Et Nox Facta Est

There the sun was, dying in the abyss,
in a haze of shadow, no sign of resurgence,
cooled, and cooling, slowly, dismally
toward zero, disk of lesser dark
just visible in darkness, a further
diminishment in the awful silence,
ulcers of fire under its leprous
skin. Through cracks a little of the core
still showed, as if through wreckage
in a skull the human soul leaked
into view. Trembling and leaping
from within, a flame that licked out
over the surface in each crater left
small glimmerings. The star was almost
black. The archangel, so weary
that he had no voice, no breath, the star
still writhing under his last wild look,
was dying, just as the star went out.
In cold obscurity, from Satan’s mouth
and from the star erupted burning floods,
scorched rubble, mountains smoldering, rocks
under the foam of primal brightness.
All around them, time and space and number,
form and sound, were dying into the lightless
unity of nonexistence. Nothing raised
its blank face out of the inconceivable.
Soudain, du cœur de l’astre, un âpre jet de soufre,
Pareil à la clameur du mourant éperdu,
Sortit, brusque, éclatant, splendide, inattendu,
Et, découpant au loin mille formes funèbres,
Enorme, illumina, jusqu’au fond des ténèbres,
Les porches monstrueux de l’infini profond.
Les angles que la nuit et l’immensité font
Apparurent. Satan, égaré, sans haleine,
La prunelle éblouie et de cet éclair pleine,
Battit de l’aile, ouvrit les mains, puis tressaillit
Et cria:—Désespoir! le voilà qui pâlit!
Et l’archange comprit, pareil au mât qui sombre,
Qu’il était le noyé du déluge de l’ombre;
Il reploya son aile aux ongles de granit,
Et se tordit les bras. Et l’astre s’éteignit.
Or, près des cieux, au bord du gouffre où rien ne change,
Une plume échappée à l’aile de l’archange
Etait restée, et, pure et blanche, frissonnait.
L’ange au front de qui l’aube éblouissante naît
La vit, la prit, et dit, l’œil sur le ciel sublime:
—Seigneur, faut-il qu’elle aille, elle aussi, dans l’abîme?—
Dieu se tourna, par l’être et la vie absorbé,
Et dit:—Ne jetez pas ce qui n’est pas tombé.—
Suddenly, from the core of the star,
a bitter jet of sulfur, like the distracted
outcry of the dying, shot forth in a splendid,
unexpected flash, cutting a thousand
funereal forms into the distance, huge,
showing on the floor of hell monstrous
porches of the infinite immensity.
Satan, bewildered, breathless, dazzled
by this lightning, flapped his wing,
opened his hands, shuddered, and cried:
Despair! It vanishes!—And the archangel
saw his own great form like a mast go down,
drowned in the deluge of God’s darkness.
He folded up his wing with granite talons,
let his arms fall, and the star went out.
But, near Heaven, at the edge of the gulf,
one feather torn from the wing of the Fallen One
lay vibrant. Another angel, whose face dawn
at his birth made dazzling, saw the feather,
and stooping to take it up in hand, he said,
looking into the sublime sky: Lord, is it needful
that this too fall into the chasm? God turned,
brooding over the remnant of such glory, and said:
Do not throw down what is not yet fallen.