You've Gotta Help Me Out

"Deep Waters, Dark Shadows"

Man overboard!

Who cares? The ship sails on. The wind is up, the dark ship must keep to its destined course. It passes on.

The man disappears, then reappears, he sinks and rises again to the surface, he hollers, stretches out his hads. They do not hear him...

He hurls cries of dispair into the depths. What a specter is that disappearing sail! He watches it, follows it frantically. It moves away, grows dim, diminishes. He was just there, one of the crew, he walked up and down the deck with the rest, he had his share of air and sunlight, he was a living man. Now, what has become of him? He slipped, he fell, it's all over.

He is in the monstrous deep. There is nothing beneath his feet but the yielding, fleeting element. The waves, torn and scattered by the wind, close around him hideously; the rolling abyss bears him away; tatters of water are flying around his headl a populace of waves spit on him, vague openings half swallow him; each time he sinks he glimpses yawning precipies full of dark; frightful unknown tendrils seize him, bind his feet, and draw him down; he feels he is becoming the great deep; he is part of the foam...the voracious ocean is eager to devour him; the monster plays with his agony. It is all liquid hatred to him.

He tries to defend, to sustain himself; he struggles; he swims. With his poor exhausted strength, he combats the inexhaustible.

Still he struggles on.

...He feels buried by the two infinities together, the ocean and the sky, the one a tomb, the other a shroud.

Night falls; he has been swimming for hours, his strength almost gone; the ship...is gone; he is alone in the terrible gloom of the abyss; he sinks, he strains, he struggles, feels beneath himself invisible shadowy monsters; he screams.

Men are gone. Where is God?

He screams. Help! Someone! Help! He screams over and over.

Nothing on the horizon. Nothing in the sky.

He implores the lofty sky, the endless waves, the reefs; all are deaf. He begs the storms; but impassive, the obey only the infinite.

Around him, darkness, storm, solitude, wild, unconscious tumult, the ceaseless churning of fierce waters. Within hum, horror and exhaustion. Beneath him the devouring abyss. No resting place...The biting cold paralyzes him. His hands cramp shut and grasp at...nothing. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, blasts, stars, all useless! What can he do? He yields to despair; worn out, he seeks death, no longer resists, gives up, lets go, tumbles into the mournful depths of the abyss forever.

...Ominous disappearance of help! O moral death!

The sea is the inexorable night into which [evil and hell] casts its victims. The sea is measureless misery.

The soul drifting in that see may become a corpse. Who shall restore it to life?






--From Victor Hugo's Les Miserables


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P.S. There is no way that A Rush of Blood to the Head is good enough to send everyone but miss terri. (Not that I don't value miss terri's opinion, of course.) So please go take a look at it as well as the other thing I just posted on A Poet in Wicker Park. Also, there is a new post responding to a B&G article by Matt Call on Politik, so please check that out as well and give your opinion.