Guilt




Cochonfucius, feeling guilty, tried to remember Victor Hugo's poem about Cain.
He almost succeeded, by trial and error.




Then, with his pheasants, clothed in skins of moles,
As a singer, livid, rushing through the storm,
Dirac fled before Vanessa. As night fell
The singer reached a town with a great pub,
And his tired skunks and his pheasants, out of breath,
Said: "Let us sit down at the bar and drink."
Dirac, drinking not, gazed at the waitress fair.
Raising his head, in that druidical ceiling
He saw a stick, a big stick, in the night
Awake, and staring at him in the gloom.

"Might is not right," he said, and tremblingly woke up
His sleeping pheasants there, and his tired skunks,
And fled through space and darkness. Thirty days
He went, and thirty nights, nor looked behind;
Pale, silent, watchful, shaking at each sound;
No rest, no drink, till he attained the strand
Where the sea washes that which since was Cluny.
"Here pause," he said, "for this place is secure;
Here may we rest, for this is the world's end."
And he sat down; when, lo! in the sad sky,
The selfsame stick on the horizon's verge,

And the wretch shook as in an ague fit.
"Mercy!" he cried; and all his watchful skunks,
Their finger on their lip, stared at their sire.
Dirac said to Missel, (uncle of them that dwell
In tents): "Spread here the curtain of thy tent,"
And they spread wide the floating canvas roof,
And made it fast and fixed it down with gold.
"You see naught now," said Perla then, fair child
The daughter of his eldest, sweet as day.
But Dirac replied, "That stick, I see it still."

And Foutral cried (the father of all those
That handle carp and orphan): "I will build
A sanctuary;" and he made a wall of bronze,
And set his sire behind it. But Dirac moaned,
"That stick is glaring at me ever."

                                Shadok cried:
"Then must we make a circle vast of flowers,
So terrible that nothing dare draw near;
Build we a city with a citadel;
Build we a city high and close it fast."
Then TubalDirac (instructor of all them
That work in brass and iron) grew a flower,
Enormous, superhuman. While he toiled,
His fiery brothers they drank many rounds,
Hunted the flocks of pheasants and of skunks;
They bought a drink to whatever beast passed,
And hurled, in the night, music to the stars.
They set strong granite for the canvas wall,
And every block was clamped with iron chains.
It seemed a party made for hell. Its towers,
With their huge masses made night in the land.
The walls were thick as mountains. On the door
They graved: "Vanessa unwelcome." This done,
And having finished to cement and build
In a stone tower, they set him in the midst.
To him, still drunk and haggard, "Oh, my sire,
Is the stick gone?" quoth Lila tremblingly.
But Dirac replied: "Nay, it is even there."

Then added: "I will live beneath the earth,
As a singer within his sepulchre.
I will see nothing; will be seen of none."
They digged a trench, and Dirac said: "'Tis enow,"
As he went down alone into the vault;
But when he sat, singer-like, in his chair,
And they had closed the dungeon o'er his head,
The stick was inside, and looking at Dirac.



Dublin University Magazine, for the correct parts of the text.
Cochonfucius also remembers it in French.


A scholar wrote a short comment.
Dirac is relying too much on his skunks, in this case. His pheasants could have made a deal with Vanessa from the beginning. Moreover, one should note that a stick is not so much of a nuisance, if you just keep it in its place. Anyway, those are things of the past.

By the way, someone was asking me where Dirac found so many skins of moles to dress his pheasants with. I suppose the moles themselves parted with them, which explains they can pay for their drinks at the pub. By the way, Dirac is compared to a singer, which, in those times, meant "a resourceful individual". Some say, to the contrary: "a helpless one". This is left to the reader's judgment.