Darkness Moves by Henri Michaux

Author:Henri Michaux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthology
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2015-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

from OLD AGE OF POLLAGORAS

I would really like to know why I always

follow the horse whose bridle I am holding.

With age, says Pollagoras, I have become like a field on which a battle was fought, a battle centuries ago, a battle yesterday, a field of many battles.

Dead men, never quite dead, wander silently around or lie at rest. It’s as if they have lost the will to win.

But suddenly they burst into motion, those who are lying down get up and attack, armed to the teeth. They have just encountered the ghost of a former enemy who—shaken—suddenly charges feverishly forward, ready with his parry, forcing my surprised heart to quicken its beat in my chest and in my sullen being, which reluctantly comes to life.

They fight their battles among themselves, without ever interfering with the previous ones, or with the next ones, whose unknown, peaceful heroes go walking about until they in turn encounter their contemporary enemy, straighten up in a flash and charge irresistibly forward into combat.

So it is, says Pollagoras, that I am old, through this accumulation.

Cluttered with battles already fought, a clock of more and more numerous scenes that strike, while I would like to be elsewhere.

And so, like a manor abandoned to poltergeists, I live without living, a place haunted by thoughts that interest me no longer, although they still work themselves into a frenzy and renew themselves, feverishly emptying themselves out in a way that I am impotent to paralyze.

Wisdom has not come, says Pollagoras. The Word is increasingly strangled, but wisdom has not come.

All my life long, like a seismographic needle, my awareness has gone through me without charting me, groped around me without forming me.

At the dawn of old age, before the plain of Death, I am still seeking, still seeking, says Pollagoras, the little far-off wall in my childhood by my pride erected, while with soft weapons and a tiny shield I walked around between the cliffs of shadowy adults.

Little wall that I built, thinking I had done the right thing, thinking I had done a marvelous thing, to put myself in a fortress immovable. Little wall, too solid, built by my resistance.

And it is not the only one.

How many did I cement up in the time of my mad defense, in my frightened years!

I have to search them out now, all of them, covered with living fibers.

As my life drains away with only a trickle left, it avidly seeks the rapids still being wasted, and the magnificent work of the brave little builder will have to be ruined for the benefit of the old miser, still hanging on to life.

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