At the Orchid Pavilion

 

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Lantingji Xu, “Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion” by Wang Xizhi (303-361 CE, Jin Dynasty)

In fourth century China, the Jin emperor presided over a picnic of poets in which all sat alongside a gentle stream. Wine cups were placed on large leaves and dropped into the stream. Any time a wine cup came within reach of a poet, he was required to take it up and drink it, and/or write a poem on the spot. My friend Ping Geng obtained for me a ceramic replica of one of the little cups used at this famous poetry gathering. The event yielded an anthology and here is my adaptation of the dedicatory poem. The artwork depicts the poets idling along the stream-bank.

The great Jin rules at the world’s center
(may it always be so), and this late spring,
in the ninth year of the Yonghe Emperor

we have gathered at the Orchid Pavilion,
in the cool north of Kauiji Mountain
for the ritual of purification, as always

the Literati gather, ink-pot and brush
as ready as a bannerman’s weapon.
Mistake not the power of these seated men.

We have climbed the steep hills
to reach this mountain slope. The woods
are dense with shadowing pines.

 The slender bamboo is emerging
and the flowing stream has swollen
with the rush of melting snow

into an artificial rivulet that bends
and turns across a levelled field
where we spread out in groups

so that each poet’s arm can reach
to touch the limpid waters
on which a broad leaf boat

carries an oblong wine-cup.
If one such vessel comes your way
you are compelled to take it,

if not, you must write a poem.
If excellent, the emperor applauds;
if not, the waters carry it off.

Although no music wafts
among the pine trees, winds
at work on fervent blossoms

and the sweet harmonies of words
suffice to make us happy. Hearts
rise in a bell-symphony of joy.

The sky is free of clouds.
The air is fresh, no hint of smoke.
The breeze is moderate and cool.

Above us, hidden in blue
a billion stars burn ever on.
Among us all, our poems are few,

Although they number tens
of thousands by now. Our eyes
harvest the landscape for images.

Too quick a lifetime passes
when one is among friends,
not years enough! Not years Enough!

We have each our own way with words,
our chambers and all the things in them.
What one collects, another scorns,

Yet out of such diversity there comes
the pleasures and satisfactions
with which we regale one another.

How quickly, alas, this all may pass’
as we grown old, our young desires
seem weary or over-sated;

What once we trafficked in
seems shallow now. We call
the auctioneer to clear things out.

And trailing ever behind us,
the unacknowledged guest,
is grief, its shadow ever-growing.

Long life, short life,
the better lived, the sooner
it seems to come to calamity.

Alas, the ancients knew best:
The only two ultimate things
are the birth that brought you

And the death that takes you away.
Alas that it must be so! Far back
into the ancient works, the same lament.

It saddens me that the worthy dead
came up with no answer for me.
I cannot express how sad this is.

It is absurd to say that death
makes all life meaningless.
Look! One more leaf has fallen!

Which one? Which one? Oh who can tell?
To live long is surely better
than to have scarcely lived at all,
 

To read and weep, one hand
unrolling the scroll, the other
outlining the share of each character:
 

Is this not how one lives
in more than one lifetime
inside the minds of the departed?

And just as we read them,
some future reader
will stumble upon these words

And say, “That poet. I think
I know him. Our minds are one.
I might have been him, he, me.

How many poets are here today?
How many brushes at work,
how many completed verses?

Oh, gather them up? All of them!
Let he who made the rivulet
on which the wine cups float,

Extend it beyond our sight,
to carry gently downward
all of our torments and doubts

Into the far-off river, touched
by swallows and dragonflies,
into the great sea of eternity.

When the Valkyries Come

The God Teutates

 

 by Brett Rutherford
Translated and adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "December 1870"

Dark vision! one people murders another.
Yet, Saxons, we have the same origins,
and we came out of the same mother’s belly!
Germania and Gaul once joined arms
in that ancient Europe whose history is still taking shape.[1]
To grow side-by-side was our long-time strength.
Two peoples gave mutual aid, a happy and tender,
triumphant couple, even as little Cain
     once loved the infant Abel.
We were a great people, equal in might to Scythia;
and it is concerning you, Germans, and us, too, that Tacitus
said: — Their soul is proud. A strong god supports them,
whose name at home makes women weep,
     and the men remember all. —
If Rome invaded our moors and risked its eagles there,
the Celts heard the warlike call of the Vendes,[2]
and Rome’s praetor was beaten, its consul chased away.
So, too, Teutates came to the aid of Irmensul;[3]
we gave each other a glorious and faithful support
sometimes with a stroke of the sword
     and sometimes with sheltering wings.
The same stone altar, strange and full of voices
compelled its worshipers to kneel
     on the grass, as the Teutons did at Cologne,
     or at the water’s edge, as did the Bretons of Nantes.[4]
And when the Valkyrie, winged and shivering,
spanned over the shadowy sky,
     your Hermann[5] and our Brennus[6]
saw between her two bare breasts
     an identical star.
Germans, look above your heads,
to the vast heavens:
while you are hell-bent on conquests,
you, Germans, you come to stab the Gauls,
trample on all the ancient laws.
Your treacherous victories
     do not make you larger:
          they soil you.
Dying, you will go on to see
your ancestors saluting ours.

---

[1] Hugo’s pleading for common origins or religions for Gauls and the Germanic people may have been conceivable in 1870, but the distinct differences between Celtic and Germanic myth are now better understood. In any case, there was no “Germany” in our sense of the word until 1870. One might see the parallel histories of the French kingdom and the Holy Roman Empire as fitting Hugo’s conception of two cultures maturing side-by-side.

[2] This line makes no sense as the Wends (Vends) were a Slavic people who struggled against, and were gradually subsumed into Geman culture.

[3] Teutates, or Teutatis, a principal god of the Celts in Britain and Gaul. Irmensul was either an idol or a god associated with Wodan among the Germanic tribes. Hugo’s connection between these two deities is purely speculative.

[4] Bretons. The Breton were a Celtic people who emigrated to France

[5] Hermann. Arminius (18 BCE- 21 CE), the Germanic general who gave Rome its worst defeat, turning back Roman power from the eastern German region.

[6] Brennus, a Gallic chieftain of the Senones, who defeated a roman army at the Battle of the Alia, c. 390 BCE. He later attacked and sacked Rome.

Great Expectations

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "December 1870"

Ah! it is a dream! No! we did not consent to this.

Stand up, anger in your heart, sword in hand,

France! take up your stick, your pitchfork, pick up

Some paving-stones, stand tall and raise them in unison!

France! what is this war?

We refuse to be invaded by some clownish,

medieval bandit — God owes us Attila.

Always, when it pleases Fate to overthrow a great empire

a noble people, in whom humanity thrives,

like Rome or Thebes, respectful Fate serves

up some august and wild monster of the desert.

Why this affront? It’s too much. You resign yourself to it?

You, France? No, never! Certainly we were worthy

to be devoured, people, and now we are eaten!

It’s too much to have said to yourself: We will be slaughtered

nobly, like Athens, Memphis, Troy or Solima,

greatly, in the flash of some sublime struggle! —

but instead we feel something biting, down below,

in the shadows, prey to this undignified scratch and itch —

gnawed at by looting and theft, plagues and famines —

we hoped for lions, but we are attacked by vermin!

 

To a Sick Child During the Siege

by Brett Rutherford

     Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870"

TO A SICK CHILD, DURING THE SIEGE

If you continue to look pale like this
     in this bad air,
if I see you enter my doomed shadow,
     me, the old man, you, the child,
if I see the natural order is confused these days,
as on my knees
I contemplate you, wanting my death sooner,
yours many years away.
If your hands are still diaphanous and frail,
     if, in your cradle,
you seem to wait, trembling, for the growth of wings
like a little bird;
if in our sad soil your roots so far
have not sunk in;
if, to our bafflement, your discontented eyes
seem to wander, Jeanne,
and I fail to find you cheerful, rosy, and strong;
if, sad, you dream,
if you have left the door ajar in that heaven
that sent you to us;
if I don’t see you one day as a beautiful woman,
walk, and be well,
just laugh, and if you seem like a little soul
who does not want to stay,
I will believe that in this world where shrouds
for some are swaddling clothes,
you have come to depart again.
Perhaps you are the angel
responsible for taking me.

 

 

The Goodman's Croft

 

by Brett Rutherford

 

Not every virgin was ravished

when the marauders came

in their tall ships: a few

were consigned to sacrifice,

well-fed until the day

they fed a hecatomb

reared up for the hungry gods.

 

In Scotland,

even among the poorest farmers,

one spot that might

have been planted is bare.

And not a rocky place, mind you,

but a fair edge or corner

with sun and soil the rye

might be a blessing in.

 

That patch

is called the Goodman's Croft.

Since too much greed

attracts the Devil,

who with a nod and a wink

is called the "Goodman,"

the proof is in the vacancy,

where such weeds as chance,

or demons or the fairy-folk

wish to implant, grow high

and rank until the witches

on Hallow-night, harvest

for broom and cauldron.

 

Fail to do this, a less-than-tithe

to dark forces, and all

the crops will fail. Why risk

starvation when the Devil

asks so little, just one bald spot

where spiders and leprous things

run riot? Avert the plow,

unfurrowed and seedless,

let Goodman's Croft be!

 

 

The Fly

 by Brett Rutherford

Five days now
a single house-fly
has followed me about
from room to room,
circling about my head.
My personal Beelzebub,
he evades the swat,
ignores the honeyed trap,
refuses the egress
of a sunny, opened window.

He is still there all night.
Does he mine, while I sleep,
my nostrils and ears?
Does he lap tears
from eye-edge
as I dream-weep
of lost loves?

Does he know something
that I do not?
Is he someone
I ought to humor
come back to visit,
soul reincarnate,
his prism eyes beaming
a joy I cannot fathom?

Begone, little friend.
Go find some she-fly
in a place of leaf-rot
and make a million
progeny. The crumbs
and dry crevices
of a poet's house
are not for you.

To the Bishop Who Called Me an Atheist

by Brett Rutherford

Translated and adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870"

Me, an Atheist? let us find out, priest, once and for all.
Already I am spied upon, and watched, and listened to.
Look through the keyhole to the depths of my soul, then,
search how far and just how deep my doubts can go.
Go question Hell, consult its police register,
gaze through the basement window
to see what I deny or what I believe,
You needn’t take the trouble to send out spies.
My faith is simple, and I profess it. I like frank clarity:

If he is a man with a long white beard,
in the semblance of a pope or emperor, seated
upon a throne (the kind of boxy, high-backed thing
     we knock together in the theater),
perched in a cloud, with a bird on his head,
on his right an archangel, on his left a prophet,
in his arms his pale son pierced with nails,
one in three parts, listening to harps, a jealous God,
an avenging God, exactly as Garasse[1] records,
as annotated by Abbot Pluche[2] in the Sorbonne
     and approved by none other than Nonnotte[3] —

Ah, if it is this God that Trublet[4] observes,
God trampling underfoot those whom Moses
     found it convenient to oppress,
sacrificing all the royal bandits in their lairs,
punishing children for the fault of their fathers,
stopping the sun at the hour when the evening laughed,
at the risk of breaking the solar system’s
     well-wound spring completely, 

This God, a bad geographer
     and an even worse astronomer,
immense and small counterfeit of man,
angry, and pouting at mankind,
like a Père Duchêne with a large saber in his hand;
a God who willingly damns and rarely forgives,
who on a privilege consults a Madonna,
a God who in his blue sky gives himself the duty
to imitate our faults, and the luxury of owning
plagues, the way we keep pet dogs;
     God who disturbs his own order,
sets Nimrod and Cyrus loose on us, sends mad
Cambyses to conquer and rule,
     unleashes Attila to bite at our legs —
Priest, yes, I am an atheist
     to that venerable good Lord. 

But if it is a question of the absolute being
     which condenses above us,
all the Ideal within all the visible facts,
by whom, manifesting the unity of the law,
the universe can, like man, say: I am;
of the being whose soul I feel deep in my soul,
who speaks to me in a low voice, and demands
constantly for the true against the false, among
the instincts whose flow half submerges us;
if it is the witness within, whose shadowy thoughts
sometimes caress, and sometimes sting
according as in me, rising to good, falling to evil,
I feel the spirit growing or the animal’s will to grow;
if it is the immanent miracle that we feel alive
more than we live, and with which our soul is drunk
every time it is sublime, and it goes off somewhere,
to where Socrates went, where Jesus wound up,
for the just, the true, the beautiful, the right to martyrdom.

What does one strive toward?
Every time a great duty draws him to the abyss,
every time he is in the halcyon storm,
every time he has the august ambition
to go, through the infamous shadow that he abhors
and on the nocturne’s other side, find dawn;

O priest, if it is this deep someone
beyond your power and beyond your ken,
that religions neither make nor undo,
that we feel good and that we feel wise,
who has no outline, who has no face,
and no son, having more paternity
and more love than summer has light;

if it is a question of this vast unknown
     that cannot be named,
and in this sublime light does not explain
     or comment on any Deuteronomy,
that no Calmet[5] can read in any Ezra,
a shared all-being that the child in his manger
     and the dead in their sheets,
distinguish vaguely from below like a peak,
Most High who is not edible in unleavened bread,
who, because two hearts love each other,
     cannot be angry,
and who sees only nature where you see sin; 

If it is this dizzying All of beings
who speaks through the voice of the elements,
all without priests, all without bibles,
whose book is the abyss and whose temple is sky,
Law, Life, and Soul, invisible by dint of being enormous,
impalpable to this point that outside the form
of things that an airy breath dissipates,
we see it in everything without grasping it in anything;

If it is the supreme Immutable, the solstice
of reason, of law, of good, of justice,
in balance with infinity, now,
formerly, today, tomorrow, always, giving
to duration to all stars, patience to all hearts,
which, clarity outside us,
     is consciousness within us; 

If this is the God we are talking about, the one
who always in the dawn of life, and in the grave,
Being that which for him begins
     and that which for him begins again;
if it is a question of the eternal, simple, immense principle,
who thinks since he is, who is the place of everything,
and which, for lack of a greater name, I call God,

then everything changes, then our minds switch places,
yours towards the night, abyss
     and the cesspool where dwell
certain kinds of laughter, and nothingness,
     a place of sinister vision only,
and mine towards the day, holy affirmation,
my own Hymn, dazzling from out my enchanted soul;
and I am the believer, priest,
     and you are the atheist.

---

[1] Francis Garasse (1585-1631), a Jesuit preacher and polemicist, author of the contentious tract, Theological Summary of the Capital Truths of the Christian Religion.

[2] Abbot Pluche. Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688-1761), French priest and author of History of Heaven Considered According to the Ideas of Poets, Philosophers, and Moses (1739).

[3] Claude-Adrien Nonnotte (1711-1793). A French Jesuit whose writings attacked Voltaire, key of which was his Philosophical Dictionary of Religion (1772).

[4] Nicolas Charles Joseph Trublet (1697-1770), an abbot and moralist, and an enemy of Voltaire.

[5] Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672-1757). A French Benedictine monk, author of the 23-volume series, A Literal Commentary on All the Books of the Old and New Testaments (1707-1716).

Heaven and Earth

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870"

VIII

Make no mistake, I never hid
that I was leaning on the eternal enigma;
I know that being halfway-seated on the balance scale
between the earth and the heavens, makes my soul freer;
I know that by trusting the unknown, I feel
something immense and good coming down,
and thus one sees the nothingness of kings, and resists,
and one may fight and walk with a heart less sad.
I know that there are proud prophets who tempt danger
and in their daily habitudes of thought
prefer to meditate, to love, to believe, and to be, in short,
on their knees before God, while on their feet before a man.
Certainly, I am bent down, as I give pause
beneath the depths of infinity,
but the hand of heaven is motionless
    and does not do what men can do for themselves.

For each there is a duty and for each there is a task;
I know this too. When evil fate sends cowards fleeing,
it is up to us to each of us to bar its way,
without awakening the lightning of the firmament.
And I waiting, too to defeat it, with a lesser phenomenon:
let heaven thunder on if man has lightning.