Our Dead

 

by Brett Rutherford

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

I am taken to view our dead where they lie
unburied as yet in the terrible and lonely field.
Their blood has made a horrible pool
on the earth around them,
and monstrous raptor birds
rip languidly into their open bellies.
The fierce, cold bodies of our warrior dead,
scattered upon the green meadow,
whom for fear of cannons we cannot touch;
they are black and frightful, and twisted in shapes
that the bodies of the young ought not to have.
The thunder of great guns has riven them,
blind gaping skulls like storm-struck stones.
Snow, taking soft pity, silhouettes them
with its secular white shroud.

 
The hands, oh! not praying! clench lugubrious and harsh,
as though the sword held up against the enemy
were still in their grasp, as though they could fire
their one small bullet against the descending shell.

Anthemless, they have no words,
they are the lipless and eyeless dead.
On the stillness of their haggard sleep
nights pass in horror of the crows to come.
Their bodies have more shocks and sores
that those whom once the rack tormented.
Beneath them crawl the criminal worm,
the fetid larva, and the stinging ant.
Their corpses are already half subsumed in soil,
like a sinking ship tilted into deep water.
Their pale bones, covered in rot and shadow,
are like those to whom Ezekiel spoke.
We see everywhere on them the gaping holes
where cannonballs went through,
the saber-scars, the cruel jab-holes
where a spear went in and out.

The vast icy chill blows over this silence.
A windowless ruin whistles with wind,
dead strewn inside like a doll-house in hell.
O look, and look, and finally look away.
This cannot fade from the eye's under-lid.
Our dead, these boys and men,
naked and bloody under the rainy sky.
O dead for my country, I envy you only
that you did not live to see this.
Rather I were here, and you in your bed.

To France, Abandoned

by Brett Rutherford

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

VII

No one is for you. They are unanimous. This one,
named Gladstone, said “Thank you” to your executioners.
This other one, named Grant, insults you, and this other one,
his German Minister, Bancroft, insults you, too.
One thinks himself an apostle,
the second a soldier, the third a judge and a tribune.

Beware the priests as well:

your blood, poured in great floods, is not enough
to satisfy them, whether from North or South,
who pass, and seeing you crucified
     stop only to spit in your face.

Alas! what then have you done to these nations? You came
to those who were crying, with these divine words:
Joy and Peace! — You buoyed them with: — Hope! Joy!
Be powerful, America, and be free, O Greece!
Italy was once grand and whole; she must be one again.
France wished all this for you! — She gave this one her gold,
to that one her blood, to all, the light.

You defended the rights of men,
     devoted and dutiful.
Alas, as the ox returns no longer thirsty
from a too-accustomed watering trough,
the men returned to the stable step by step,
sated with you, formidable big sister,
forgetting who protected and fought for them.
Ah! to show oneself ungrateful is to prove oneself small.
Not a kind syllable! not one of them knows you.
Their crowd, whooping and mocking you,
at this very hour when your greatness is crumbling,
laughs at every hammer blow that falls
on you, naked and bloody and nailed to the gallows.
They pity their own sons whom bitter fortune
condemns to rediscover their true mother
and cast in shame this shameful renunciation.
You can’t just die, poor France, and that’s the sorrow.
You bend your radiant forehead into night;
The eagle of the shadow is there;
     it eats away your liver daily,
the one who denies the vanquished; and gives joy
to plundering kings, like the bandits of Adrets,
Kneel if you will at the feet of the eagle,
charm Europe and please the world! ... — Ah! I would like,
if I weren’t French already, to be able to say
that I choose you, France, and that, in your martyrdom,
I proclaim you, you whom the vulture gnaws,
as my homeland and my glory and my only love!

 

The Forts of Paris

The outline of the old Paris forts can still be seen today.

 

by Brett Rutherford

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

Seen from the sky, they have the shape of stars.
Crouching on hill and mound,
forts are the enormous watch-dogs of Paris.

In case we can be surprised at any moment,
in case a horde arrives, in case the vile ambush
tries to creep up to the city walls — they watch.
Nineteen of them are ever on guard,
alert and worried, threatened and menaced
by whatever amasses in the dark of night,
they can warn each other
     whenever something stirs
         that ought not be there.
Their bronze necks stretch all around
    the high and formidable walls.

During our slumber they stay awake,
hoarse lungs ready to cough out thunder.

The hills, sometimes, erupt in earth-born stars,
throwing a flash of lightning,
    the valleys and plains below lit up,
in sudden alarm in the dark of night.

When heavy twilight falls upon us,
its silence might be a trap, its peace
the lull concealing an enemy camp.

To lure, ensnare, encircle us
   is their intent, in vain.

Our trust is in the guard-dog cannons,
horizon hugging, monstrous in size,
respected by all the populace.

Paris, the armed camp in bivouac,
Paris its own tomb, Paris
     imprisoned within its own close quarters,
standing in solitude
     among a universe of empires,
Paris its own sentinel ever-wary,
     weary grows, and dozes off.
The sleep of some spreads out and muffles all,
men, women, children alike must slumber.
What sounds, the sobs, the strident burst
of hysterical laughter cutting itself short,
the dim and fading footsteps
around the water-tanks, the quay,
     street-corners and riverbanks,
the thousand roofs beneath which dreams
rise trembling and then still themselves,
the groan of settling boards and stairs
mistaken for the tread of burglars,

The lifted hope that believes everything;
the famished sigh that says, I just might die.

All keep, as out of respect
    for those distant guardians,
a close-to-silence half-wakefulness.

Sleep now, forget everything,
     count on the fact that they are there.

We stand up with a start! We gasp and pant!
Lending our ears from doorway and window-peep,
something like a mountain howling reaches us.
The whole town listens, bed-sheets clutched:
everyone, on every road and farm, wakes up.
After the first rumble, a second cry responds,
the inarticulate utterance of deaf terror,
fierce howl, hint of inclement weather,
no! a hundred more voices echo, thunder
piled upon thunder, this is no storm!

It is them, our guardians! Somewhere amid
the clotted darkness they saw the hides
of covert creatures moving about.
They sparked; they lit them up in silhouette,
and there was no mistaking it: the enemy!
Is that it? Did they make out, in some wood
so dark that even an owl would shun it,
at field’s edge, the black swarm of a battalion,
the sound of muffled feet, marching?

Amid the thicket, did our dogs
make out the tell-tale gleam of human eyes?
How beautiful the forts of Paris,
like strong and faithful dogs who bark,
and, once awakened, roar their challenge.

 

Prowess of the Prussians

by Brett Rutherford

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

V

PROWESS OF THE PRUSSIANS

When conquest admits that fraud is its sister,
this is progress. In vain conscience cries,
what began as an exploit is now exploitation,
a poor neighbor claiming the right
     to the rich neighbor’s gold.
On the back of winged Victory
     they have placed a bag for loot.

While waiting to swallow Lorraine and Alsace,
one snatches a watch from a watchmaker’s nail;
if one wants to immerse himself in immense glory,
breaking a window is a stupid thing.
Just walk in the door and take what you want.
Despite being brought up as honorable men,
the soldiers need tobacco — damn it all! —
so they steal it. Through Reichshoffen[1] and Forbach,[2]
through this war where we had scant hope
of a dwarf Napoleon delivering great France,
in battles where generals failed to appear
(imagine if Marceau,[3] or Hoche,[4] or Condé[5] went missing!);
through Metz betrayed for bribes
     and Strasbourg smoldering beneath the bombs;
among the cries, when grapeshot felled the living,
one showing to the morning light his brains,
     and other his cascading entrails,

Through all of this, the flags one moment advancing
     the next drooped down in flight, the waves
of galloping squadrons like a roiling sea;
in the middle of this vast and sinister spiral,
an avaricious conqueror (with his stingy household)
half Shylock and half Galgacus,[6]
reduced to offering a side-street’s stolen clock
from some looted shop of the vanquished,
as a love-offering to some blond-haired nymph
at the foot of Mt. Adule.[7] Bellone herself,
war’s goddess, descends disheveled and fierce
from the lightning-flashing cloud, from which
blood falls instead of the nurturing rain.

She takes up a hammer to nail packing crates,
and helps out with the loot-inventory.

A country is being ransomed village by village.
The terrible victors turn out to be rascals,
wolves, tigers, and bears in clownish guise.
They overthrew an empire to cut a purse.

Caesar, upright in his war chariot, says:[8]
     I came, I saw, now pay me my fare.

One massacres a country, the blood is still fresh;
then one decides to charge for it —
     Can one really invoice murder?
     How does one render a bill for famine?
— Pay up now, it’s almost six months
     since I exterminated you. —
How much? That much? That’s far too much! —
We couldn’t be brought to slit your throat for less. —
even if we upset, in the depths of heaven, those proud witnesses,
our ancestors, the heroes, pale in the clouds,
by shows of war, to which admission fees are attached,
we don’t worry much about these ghosts.

Five billion in gold will give the Prussians
     a place of their own in Valhalla.
They boarded a bank as pirates.
They copied in plunder, in fraud, in brigandage,
the shifty-eyed Bedouins and the cowardly Baskirs;
and Schinderhannes[9] puts on the false nose of the god Mars.

For our part, we have as leaders
     kings born in a ditch, and their princes
have ministers the way a thief has pincers.
At bay beneath their feet we trample scruples;
in short, they lie in wait along a woodland path
     intent to rob us blind.
They rob — we strip, we grieve — they round up, they pillage.
Perhaps, in the honorable days of old
     it was more beautiful to have taken the Bastille.[10]

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[1] Reichshoffen. A Prussian victory over the French at the village of Wörth in Alsace, on 6 August 1870, with 5884 men killed and wounded and more than 9,000 captured.

[2] Forbach. The Battle of Forbach, also called the Battle of Spicherin, also on 6 August 1870, was a French defeat characterized by inept leadership.

[3] Marceau. François Séverin Marceau (1769-1796), general, hero of the French Revolution.

[4] Hoche. Louis Lazar Hoche (1768-1797), a quick-thinking general, hero of the Revolution.

[5] Condé. Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (1621-1686), favorite general of Louis XIV, a hero of the Thirty Years’ War.

[6] Galcacus. Caledonian chieftain who spoke out against Rome’s exploitation of Britain, and organized the Britons against Rome.

[7] Mount Adule. Mt. Adula or Rheinwaldhorn in the Swiss Alps. It was the first Swiss peak to be the object of mountain-climbing, and is the watershed from which both the Rhine and Po Rivers originate. Hugo’s allusion can be read as both about the strange passion for conquering empty mountain peaks, and for a summit from which one might overlook two empires.

[8] The lines from here to the end of the poem were likely added after February 1871, when Bismarck demanded a five-billion-franc war indemnity from France.

[9] Schinderhannes. Johannes Bückler (c. 1778-1803), an outlaw and one-man crime wave in Germany.

[10] Bastille. An allusion back to Marceau, whose Revolutionary career commenced with the storming of the Bastille.