Sinistre. Disaster

DISASTER

WHAT hour knocks on the ribs of the hull This great shadowy blow where cracks our doom? What impalpable power comes rattling In our tackle with the bones of the dead?

Naked on the prow, the crashing torrents Wash away the odour of life and wine: The sea casts up and digs again the tombs, The same water hollows and fills the ravine.

Hideous man, in whom the heart capsizes, Strange drunkard led astray upon the sea Whose nausea concomitant with a ship Snatches from the soul a desire for hell,

Absolute man, I tremble and calculate, Brain all too clear, capable of the moment Where, as a phenomenon in minuscule, Time breaks in the manner of an instrument ...

A curse upon the swine who rigged you out, Ark gone rotten with its swarming ballast! In your blackest depths, all created things Beat on your dead wood as it drifts to the East ...

The abyss and I make up the one machine Which juggles with its scattered memories: I see my mother and my porcelain cups, The greasy slut in the musky door of bars;

I see Christ at the yard-arm tied down fast!... He dances to death, foundering with his own; His blood-red eye lights on me this device: A GREAT SHIP PERISHES COMPANYAND GOODS!...