by Brett Rutherford
Adapted from Victor Hugo, l’Annee Terrible, “April 1871.”
There was a woman, wild with grief, and she was everywhere!
In the untrod forests, whose thickets none can penetrate,
she gave the owls asylum. Softly the worried leaves
whispered into her harried ears, of evil afoot and dark designs.
At her breast the sweet newborn shivered; she swaddled it
and hurried on, for terror must not catch this tragic child.
She knew paths where no paths were visible; branches
parted for her before the growing night,
the sky’s dark tide, the baying threat of the wolf-pack.
Oh! the fierce love of the woman of the forest!
Such now is Paris, the mixing-pot of Europe,
Glory, Law, and Art her triple breasts
that feed her celestial child, the Future.
Silver-shod Dawn champs at the bit
in neighing salute around the cradle sublime.
She, once a Chimera, is now
the august mother of our reality,
nurse of the high-flown thinkers’ dreams,
an equal sister to Rome and Athens.
As sure as spring bursts out with laughter,
as sure as the sky that never fails to glow,
Paris is life itself, Paris the joy of living.
She is the wild woman still, where once
the woods stood thick. Now she is Paris,
and mother of all Europe, with three breasts
breastfeeds the Future, her celestial child
with the mother-milk of Law, Glory and Art.
At dawn the distant horses neigh
around this cradle sublime …
When the air is pure in the light of day
beneath an unclouded blue firmament,
she rocks and sings to the mighty little god.
Each day a festival! She nods to show
to proud and cheerful citizens this dream —
the world to be that, breathless, stutters,
this trembling imago of the new human race,
this giant (no taller than a dwarf today!)
which we dare to call Tomorrow, for whom
a furrow already forms ahead of his path.
Mother Ideal! On her calm and tender forehead
her happy mouth, and in her gaze that fixes you,
evil is denied existence in that radiant smile.
We sense that in this city, hope lives on,
a place that loves and blesses us. But if
a sudden darkness should come upon us,
if the dreaded eclipse comes to swallow us
and intends to shadow us forever;
if panic makes the people shiver, embers die;
if some vague monster tramps about
the horizon line of forts and forests;
if everything that slithers and extrudes itself,
crawling and squinting from some nether chaos,
comes to threaten to divine child, our Future;
oh, then, she is fierce. She stands, she screams,
she becomes the furious Paris. She rumbles and roars,
fierce as any monster, known or unknown.
She stands up, and she who once charmed
the whole known world, will make it shudder!
