Christ on the Mount of Olives
I
Our Lord lifted his arms skyward, like a poet
In a sacred wood. For a long, long time
He had been lost in sorrow too deep for rhyme,
Thinking ungrateful friends had sold him out.
He looked down. Awaiting him there was the crowd,
Folks dreaming of becoming wits, prophets, and kings --
Stupid people, lost in their bestial slumberings,
And he cried: "Now listen to me! There is no God!"
Nobody stirred. "Friends," he called, "have you
Heard the news? I cracked my head on the blue
Vault everlasting; for days now I've been hurt, bleeding!
"Brothers, I steered you wrong! Here's the abyss!
God left me alone at the altar, a vain sacrifice.
God is no more!" But nothing could wake them, nothing ...
II
He began again: "Everything is dead! I've passed
Through all the worlds (got lost in the Milky Way)
As far as life's richest veins ever spread
Sands of gold and waves of silver, especially
Where tides lapped the deserts, and in the chaos
Of sea maelstroms ... a vague breath in places
Moves the stray spheres, but no spirit
Exists in any of these enormous spaces.
Looking for God's eye I found only a socket--
Huge, pitch dark, and bottomless. Such night
Seethes there it seeps into this world, deepening always;
And around this pit arches a strange rainbow,
The sill of Old Chaos. The void is a mere shadow
Of that vortex devouring our worlds and days!"
III
"Mute sentinel, unmoving Destiny,
Cold Necessity! Chance, traversing
Dead worlds beneath eternal snows, making
The whitening universe colder degree by degree,
Unmoving mover, do you know what you're doing
With your burnt-out suns colliding randomly ...
Will you pass the breath of immortality
To a world being reborn from another dying?
O my father! Is it you that I feel in me?
Can you live, conquer death, do you have the power
Or have you given in at the final hour
To that angel of night so direly
Accursed? I feel so alone in my suffering.
Alas! If I die, it's the end of everything."
IV
No one heard him groaning, the timeless victim
As he poured out his heart to the world in vain.
On the verge of fainting he murmured down
To the only soul awake in Jerusalem:
"Judas! You know what they think of me
Down there? Sell me out! Close the deal right now!
I'm hurting, my friend, far-gone, laid low.
Come, you at least have a criminal's energy!"
But Judas passed on, pissed off, lost in thought,
Bitter he's been paid so little to see
His name scribbled on walls, an obscenity ...
At last it was Pilate, Caesar's lookout
Whom pity prodded to turn a partisan,
Saying, on impulse: "Bring me the madman."
V
This was he, the sublime fool indeed, the madman,
Sweet, torn Atys, whom Cybele gave new life,
This Phaeton in his prime God's thunder cut off,
This sky-climbing Icarus, all but forgotten.
The augur pored over the guts of the sacrifice,
Earth got drunk on his blood and flesh.
Tipsy the universe reeled on its axis,
Olympus lurched toward the abyss.
"Tell me" cried Caesar to Jupiter Ammon,
Via his oracle. "Who's this new God today
Lording it over us, a god or a demon?"
No mortal or oracle ever would say.
But the one who gave souls to the children of clay
Holds the key to the mystery -- He alone.
- Gérard de Nerval
Our Lord lifted his arms skyward, like a poet
In a sacred wood. For a long, long time
He had been lost in sorrow too deep for rhyme,
Thinking ungrateful friends had sold him out.
He looked down. Awaiting him there was the crowd,
Folks dreaming of becoming wits, prophets, and kings --
Stupid people, lost in their bestial slumberings,
And he cried: "Now listen to me! There is no God!"
Nobody stirred. "Friends," he called, "have you
Heard the news? I cracked my head on the blue
Vault everlasting; for days now I've been hurt, bleeding!
"Brothers, I steered you wrong! Here's the abyss!
God left me alone at the altar, a vain sacrifice.
God is no more!" But nothing could wake them, nothing ...
II
He began again: "Everything is dead! I've passed
Through all the worlds (got lost in the Milky Way)
As far as life's richest veins ever spread
Sands of gold and waves of silver, especially
Where tides lapped the deserts, and in the chaos
Of sea maelstroms ... a vague breath in places
Moves the stray spheres, but no spirit
Exists in any of these enormous spaces.
Looking for God's eye I found only a socket--
Huge, pitch dark, and bottomless. Such night
Seethes there it seeps into this world, deepening always;
And around this pit arches a strange rainbow,
The sill of Old Chaos. The void is a mere shadow
Of that vortex devouring our worlds and days!"
III
"Mute sentinel, unmoving Destiny,
Cold Necessity! Chance, traversing
Dead worlds beneath eternal snows, making
The whitening universe colder degree by degree,
Unmoving mover, do you know what you're doing
With your burnt-out suns colliding randomly ...
Will you pass the breath of immortality
To a world being reborn from another dying?
O my father! Is it you that I feel in me?
Can you live, conquer death, do you have the power
Or have you given in at the final hour
To that angel of night so direly
Accursed? I feel so alone in my suffering.
Alas! If I die, it's the end of everything."
IV
No one heard him groaning, the timeless victim
As he poured out his heart to the world in vain.
On the verge of fainting he murmured down
To the only soul awake in Jerusalem:
"Judas! You know what they think of me
Down there? Sell me out! Close the deal right now!
I'm hurting, my friend, far-gone, laid low.
Come, you at least have a criminal's energy!"
But Judas passed on, pissed off, lost in thought,
Bitter he's been paid so little to see
His name scribbled on walls, an obscenity ...
At last it was Pilate, Caesar's lookout
Whom pity prodded to turn a partisan,
Saying, on impulse: "Bring me the madman."
V
This was he, the sublime fool indeed, the madman,
Sweet, torn Atys, whom Cybele gave new life,
This Phaeton in his prime God's thunder cut off,
This sky-climbing Icarus, all but forgotten.
The augur pored over the guts of the sacrifice,
Earth got drunk on his blood and flesh.
Tipsy the universe reeled on its axis,
Olympus lurched toward the abyss.
"Tell me" cried Caesar to Jupiter Ammon,
Via his oracle. "Who's this new God today
Lording it over us, a god or a demon?"
No mortal or oracle ever would say.
But the one who gave souls to the children of clay
Holds the key to the mystery -- He alone.
- Gérard de Nerval