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SEPTEMBER
(translation copyright Joseph
J. Visser 2011)
I
Night bears from a dead womb
æons of a slave's wrath:
purple rage -
exalting.
Shrouded in darknes & haze.
From the dark valley
before the crack of dawn
from mountain slope
from barren bush
from starving field
from muddy pound
village
town
homestead
from hovel & cot
from plant, depot, yard
granary
farm
millers'
workshop
workroom
workbench:
along way and winding lane
height
through scree and ravine, over peak and hillock
over ridge
and hill
through dark hollow track
through autumn-yellow coppice
through stoney bed
water
turbid ditch
meadow
cornfield
vineyard
pound
hawthorn
scorched stubble
blackthorn
marsh:
depleted
grubby
starving
sullen
emaciated from toil & moil
chappy from heat & frostbite
careworn
crippled
lank-haired
scum of the earth
barefooted
underlings
peasants
savages
indignant
raucous
with neither roses
nor songs
neither music, nor beats
without clarinets, timpani, or fielddrums
horns, nor trombones, or trumpets:
ragged bags over their shoulders,
in their fists - no shining daggers,
rather common sticks
pizzles
and poles
and goads
and handpicks
and hayforks
and hatches
and axes
and scythes
and sunflowers
the elderly and the young -
boundless flood-tides
like unchained herds
of blind animals,
innumerable
raging bulls -
bellowing
bawling
(behind them a night's stone-canopy)
gushing forward
in disarray
irrepressible
terrible
grand
THE PEOPLE!
II
Darkness shattered
on mountaintops
Sunflower-hearts
drawn to the sun!
Dawn from slumber
awoken
midst thundering machine-gunfire:
From far away
slopes
volley after volley
lushing
madding
bullets - lead.
Guns
ivory splitting
roaring . . .
Death and destruction.
Sunflowers falling into the dust.
III
The Voice of the people:
Is the Voice of God
In thousands
put to the sword
people
nullified
humiliated
less than the mendicant,
left
without a brain
without a nerve
risen
from the alarming obscurety
of its life
and writing in its very blood:
FREEDOM!
First chapter:
September.
Vox populi
Vox Dei
O, God!
supportest thou the sacred work
of the coarse, and earthenblack hands:
poureth audacity
into these pounding hearts:
Thy wish be that no man is enslaved -
behold let us swear by the debth of our graves
that in the resurection of all mankind
liberty is sacred.
We face death
so be it!
beyond there:
there blossoms Canaan
Rightfully promised
to us
eternal spring to the living dream . . .
in our Believes, in our Knowledge, in our Wishes!
God be with us!
IV
September! September!
O month of blood!
of uproar
and pogrom!
Maglizh first
Stara, and
Nova Zagora
Chirpan
Lom
Ferdinand
Berkovitsa
Sarambey
Medkovets
(with priest Andrey)
towns and villages.
V
The People rise
hammer
in hand,
bestrewn with soot, sparks and cinders
sickles midst the furrows
numb with dank and cold
folk of the black toil
and ineffable suffering
(not the intellectuals
talented
protestors
orators
agitators
industrialists
aeronauts
pedants
writers
generals
proprieters
of residencies
musicians
blackguards)
But
peasants
workmen
the rough and vulgar
the nameless
illiterates
profanes
rowdies
boars
cattle in a herd:
thousands
the masses
the people;;
many a thousand faiths
faith in the peoples' ascending,
many a thousand strives
the striving for a blessed life,
a thousand eager hearts
an untameble fire lit in each heart,
thousands of blackened hands
in wide scarlet welkin
upwards thriving
all red
bannered
flying
high
wide
over the entire, shaking, disturbed,
and desintegrating country
the reaping of the raging storms:
In Thousands
The Masses
The People.
VI
Flashing lights
over the Balkan cradle,
belly up
under the heavens
and an eternal sun
lightning
-thunder
crashing
straight into the heart
of the giant
centennial
oak.
Hill mass on hill mass
echoes promptly
celebrating grandure
with sledgehammer banging
on enormous
bouldery ridges
in mountainous crannies
- fiery lairs -
with coiling broods of vipers
and tarpits,
in caverns
of dragons and serpents
in the deafening emptiness of witchcraft
- and the roaring rumble merges
in distant echo:
resounding and rumbling
of waterfalls
deluges
torrents -
raving
eddies in abysses
thundering.
VII
Let tragedy commence!
VIII
Frontliners
perish in blood.
Muteny's onset
takes the bullet.
Banners stiffen
pierced.
Mountains resound . . .
There upon
over far away and nearby hills
dark rows
of people
black ranks:
of regular paid soldiers
and distinguished melitia.
Everybody knows:
"The Homeland
is under thread!"
Splendid:
but - homeland to whom? -
Again furiously barking
machineguns . . .
Frontliners
perish in blood.
Just then from some distance
supreme
sweeping artillery.
Total tremor
in towns
and villages.
Corpses piled
- blood soaked hoards -
ambushed
clensed
flushed
fleeing . . .
Their swords drawn
cavalry squadrons sweep through
scattered inhabitants
- shot at, and shelled
with shrapnel, mortar fire
- running off terrified, in every direction
cought in dwellings
slaughtered there
with blood stained swords
under mean eaves
midst the shrieks
of terrified mothers
child and spous . . .
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IX
Troops advance.
Under the vile ululation of shrapnel
petrifying
even the braver:
dispair
elevates bare hands towards heaven.
Terror without glory
frozen on every face
eyes empty from suffering.
"Each
saves his
very soul!"
From any path
company after company comes down
- infantry
cavalry
artillery.
A droning attack
of drums.
Panic
haughty
over the tattered
scarlet banners -
The prodigal purple blaze is born.
Than
midst evil hour
alone,
as if possessed
epicly audacious
father
Andrey
with legendary gun
firing
charge after charge
Till finally
"Death to Satan!"
he yells
maddened and majestic
and suddenly swirls
the very gun:
the final
grenade
sent
right into
- God's temple
where he had sung mass, read liturgy
. . .
Then he surrendered.
"Hang the red priest!
No cross - nor grave!"
He is brought to a telegraph pole.
A drumhead court-martial.
Captain.
Noose.
All's ready.
The Balkans
under obscure gloom.
The Heavens
unforgiving.
The priest standing straight,
upright in full stature
all
quiet like granite
woeless
beyond recognition
- Christ's cross to his breast
and a gaze to the hillcrest
far away
asif with scorn
- Cowardly one looks away
when man murders fellowman,
butchers!
Where is the meaning
in the killing of a single person?
Amen!
He reproached
and spat.
Swiftly slipped
his head into the noose
and
without much of a welkinward glance
- dangled -
tongue
squeezed between the teeth:
grand
triumphant
unattainable!
X
Autumn
progressed
wildly lacerating
by wailing, gales and Erebus.
Tempest swept
the dark Balkan mountains
- gloom and lightning
and crows in a murder croaking -
Blood-stained sweat
pouring out of the back of the earth
Terror and quivering mortified
every hut and home.
Pogrom!
Lightning
crashing the heavenly vault.
XI
With time
came worst terrors
Fury gaped
Insanity resounded from the belfries
- struck, pealed, rang . . .
Nightly dark since fell over the lowlands -
silence and fright closed in on it
from all sides.
Death
- bloodthirsty witches huddled
together in any one corner of gloom
shrieking,
lashing out
for whatever could be had
with their bone dry, and clutchy fingers
- long, infenitely far reaching -
seizing and squeezing
chocking any one's last moan
from any last terrified heart
O, night of unmentionable sacrilege!
- here concealed, there in the open:
crimsonly bloodstained, again, village squares.
Death's smothered shrieks form choking throats.
Chaines maliciouly resounding.
Jails overcrouded.
On the courtyard
in barracks, prisons
commanding sounds for salvo's.
Gates bolted up.
Knocked on by outsiders.
A neighbour's son, revolver in hand
lies dead on the threshold.
Father hanged.
Sister desecrated.
Peasants being fumigated from their settlements
traced and filed - escorted:
dismal convoys.
Destined to be executed:
Command: Halt
"Take aim" -
guns cock
Ku
Klux
Klan -
"fire!"
- volley.
Ten corpses
on the riverbank
heavily sliding
into the muddy dead waters of the Maritsa.
Patches of blood borne
in sorrowful flood.
A military band in a different world
walking a deserted street
sounds out
"Whispering Maritsa . . . "
Bloodrun . . .
In trodden field
hawthorn - overgrown
midst thistlesand stout grass
with rolling red-budding heads
with sliced, and disfigured features
Gallows spreading their black hands
(visions in the thick of mist)
Ceaslessly sounds the axe's horrifying marche
hitting bone. Farmsteads on fire
illuminating distant horizon.
Blood runns in the gutters.
Pyres blaze
with the purifying hiss of a sacrilegious tongue
wheels of burning fire
see Daniel 7:9-10 in the King James'
around the throne
of the Ancient of Days.
The smell of life-flesh burning.
Heaven unwinds in the terriffic
and utter scream
from the blessed inhabitants of holy paradise
- to god a truculent Hosannah -
Closure.
Hurricane ceasing,
storm
reposing:
peace
and calm
came
over an entire
country.
Bloodshot in devine cause.
XII
Muse, be inspired by Achilles' unrelenting wrath
. . .
Achilles were fierce force
Warrier's demon . . .
Achilles were the general of his days see Socrates' question to Hippias of Elis
to H.I.M. king Agamemnon
on which is the better man, Achillis or Odysseus
Achilles were a hero.
With countless
crosses, decorations, ribbons
Paragon
of order, and resolve
for his country
. . .
But in our days none of us
believes in heroïsm anymore
- neither foreign, nor familiar.
Troy was pillaged and sacked. see Liber Tertius Decimus:Hecuba,
Polydorus and Polyxena
Priam and Hecuba perished.
Achilles exulted . . .
- What be Hecuba to him? -
His soul is harsh and savage
deaf
for weeping of this blessed mother, crazed see the Pieta
by graves, anonymous and incarnadined
excrescent in a blink
- so many -
innumerable.
- What be Hecuba to him? -
Achilles the heroïc.
Achilles the truthful.
Devine scourge under god's providence. see Job 9:23
So is Achilles slain with heinous arrow.
- And perishes
crashed in an ignominious fall:
murdered in retribution.
Agamemnon kills Iphigenia
and perishes:
Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon
and perishes:
Orestes together with Electra kills Clytemnestra
and perishes
oscillation remains
- steadfast and ever lasting
through the ages
Cassandra - the prophetess:
see Aeschylus' Agamemnon line 1313
in her verses on retribution
- in completion is truth. -
Absurd caprice, game and amusement
in the hands of the gods.
Perennial bloom of divine fury.
Death without a price is entertainment to them,
each wail - a jest.
Death, murder and blood!
How long, how long?
Mighty Zeus
Jupiter
Ahura Mazda
Indra
Toth
Ra
Jehova
Zebaot
- respond!
Out of blaze and bloodshed
rising from throbbing throats
cries of murder,
bellows
of martyrs without number
hovering over pyres of blazing wood:
- Who
betrays our faith?
Respond!
You do not answer?
It's beyond refute?
- We refute all this!
Behold:
in one leap
we jump right into heaven:
DOWN WITH GOD!
we bomb the very umbilicus
take heaven by force:
DOWN WITH GOD!
and from the creator's throne
we grab and cast his corpse downwards
into universal abyss
starless,
unyielding!
DOWN WITH GOD!
With our heavenward bridges
all without end
with rope and crow-bar
we picture ourselves in paradise eating meat on fasting-days
. see Genesis
1:29
Away with
supremecy over our destitution
the carnage
the earthly score.
All that was written by philosophers, poets -
It shall come true!
- Without god! without a master!
September shall be May.
Human life
will be an uncompromised ascension
- UPWARD! UPWARD!
Earth shall be paradise -
it shall be!
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