by Brett Rutherford
Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Année Terrible, “July 1871”
[POEM XII]
The earth below, and the heavens above!
If evil reigned, if there was nothing down here
but forced labor, followed by futile protests;
if the evil past kept on returning;
if black water, vomited, came back
as the only thing to slake one’s thirst;
if midnight could insult
the high noon’s azure
and boast, “Look here, I killed the sun!”;
if nothing was certain
and no one could be counted on,
then God would have to hide in shame.
Nature would be a timid impostor.
The constellations would shine for nothing.
That all this time
the empyrean concealed
immortal villainy,
that in the black cosmos
between the galaxies
there hides an entity
whose delight is inventing crimes,
that mankind giving everything,
days, tears, and blood
is the literal-minded plaything
of an Almighty coward,
that the future one walks
is a colonnade of black wickedness —
that for my part
I refuse to believe.
Would it be
worth the wind’s while
to stir the stormy flood of the living?
Should morning, draped
in the mist of frozen seas,
even bother to announce itself
by casting icy diamonds down
onto the vaguely dazzled flowers?
Does the bird
sing for nothing?
Does the world
exist for nothing?
If Destiny were
only
some random huntsman
who shoots whatever comes along;
if human effort were only good
at manufacturing chimeras;
if shadows emerged from wombs
instead of daughters
and wives, on giving birth
turned into piles of ash:
if ships set
sail,
and after endless rowing.
can never come to port;
if everything one craved and bled for,
each act of crafting something new,
led only to defeat and nothingness —
No! I do not consent
to this bankruptcy,
this zero-sum of everything!
The end of all roads
cannot be nothingness,
like the falling-off
of some idiot flat-earth.
The Infinite is better than that!
Is life to be crushed between two stones —
Charybdis the cradle
and Scylla the tomb?
Paris, your muscles
are strong enough
to get the better of this!
France, you great star:
you have done your duty
and God owes you.
Rise up, and keep on fighting.
I know that God now
seems only a glimmer
seen through the mown-down path
of dire destiny. This God,
I repeat, has often in ages past, cast doubt
upon himself as old wise men
reckoned with him and shook their heads.
The Unknown does not yield itself
to the summons of metaphysics
with its morose and heavy calculations,
nor will the scalpel reveal elan vital,
explaining everything away
in tables and formulae.
Something always eludes the thinker.
That being said, I have my faith.
I think it to be a higher light.
My conscience is there in me,
and there, my guest is God.
By drawing a circle around everything,
using a dubious compass I can say:
this is all, and God is nowhere in it.
Outside, somewhere, if such a place there be,
is his only possible residence.
Yet that circle has not contained me.
He is not outside myself, but in.
He is the rudder when I sail randomly
at loss of direction on the foamy sea.
If I listen to my heart,
I hear a dialogue.
Call me mad if you will.
In the depths of my mind
there are two of us:
him, me.
He is my only hope,
and the only thing I fear.
If by some chance a reverie
presents to me an evil I would like
to embrace,
a deep rumbling swiftly follows
from deep within me. I say,
“Who is there? Does someone speak
to me? And why?
And my soul that trembles
in that moment of second-thought
says to me, “That was God. Be still.”
*
What should we do? Does not the world,
united, adhere to some sense of progress?
Deny this, and deny all reason to be.
No, no! If it turns out
that this God deceived me,
placing the bait of hope
in front of me,
laying the snare,
to take me, a humble atom,
and make me know myself
a phantom caught
between the present, a dream,
and the actual future,
if God intends only
to gloat and deride me’
I, the sincere eye and he, the false vision;
if he deceived me with some deplorable mirage;
if he handed me a compass
only to dash my ship against the rocks,
if through my conscience
he made me falsify my reason
so that I knew not true from false,
then I, whom am only one speck
a mite on the horizon,
I, the nothingness
would be his dark accuser.
I would call upon all beings
across all time and space
to be my witnesses.
I would line up all infinity
against this God.
Ether and nebulas,
black holes and empty space,
even the vacuum would take up my cause.
Against this evil-doer
I would line up the stars
themselves.
I would throw our evils and disasters
into his face. I have oceans enough
to wash my own hands clean;
the errors I made, were of his making.
In this high court the accuser
can never be the accused.
I accuse, and God would be the guilty one.
Anger against a god has no limits.
No matter how inaccessible,
impalpable, invisible he is,
I would persist and find him out.
I would see his true form.
I would seize him in the heavens,
as one takes a wolf in the forest,
and, terrible, indignant and calm,
a prosecutor extraordinaire,
I would denounce him
amid his own thunder.
If Evil it is
that reigns and rules,
if some immense lie
is the root of all,
then everything would revolt!
Oh! if the sky
man contemplates
is no longer a temple before his eyes,
if under all creation there seems to ooze
some odious and obnoxious secret,
that pillar of glory has nothing on top;
it is a pole of servitude and chains.
I would bring down this confidence man,
this forger, and lean him there,
where he would blame everyone else.
He would insult our mourning,
and scorn our rags and rubble,
shrug at our thirst and hunger,
keep tally of our vices and crimes.
Victims would turn back
their executioners to face him.
He would answer for war and hatred,
for the eyes gouged out
that saw too much,
for the bloody stumps of despair.
The fields themselves, wind-shaken woods,
the mountains with their hearts of iron,
the flowers poisoned by the fall of ash,
from the furious and mad chaos
of destinies cut and re-cut,
from every last thing that has a name,
appearing to be, then vanishing,
then re-appearing again out of the realm
of wish-forms where matter is not,
from all a dreary accusation emerges.
Reality would seep through horrible cracks.
Tearing their hair, the comets would come.
The air itself would press him down,
accusing him with its rainy breath.
In such a world turned upside-down,
the worm would say to the star:
He envies you, and in his jealousy
he makes us both gleam at night.
The reef would say, “I wish no harm
to anyone. His wind and tide
make me a destroyer.”
The sea would say, “My spite and storm
are all his doing. So I avow.”
The universe would be God’s pillory.
*
Ah! Faced with this bankrupt God,
reality would serve
as one sublime payment.
I would be the quiet creditor of the abyss.
My eye already open, I would wait
for great awakenings.
Those other suns
across the gulfs of space —
I do not doubt them.
I think the vacuum empties out
where I see a new star begin to bloom.
The black at the far reach
of the azure sky,
retreats from the well of dawn.
These fleeing shadows are loyal to nothing;
they make no promises they are able to keep.
The darkness above us
may seem to eclipse the rays,
but is it not by night,
that, pensive and wandering,
we actually believe?
The sky may be troubled,
dark and mysterious,
but what does it matter?
Nothing righteous need fear
that dawn’s door will fail to open.
Complaint is vain, and “Evil”
is only a word, an empty one.
It is good that I have fulfilled my duty.
It is my nature to suffer happily,
knowing all justice is in me,
invisible as I seem to be,
a grain of sand.
When we do what we can,
we hold God responsible,
so forward I go,
knowing that Nature does not lie,
sure of the honesty of the deep firmament.
“Hope!: I proclaim,
to whoever lives and thinks.
I affirm that the unknown Being
who spends, without counting,
the splendors, the flowers, the universes;
and as if emptying great sacks
that are always open,
dispenses stars, and winds, and seasons;
and who lavishes on the cloud-piercing
mountains, the seas that gnaw
at cliff and dike, without
respite,
the azure, the lightning, the day, the sky;
that he who spreads light’s torrent out,
and life and love to all space and time;
I affirm that he who neither dies
nor passes away, who made the world,
(a book so awfully mis-read by priests),
who gives Beauty as a form to the Absolute,
real despite doubt,
and true despite fable,
the eternal, the infinite,
God is not insolvent.
