Feb 25, 2004

I figured today might be a good day to post my translation of Gerard de Nerval's own account of the proceedings at Gethsemane. Oh Gerard, I would wear your ghostly kiss on my forehead today: a 6 for my dead heart a 6 for my dead soul and a 6 for my own hungry ghost...


CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
Gerard De Nerval

1.

When the Lord, lifting his skinny arms to the sky
Under the sacred trees as poets do,
Longtime lost in mute dolor
Called himself traitored by ingracious friends;

He looked down on the ones waiting below
who dreamed to be kings, prophets or seers
But all lost to the numb sleep of beasts &
Started to shriek "No God doesn't exist"

Still they slept, "Friends have you heard the news?
I touched the eternal vault with my face;
I bleed, I break, I suffer days upon days

Brothers, I conned you: Abyss! Abyss! Abyss!
The god is gone from this altar that murders me!
God is not! God is no more!" But forever & ever they sleep.

2.

All is dead! I have traversed the worlds;
I have lost my wings in their milky ways,
& life! life from its fecund veins
Spills gilded sand & silver floods:

Everywhere abandoned land is touched by waves,
Dumb whirlpools in angry seas...
A vague breath incites the vagrant spheres,
But no ghost exists in said immensities.

Looking for the eye of God, I saw only a socket,
Black & bottomless; the night that sleeps there
Shines down to a world growing thicker still;

A strange rainbow enfolds a somber hole,
Stoop of the old chaos whose shadow is the void,
Spiral that swallows the Worlds & Days!

3.

Motionless destiny, mute sentinel
Frigid Necessity! Chance who moves,
Through these dead worlds under endless snow,
Freezing the pale cosmos by degrees

Do you know what you're doing, transcendent god,
With your extinguished suns, bashing together
Can you expell an immortal breath
Beween a world that's dying & another undead?

Oh my father! Do I feel you inside me?
Can you live & overpower death?
Or did you succumb to the final twitch

Of that blighted angel of night, anathema...
I know I'm alone in my tears & my pain,
Alas! & should I die, everything dies with me.

4.

No-one heard his immortal groans
As in vain he gave his exhumed heart to the world;
But about to expire in a powerless heap,
He cried out to the lone one awake in Jerusalem:

"Judas," he screamed, "You know what I'm worth,
Sell me quick, close the deal,
I'm in agony, friend, prostrate,
You at least have the stomach for crime!"

But Judas withdrew, pensive & anxious,
Feeling duped & wracked with such remorse
he could read his dark deeds scrawled on each wall.

Finally, Pilate alone, Ceaser's watchdog,
Prickled by pity & in an offhand remark
to his goon said, "Go & fetch me the freak!"

5.

It was he the freak, insane & sublime...
Forgotten Icarus returned to the sky,
This Phaeton lost to the lightning of gods,
This pretty, bruised Atys who Cybele revives:

The oracle scryed the victim's side,
The earth got drunk on sacred blood...
The firmament spun feckless on its axle
& for a moment Olympus tottered abysswards.

"Answer me!" screamed Ceaser to Jupiter Ammon,
"Who's this infant god loosed on the world?
If not a god then a demon at least..."

The oracle invoked was silent forever;
Only one could end the enigma:
--He who gave his ghost to the children of dirt.

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