THE MARCH INTO THE TUNNEL
701
at wit's end, counting grains, trains, tons, babies, calves, wheels,
shoulders for bearing arms.
A permit was necessary to get a mouthful of bread.
Thirteenth Canto
Shelters are numerous. Unsheltered places are still more numerous.
A plain rich in men
is
mowed by a round of artillery.
But humanity, numerous although fewer than the rats, is out there
presenting itself, an impressive reservoir.
Fresh troops, new blood.
Between the hedges of flags, between the hates of flags, there it goes,
filing off to the next rotting-place....
As
a school of tunnyfish in the trapping area, beside an interminable
net, believing itself prudent, goes off all the same without suspi–
cion into the chamber of death where, crowded by new arrivals,
they fight furiously, vainly, attacking those closest to them, so
humanity, while making its promising accounts and statistics,
enters methodically into its charnel house.
Twentieth Canto
Look! the harsh Epoch has come, harsher than the harsh lot of man.
The Epoch has come indeed.
I will make their houses into junk heaps, says a voice.
I
will
make their vessels that sail the sea into stones that sink quickly.
I
will
make their families into terrified hordes.
I will make their riches into what mites make of a fur, leaving only
the spectre, which falls into dust at the slightest movement.
I
will
make their happiness into a dirty sponge which must be thrown
out, and their plans of other days, compressed more than the body
of a flea, will persecute their days and nights.
I
will
really and truly make death glide and woe to him who finds
himself under its wings.
I
will
throw down their gods in a monstrous overthrow and in their
scattered fragments they will find gods whom they did not know
about and whose loss will make them suffer even more.
(Translated by Richard Ellmann)
