from Victor Hugo’s La Ronde du Sabbat, 1825

Just as in a mystery, behold now
how the moon veils itself in cloud
before the black monastery’s walls!
Spreading its fright, the midnight spirit
passes, swaying twelve times where once
a bell tolled (no more!) in the unpeopled
belfry. Long resounding comes the noise,
the air shakes, the roll and rumble stifled
as if locked up beneath the bell itself.
A shadow, and silence falling — listen !

Who thrusts these clamors upon the quiet
night? Who casts these phantom lights?

Dear God! The ruined vaults, the jagged doors
seem to be enveloped by filaments of fire.

Do we not hear, where the boxwood branches dip
into the Holy Water, an agitated tide of waves,
a tiny troubled lake a-boil in its granite urn?

Commend our souls to those who look down
upon us! Down here, among the blue rays,
among the scarlet flames, with cries and songs,
with human sighs and inhuman barking,

now everywhere, waters, mountains, woods,
larvae, dragons, vampires and gnomes,
monsters whose hell dreams only phantoms,
the witch, set free from the deserted tombs,

her silver birch broom whistling through air,

Necromancers tiara’d with mystical caps
above whom cabalistic symbols glow,

the no-nonsense demons, the crafty goblins,
all welcomed by the jagged line of roof,
by the broken hinge of the abandoned gate,
children of de-sanctified waste places come;
they come right through, a thousand lightnings,
the airy gaps in the stained-glass windows.
They enter the old cloister as a swirling wave.

He stands amid them, Lucifer, he, their Prince,
his bull’s forehead concealed beneath
the high-capped miter of heavy iron.
The chasuble has veiled his diaphanous wings,
as on the crumbling altar he places his cloven foot.

O terror! Now they are singing, here in this place
where day and night the Eternal’s eye should watch!

Now hand or claw reaches out for its kindred —
or, horror to behold, for nothing like itself —
they join, the form the immense circle,
the Antipode to the Cross, the bottomless!

Like a dark hurricane, the whirling begins.

To the eye that could not encompass the whole,
each hideous guest appears in his turn;

Hell spins, it seems, within the darkness,
its dreadful Zodiac all emblems of death.

The wind-force makes all fly, no need for wings!
They are carried ‘round, and Satan conducts
the choral bursts of their beastly voices.

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

“Change partners randomly”

As the demon mass around him rolls,
Satan and his joyful minions
press in on the altar and the Cross.

It is the cardinal night of autumn

The hour is solemn.

From Satan’s fingers rise
the ancient flame that does not die,
that pale winged fluttering
fringed with the purple of kings —

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

«Yea, Children of Darkness,
rejoice in our triumph!

Brothers and Sisters, come
from a hundred dimensions,
from funereal places,
dens dank and deep,
Hell will escort you!
Come as a cohort
on griffin-powered
chariots! Come now!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

« We welcome deformity and crime!
Come without remorse,
goat-footed dwarfs and suicides!

Come, Ghouls, whose lips
have never weaned from carrion,
and the black blood of the dead.

Infernal women,
outdo your rivals
in lust and vengeance,
outlast your lovers
to the point of death
and join us, exultant!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

Thrice-hounded Jews,
you are welcome among us!

Gypsies, Bohemians,
charged with anathema —
all may join us! Welcome!

Will o’ the Wisps, we know you!
Pale specters who escaped by night
after an avenging patricide,

glide on the breeze, catch hold
of the frieze above the broken wall,
fly, or crawl!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

Come, wicked goats,
eaters of everything.
Come, slender-bodied lice<

eaters of Everyman.
Come down. seducing Sylphs,
fall a stream of hail,
and melting, bedew the field.

Take hands again, with one
of your own kind or kindred!

Follow the beat. Expand
the dance. Repeat the chants!”

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

«Now at this beautiful moment
experts in magic shine
in the orgy, their blood-red beards
puffed out with smoke and lightning.
What did you bring? What offering?
What innocent soul is your prey?
or better yet, what unsaved sinner
did you kidnap from a confessional?
The victim with a victim in his mouth!
The fire of evil craves them all!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

Laughing in the holy place
(for who would know?
who’s watching there?
be still, if you would live to tell!))
Satan now parodies a chant
after Saint Matthew,
and in the chapel where his king
calls upon him, a demon sings
from the book of God!

The dead
in their vaults below, if they could feel
beneath the paving stones, and hear this rout,

how they would tremble!

Bring them out of their resting place.
Open, ye tombs. Up, flagstones, up
lidded vaults! Bring out the monks
who once worshipped here. Arise!
And in each stall let a false monk spread
the fatal robe that burns his bones

and that a black chamberlain
attend to the burning of the cursed flame.

“Satan will see you now!

With your coarse hands
among the monk-dusk,
make ink and write,
Sorcerers, write your

Abracadabra!

Fly away first, ye wild furred birds
of magic and curses,
dictate a whole new alchemy
of forbidden metals. Tear
the very fabric of matter to shreds!
This is what Satan is all about!

Fly away first, ye wild furred birds,
whose bald wings hang
from the alcoves of Smarra*
where the vampire dwells.

Here is the signal!
Hell reclaims us.
The sun draws near! The time
may come when all souls know
no other flame than my black
lantern. May our dancing round
in the profound shadow
open the whole world
to an infernal circle!

*** ***

As I emerged from my hiding place
the pale dawn whitened the colossal
arches. Night and the Devil fled,
a confused swarm of dispersed demons.

And the dead, who had been burning bright
but moments before, reposed again.
The stones were back that held them;

their frozen glances gazing upward,
pillowed in ash and the dust of ages.

October 1825

Alexander Pushkin: The Demons

A new paraphrase/adaptation of a Russian poem from 1830.

The clouds whirl, the clouds scurry.
The moon, unseen, lights up
from above the flying snow.
Gloom-ridden sky, gloom-ridden night:
on my life, I can’t find the way.

I drive, I drive on the endless steppe.
The little bell’s ding-ding-ding
flies back to me, fearsome,
fearsome in spite of one’s self,
lost bells amid an unknown plain!
— “Driver, don’t stop! Keep going on!” —

“It’s impossible, sir. It’s a heavy go
for the horses against all this snow.
And my eyes are swelling shut, sir.
Who can make out where snow ends
and where the land begins?
All the roads are covered, I swear.
Kill me if you like. I’ve stopped,
for not a track is to be seen.
We are lost! What would you have me do?” —

“What have you been following, driver,
if you can see no road?” —

“Some Demon of the steppe, my lord,
is leading the horse and me. I thought
I recognized a turn or two, but no,
now we’ve been turned aside. We’re lost!

“Look, there ahead beyond that drift
he huffs, and spits at me. My God,
he’s almost led the stumbling team
into a steep ravine! Back, back!

“Did you not see him, sir? He stood
as thin as a weird mile-post before us.
(Here, take this cloth and clean
your fogged-up spectacles!)
Look there — that little spark was him,
and now he’s gone into the empty dark.”

The clouds whirl, the clouds scurry.
The moon, unseen, lights up
from above the flying snow.
Gloom-ridden sky, gloom-ridden night:
on my life, I can’t find the way.

We have no strength to go onward:
there, look, our tracks again:
we have gone in a full circle!
The little bell is suddenly silent,
in a fog so thick it cannot tremble.

The horses stop. What is that in the field?
“Who knows, sir. It’s just a tree stump.
No, Bozhe moi, I see a wolf!”
The snowstorm becomes furious,
the snowstorm howls and wails.
The snorting horses make sounds
of terror and try to break the reins.

“There – farther on — the Demon.
I saw him jump, sir. See there:
just those two eyes float deep,
red lamps inside the gray-white
nothingness of sky and snow.”

Then comes a sudden silence,
a narrow path made visible
lures on the horses; the bell
makes tentative tinkles. I see
a line of phantoms assembled
on either side of us,
in the midst of the whitening plains.

Onward we go, the driver’s
whispered litany of Bozhe moi,
Bozhe moi and the silver ding
of the blessed sledge-bell
our only prow and pilot.

Endless and formless,
the Demons watch us
in the dim play of the moonlight;
they are are legion as leaves
on the ground in November.

How many are there? Where do they go
en masse in this blizzard night?
And, oh, they are singing. Hush, driver!
Listen to that plaintive melody!
Are they off to some hobgoblins’ burial?
Is Baba Yaga at last to be married?

The clouds whirl, the clouds scurry.
The moon, unseen, lights up
from above the flying snow.
Gloom-ridden sky, gloom-ridden night:
on my life, I can’t find the way.

In faith the driver and the horses
plod on in the narrow passage,
the right-of-way the Demons grant us
as they swarm and swarm around us,
some walking on snow and treetop,
some leaping into the storm itself.

Home, if I make it there, will not be warm
enough, nor will any bright song erase
the funereal chant of the Demons,
whose mourning rends my heart.

Bozhe moi, ding-ding-ding,
Bozhe moi, ding-ding-ding
Bozhe moi, ding-ding-ding

1830, Translation and adaptation by Brett Rutherford, 2012