by Victor Serge
I see you calmly looking off in that direction, your one eye filled with the last gleam of distress
I feel an urge to flee from you because I still drink my portion of human joy from incomparable lips,
Yet you would say to me: It’s OK, Serge, everyone’s got to live!—but you yourself are too far from carnal lights.
We have nothing more than sad handshakes at the curb to connect us,
They will just have to do.
How could I halt what tears through you with no end possible save the end of the universe?
How could I halt what so swiftly despoils you, leaving only an exhausted mask that frightens even you?
How could I respond to your gentle nervous laughter, the laughter of a ghost?
Your science of the sunset’s last moments is but prescience of the night,
A night too deep to have prescience of the day.
You will not finish your Life of Élisée Reclus, you would need ten years’ work
And you have only this bleak present of a few hours.
One morning you will fall asleep over those manuscripts as the birds awake
—it’s finished, you are sleeping, you are no more than a shade inside me,
I hear strange birds singing in the palm trees,
What’s become of you, what will become of your manuscripts?
Jacques, the serene face of your death followed me through the streets of Marseille amid the defeated crowds,
It conjured up sudden silences in our room, but decorum prevented my saying they signaled your presence.
I found you on the Atlantic in the midst of implacably radiant expanses,
Here you are next to me at Pointe du Bout, in the muggy tropical rain,
Is it my gaze or yours that follows the flight of the black dragonflies?
Martinique, April [19]41.
Altagracia
Oh dazzling cemetery!
A multitude of crosses hallucinate it in white,
Standing in closed ranks like living beings through a final discipline
Of cement and fire.
In darkest night, I saw it streaming with light.
Its battalion of crosses seemed to start moving.
A host of eyeless faces were revealed in the slanting mirrors of lightning bolts,
All the world’s mirrors were breaking at once, sweeping away the disfigured faces of armies …
Light, light, rise up! Pure and lucid light under the rain of spearheads, under streams of swords;
The jungle was being torn apart by thunderous fevers,
torrents were blasting painfully exalted gravestones.
And these disfigured faces were yours, were ours
—what would I be without you, what would we be without them?
Black palm trees waved to us from the depths of the broken firmament,
then the clouds disintegrated and the stars were great fires.
Cemetery petrified by light! Torrid daylight turns it back to cement,
Returns it to the stupor, the blindness of the living.
I see the gravestone of Porfirio Kepi. I see a Chinese merchant’s gravestone, which looks like his cash register,
Add up the hours, add up the lightning bolts, add up the glimmerings of consciousness, add up the piasters,
Deduct laughter and anxiety,
But how much do they weigh, the anxiety and the cement and the cherished calm lost landscapes of Hainan?
A black woman in mourning comes there early every day, she is skinny, she is poor, she is dressed like someone who would feel ashamed of not having a little money
She brings flowers, she would be ashamed of coming empty-handed to this emptiness,
No spark of life remains in her, she makes her way, a black ant,
She respectably makes her way.
I see her talking to someone in this absurd desert, she asks:
“Do you think these flowers look good here? Do you like them?”
She tells him the price of rice, the price of asphodels,
As she used to say, “Do you want a little more rice or coffee?”
The sun at its zenith envelops her in incandescent solitude.
What better name for her than Altagracia?
Everything must be given her in the startling vacuity of a name,
Like a recompense utterly vain and yet necessary,
Otherwise, complete injustice would burst upon this helpless being.
Ciudad Trujillo, D[ominican] R[epublic]
The cemetery, 1941.
Mexico: Idyll
In memory of Marcel Martinet
In the shade of cruel nopales the mule’s eye gently glistened
Like a lover’s silence
The saddle was studded with silver. The man looked like a black eagle
Yet he had a singing smile
He was as beautiful as the angels without fear perhaps without joy
With no other joy than the throbbing of the blood in his tense veins
He said I await thee my betrothed.
Oh sweet life oh sweet terror fresh ripe watermelon bitten lips
Calm vibration of the earth
Restless nights vanished beneath a thousand unknown stars
When the dark-haired girl took off her clothes.
Stones ruin her back his hands the hands of the sky bruise her breasts
The night full of shifting omens sizzles like a conflagration
Oh mineral coolness Imagined undulations of serpents
The very sap of lianas joins their limbs This convulsive heat flows from the bowels of the earth.
Oh delectable violence No murder is sweeter Lord!
Oh wrenching and submission
Death is not sweeter Lord!
Magic moon Mother moon illuminate them with your plainchant!
They climbed to the top of the old lava flows flesh against flesh on the one saddle
The tread of the mule set swaying the world the stars their blood their silence
Somberly pacified
The silver-trimmed harness jingled liquid stellar murmur
The smell of resin was in the air
The escort of tall black milky chandelier cacti
Surrounded them with stillness
The same bolt of lightning struck them both at the spot where you see a cross
(Or else it was slugs fired by people from San Juan parish—
because of the division of water from a stream)
Mexico: Morning Litany
Don’t be afraid kind tourists listen
If the scientists are to be believed—when they are reassuring—the incubation period for leprosy is at least seven years
Many fellows in the flower of youth would choose this seven-year risk
Over flesh scorched by Flammenwerfer
In the astral glow of sulfurous bombs
They would give up a posthumously awarded Purple Heart
And splendid parades over their graves
They would cheerfully consent to their faces rotting
—hey, in seven years! seven years what an eternity of happiness my boy mis muchachos!
And you’re going to say the true human face is noble?
For my part I have seen it in the infernal moments of which everyone is ignorant and I tell you it is ignoble
And that it’s deserved every imaginable leprous plague
But no one deserves being burned to a crisp at the age of twenty
And if I talk like a man consumed with rancor forgive me Kind tourists listen
A las dos y a las tres
a las cuatro y a las seis
at every hour Christ the King
at every hour the Virgin Queen
at every hour drink and sorrow
at every hour a wound for me
at every hour a death for you
Holy Mother Infant Jesus
bless our land and freedom
arid land and naked man
fal
len pride defeated race the donkey licking hot stones
the serpent devoured by the eagle
and the eagle killed by vultures
the bird of fire the bird of ash
leprous blood and avidity
dead eyes and humility
“And what else my dear Mr. Jones what sort of eternity?”
Mexico: Churches
The two most Christian churches I have seen combine in my memory
thus two rising flames join one crimson and the other black
thus continental expanses merge the tropics and suddenly the pole
the jungle and suddenly the steel of glaciers inseparable in their inexplicable unity
One was on the Sergiyev Posad road on the way to the Trinity Lavra of Saint Sergius in Old Russia
on the snowy plains surrounded by sleepy woods blue and white
under a splendidly dazzling sun
At a bend in the road the flamboyant crimson church of Pushkino came into view
its tower set on the ice like a joy a joyful relief
and we were reconciled with the cold with the northern lights
with the polar nights
with the convulsive nights and the obsessive suns that each carried in his head
(We were young travelers joyfully bitter and strong on intimate terms with torments and death
we had real need of reconciliation with ourselves and the work of human hands)
After the wars revolutions mass graves inexplicable crimes an ocean of anxiety an ocean on the map
it was in San Juan Parangaricutiro in the state of Michoacán that I saw the other church the one with the black flame
volcanic ash was invading it and burying it
incandescent lava was crawling toward it through the fields
already covered with ash that was reddish and gray at once bright and dark we saw molten basalt
and dark destructive snow cosmic dust cold fire dust
We seemed to see the most immense battlefields of our times denuded and delivered up to remorse alone
to the subdued specter of remorse alone
Little by little the church slipped into the irreconcilable night
a night of annihilation
cinders from the crater fumed at the end of a seedy alley
rhythmically exhaling the breath of the inhuman earth
a heavy cloud unfurled visible nothingness across the sky
tearing open blinding the Milky Way
For a few pesos some Indios gave us some ordinary exhausted horses of the Apocalypse
some drunken Indios had the faces of corpses that were delirious
yet smiling
And there were others who were very dignified they were eating tortillas in the halos of smoky lamps
—what calm ruled there what security in calm and certain destruction
And when morning came a morning as calm with annihilation as the night of annihilation
the Indios entered the transparently bright nave they entered on their knees
dragging themselves on their knees hopping on their knees
they advanced on their knees toward the altar
they stood up oddly straight before the altar
they backed out all together in an extraordinarily slow hopping dance
all surrounded by murmured prayers and the scuffing sound of their feet on the stones men of energy and ash
reconciled with the disaster
reconciled with the death throes of the land under basaltic fire and ash
reconciled with the end of the world—and why not?
reconciled
Thy will be done oh Lord—oh Planet!
Carried away by the rhythm of their dance without gestures refusing to see us they did not see us
but we saw them we understood them deeply through a sort of transparence
Outbreaks
From twelve thousand meters up in the interworld the angel-faced aviator released
liquid-air bombs as pretty as trinkets and illustrated tracts full of promises and wisdom,
on the living map below he saw great white flowers shoot up, perfectly flawless flowers,
he was not thinking of anything for his head was equipped with brand-new ideas made of a metal that was superflexible, durable, unbreakable, and cheap.
The planet split into three, into four, into six, into six hundred and sixty-six parts,
six hundred and sixty-six decapitated little girls under the rubble of the School of Good Conduct inaugurated the day before by the President of the Republic.
Rescuers dug into the rubble with pickaxes,
clouds of multicolored birds suddenly flew out,
but they were headless birds that turned into bloody rags in the air,
into rags that turned into paper in the clouds
in the clouds that turned into mad ideas,
peaceful,
blazing,
ruthless ideas.
Père Ubu shouted: Damn it! All my chamber pots are broken!
Shit! Get some glue! I want a strong glue, like the Lord Our God ones,
that American brand, a hundred thousand tons, by air, cable New York and 3 percent commission,
a sacred mission!
You pack of bastards, my collection of Siamese postage stamps
is screwed, well, that’s just how it is. I’m going to have to make you
a nice little revolution with mass-produced guillotines, standardized, electrified, et cetera
and statues of jerks in uniform on every street corner, you’ll see!
A dictator made of polychrome glass backed his way out from underground,
from underground backed his way out, his buttocks
were stamped with blood-red and gold shoe prints, bigger than himself, it was incredible,
paper numbers were spinning in his chest,
a recording bawled from his throat: Citizens, my day of glory has come!
Innocent lands, wretched lands, here we are, it’s really not our fault if that’s the way we are.
Mexico City, 1941.
Philosophy
What’s certain is that people have wasted a lot of time looking for recipes to vanquish courage,
but it’s not over. Nothing is ever over, even if despair is playing its last card.
What’s certain is that people have wasted a lot of time measuring the lines of force between human sorrow and the trajectories of comets,
but at the bottom of the sea typewriters and starfish and the carcasses of boys
get along famously and whatever we do
not one of us, not one child drowned before opening its eyes,
no matter the depth of the graves, the latitudes, the longitudes, the explosives, the torments, the prayers,
not one of us will fall outside this universe bounded only by the northern lights,
which have neither dimension nor number, neither magic nor duration, neither consciousness nor exchange value.
We are here for a probable eternity of rainbows alternating with a total darkness that a single star of the fourteenth magnitude inexplicably resurrects.
The wind does not die if the sail is ripped apart
and we are the vessel, the masts, the sail, the wind, the rip,
we are the bolt of lightning passing through the rip.
No algebra will demonstrate the contrary. The murdered sleep of bombardiers can do nothing about it.
True suicides are impossible, as the Milky Way confirms by its living glacial purity, which the dead will never see again because it resorbs them.
Besides, they no longer have a need to see, for the flame cannot see itself, the flame burns unaware of its own existence.
So stay calm and be reassured, salvation does not reside in fear, perhaps it lies simply in communion with fire, simply.
The circle of worlds has but imaginary forms, but we are as real as the heavens.
And if the voice that speaks this wa
y strikes you as vain, forget it,
for I am only a passerby who often turns back at the boundary of cruel, cherished temporal certainties and clear eternal uncertainties.
Mexico City, Oct[ober 19]43.
We have long thought …
We have long thought
that the gods of our hope
would end up believing in us.
That they would shatter solitude,
disenchant the deserts
—if only in order to live.
We have been betrayed.
What are they and what are we?
A low song rises from the ashes,
The dark glow reaches its zenith
—what else remains to us?
Stars without eyes, brows
shattered by thunderstorm,
this pride at standing upright
at the edge of yawning craters,
the habit of still believing
more in the earth than in the grave,
this living desire to quell
the wild laughter bleeding in us.
—Be content with these pledges, my love,
I have none better.
I’ll make them into a necklace of foam
too light to bruise you.
Mex[ico City], April [19]45.
Note
Sing me again your beautiful song:
Perhaps I will still believe it.
Whether lying or resistant,
it’s the same enchantment.
Bathe in the ocean, my love,
we are too much burned by the sky.
Be perfect like the wave:
even if it hardly exists.
Someone will fall if you succumb,
perhaps it is only me.
Be light, for my voice is heavy.
The corpses have grown calm.
Have I yet enough space
for an intelligent death?
—A man who knew nothing about it
discovered the central fire.
Mex[ico City], April [19]45.
It takes …
It takes men without faces,
it takes faces without men,
clamor without depth
and torture without value.
And let steaming rains fall
on the cerebral jungle!
So many funerary masks
are preserved in the earth