How old is the night ?
Nobody replied.
Since, blind Time groped amidst the labyrinth of ages,
the way was unknown,
No one had any notion of where ended the path.
At the foothills obscurity resembled the orbits of a deceased ogre;
Piles of clouds were clinging to the breast of the sky;
Heaps of darkness stuck to the cavernous holes
Looking like chopped limbs of the dead of night;
An igneous intensity
Lit up and died from moment to moment :
Could that be the menace of an unknown and ominous planet ?
Could that be the blazing and greedy tongue of hunger without beginning ?
The scattered objects all looked like a monologue in delirium,
The dusty left-over of an unfinished biological play;
They were merely broken arches of arrogant and intemperate might,
Attached to oblivion, a worn out bridge over a forlorn river,
An alter studded with vipers' den inside a temple without deity,
A broken flight of unfinished steps leading to void.
A sudden vehement din seething and revolving in the sky...
Could it be an imprisoned flood raging to rush out of its cavern ?
Could it be a demented ascetic's whirling utterance of wrathful syllables ?
Could it be a suicidal thunder-cry of a great forest invaded by fire ?
Below this tumultuous and terrible uproar an indistinct serpentine stream of sound : As if - gushing out of a volcano - a bubbling flow of lava
Wherein mingled angry whispers against other people's fortune,
and ugly rumours,
Coarse laughter of contempt.
There men moved about
Errant, like torn pages from history...
In the light and the shadow of the torches their faces
Tattooed with chimeras.
At times out of a baseless suspicion a crazy man
Pounced on his neighbour.
In no time a quarrel without justice unfurled on all sides.
A certain woman started lamenting in a distressed tone,
Crying : "Alas, our wayward child has become a wreck."
Some fille de joie nude in their intoxicating youth burst out laughing,
Exclaiming : "Nothing ever begets of nothing."