PAX by Rubén Darío *
“I go crying out for Peace. Peace, Peace”,
That’s what Petrarch cried out,
and that's what I too cry out:
"soul in soul, hand in hand”,
to the countries in their Dawn…
For the old lands are bloody and grieving.
Death, cautious, or fiery, or in two minds,
follows in the footsteps
of Christ’s rose colored feet
that spread tears as well as stars.
Humanity is restless,
seeing the death of a Pope and the birth of a comet:
as in the year one thousand.
It sees a new Tower of Babel
falling to bits in a cruel bonfire,
to the sound of cannons and rifles.
"Death detested by mothers", dark mother
who bequeaths the hoarse roar
of lions; Pallas Athena,
odious to good looking youth ,
since you are the one giving out arrows and bullets,
abominated you will be
in the flow of centuries and fleeting ages,
because, despite everything, your strength and power
will succumb to the golden thunder of ideas.
Pile up the libraries,
Fill the art galleries,
with wonders of the brush,
the burin and the chisel.
Call on Homer, da Vinci and Dante,
for them to watch the
whole cruel show
from beginning to end:
The jawbone of the ass
in the Hand of Cain
striking Abel's forehead!
But the mystery will come,
victorious and wrapped in fire,
more formidable than what any
Indian epic or Greek drama may tell.
And our electric, self-absorbed century,
between bright flashes,
will see emerge the one
who was announced by John,
the one with hair like a woman’s.
Everything announced in that Great Book
the nations blind to God will see,
invoking God in a time pregnant
with hatred, anguish and ambition.
And what Malachy the seer
saw in the Middle Ages, "huge and delicate".
As Verlaine says - people will see it today
undone, bloodied and disheveled.
They cry: Holy War!
putting their dagger to someone’s throat,
unsheathing their sword:
invoking the name of God,
As the cathedrals of Reims and Louvain,
get blown apart by the Krupp 42s …
No, you Kings!… War is hell, it's true.
And true it is that a wolf sleeps
fatal in the soul of Adam’s children;
but neither is Christ Jesus dead.
And against murder, hatred, theft,
He is the Light, the Way and the Life!
Hohenzollern: you with a golden eagle
on your forehead.
I remember the poem of the Seer
Victor Hugo, that vivid sonorous song
where Justice insists to the bronze …
God is above everything; and at the summit
of the peaks of human glory,
a formidable angel suddenly animates
heads driven mad with divine thunder,
and from overflowing urns in the shadows
shower rains of flame, rains of poison;
and Abbadon, Appollion, Exterminans -
who are one and the same -
rise up from the pages of the Book of the Abyss.
Emperors! Kings! Presidents!
the time will come in the Dawn.
The visions of Dürer will pass away,
the mercenary pikemen will disappear
from the images of Callot and too will pass
the horrors of Goya the visionary;
just as, from the soil’s bitter memory,
the fierce tiger will also pass.
Howitzers and muskets will be forgotten,
and thanks to the sacred blood of Calvary
the blood of warfare will end.
Be purged by fire
and earthquake
and tempest
this blind planet,
unknown to the stars
like its transient humanity.
And since needs must,
come and purge this
planet of evil,
with war, plague and hunger,
the messengers of True Truth.
Truth that makes fountains run dry,
and the damned to gnash their teeth.
If Peace is not possible, and as in Isaiah
the cities burst apart;
may the nights and the days be of darkness;
may the souls who feel
the breath of God, sleep a deep sleep
while the world bleeds out and falls apart…
So when from the apocalypse enigma
the white horse steps out, radiant in splendor and stigma,
the only ones immersed in the holy truth
shall be the pure of good will,
who have glimpsed among life’s rough brambles
the footprints from the steps of Christ Our Father.
Ah, how happy the wicked devil must be!
With hatred ruling the whole universe,
hatred in the sea and under the sea;
hatred across the land and in the wind,
with blood and more blood reaching
to spatter even the heavens.
Driven by electric energy and fire
the Behemoths and Leviathans.
In that biblical immensity
Isaias and John are no more to be seen.
Any Balthazar, Darius or William
can see with jaundiced eye
the visions of centuries
a vast crowd of dreadful ghosts.
And the helmet that covers them,
the cape you dressed them in,
under some white ill favored snow,
and that untidy mustache,
with imperious demeanor and military air,
with all that power, they all look so very sad.
And when the tenderness of Christmas came,
Santa Claus, coming to the child's crib,
had to lift up his ermine robe
to stop it being stained with so much blood and bile.
It was in 1870.
With France on fire in its bloody war.
As Hugo tells us in his superb verse.
And Paris, divine, in her sorrow,
oblivious to accustomed feast days,
on that Christmas Eve could see only shadow.
There was only siege, hunger and fury,
only horror, hatred and insult.
All was death, fire and sheer excess.
One side of the Seine sustained
tremendous German conquest:
the other, a France unforeseen.
It was midnight - the magic hour,
portending a mystical dawn -
the bells of Our Lady of Notre Dame.
And the Seine’s left bank resounded
in the darkness of the night to
Christmas Eve’s ritual carol of Noel.
A silence. But then, noble and austere,
that fierce army answered
with a solemn lutheran chorale.
And in the deep night of that war,
Jesus Christ, banished hatred
through song, casting evil from the earth.
Will there be no younger race
who, bringing war under its yoke,
unites the power of Beethoven
with the song of Victor Hugo?
Long live France our Queen! And Germany our Mother!
That greeting, which so touched the great poet,
will it now make forests burn and craters roar,
make the Angel of Peace an executioner?
While the Austrian princess snaps her fan,
William placed Watteau in his palaces,
not knowing great Frederick’s flute
had Waterloo’s sad requiem still to come.
But one must always see, when the struggle is hard
of the tiger, of the lion, of the eagle in its flight;
if men fight, it's because no one can hear
the bugles of Peace that sound in the sky.
Krupp creates brutal horrors to humor Death
but he of Assisi can stun even the lowest devil;
Hussars of death are fated to wear crosses of black,
while gentle people of Love wear crosses of red.
Oh, our peoples, our peoples! Let us come together
in Hope, in Work and in Peace.
Don’t seek out darkness, or go chasing after chaos,
nor nurture our fertile land with blood.
The old forebears have struggled enough.
for Patriotism and Freedom, now let the glorious clarion
sound out across time, across the skies,
Washington, Bolívar, Hidalgo and San Martín.
Look at broken Europe’s bitter example,
of funeral trenches dug in blood stained lands;
and both sides sobbing out of pity and grief.
No, don't let Hatred shoot its arrows, rather
bring honey and roses to altars of Peace.
Peace to our vast America. Peace in the name of God.
Such that here may be the focus of a new culture,
whose principles prevail from North to South,
let's make a living Union from new triumphs,
The star spangled banner joined with the white and blue…
* Rubén Darío read this poem at the Havemeyer Hall ofr Columbia University, New York City, N.Y. on February 4th 1915.