TICONDEROGA AGAIN
Dedicate, with zeal,
to Robert Louis Stevenson.
Requiescat in Pace (1)
and to Hugo Pratt ,
and to Hector Germán Oesterheld.
In Memoriam (2)He goes through the forest,
He, the hunted hunter,
goes through the woods.
He, the haunted man,
is fleeing from himself,
but he doesn’t know
that he’s fleeing
He stumbles and strikes upon a fallen bough.
He falls on the ground,
then,
he stands up,
he strides and them run.
Now he slides,
he stumbles and falls again.Automn has come in the middle of the summer,
it reigns in the forest
it exposes its presence,
with it many copper colours.
Brown ones,
auburn and ochre ones,
the old golds that the Old Oesterheld remembers,
glimmering red ones,
creamy grey-brown ones.The shining sun glitters
at the evening time, it breaks into that dark cathedral,
it seaches among mushrooms,
among mildews,
the melancholy lichens,
the thoughtful dandelions,
noble ones in its white spores,
and the fearsome and ominous toadstools.At last,
the golden beam
rest upon a lonely squirrel,
very rich in red ochres,
as brown as the stiffy leaves there are,
as reddish as the generous sandaracs,
as they,
it’s a restless and spirited animal.
With its invisible minions
that strange squirrel
resemble a Hellish Harlequin.Suddenly,
dry they crack,
they resound,
empty and hollow resound they.
They are the crashing of the moskets and harquebuses.
Bullets, lots of them.
Pistols’ shoots.
Dry gunpower’s outburst.To every stroke, to every clash,
it trouble the eternal peace.
Already Old one, the wood remains silent.
It is tired and boring from so many wars.
The warbles are delaying,
the elytra are posponing its music.
The poplars and the aspens’ leaves remain calm.
Till the wind is to be called to a little hush,
it stops is marching pace,
it stops is running race.Only Ticonderoga runs,
Ticonderoga only runs,
he runs alone,
he doesn’t have his friend with him,
Numokh P’tatusha is anymore with him.
Through the ofrest he runs,
a daredevil and reckless boy.
He runs, fearless to the crashings.
He, a daring kid, forward the bullets,
audacious front the h ateful troups,
that abhorrent enemy army.The Katchinas of the Death,
only they pursue him closely.
The Fetch of the Slaughter surrounds him.
The Banshees from the Burrows
persecute him.
The Doppelgänger
from those green wildernesses, oppress him.At the ultimate, he is exhausted.
He, the faithful Washington post-office messenger falls.
His corroded and weared away body
doesn’t endure anymore,
his strength fails him and gives up.
His Life ,
his Life gets away from him,
his Heart detains and ceases his beat .There, on that hill,
there,
from which we can see the water blendings:
the Joyful Alleghany,
and the Merry Monongahela,
both rivers rich in mamories and thoughts.
There, were we can see flow together both waters.
There, directly opposite to Fort Duquesne.
There, where the Ohio River always its borning.Together, united to Ticonderoga,
united to him,
only remains his outburn game-leather-bag.
Some fallen leaves flee, scape from his lying body,
at that time, his eyes, already vitrious ones,
they believe that they can see,
standing up front him,
his same silhouette, his very same profile,
his image erect, upright and brisk.
That image who, with a hand,
his left hand,
points out without a word,
just to his mouth ,
as if he were praying and imploring the courier to be silent.
And with the other one,
the right hand,
extended and straight aiming to him,
he urges on to him
to leave that place and that time.
But, before, kisses him,
and rounds something in his ears,
nobody, nor we could hear.
And there, it remains,
quiet and unperturbed,
motionless and stiff,
his body.
At the repose of the Death,
then,
that now distant, far, remote,
July, the ninth,
from the Year of Our Lord,
Seventeen Fifty Five.Here,
today,
night falls over the financial centre of Pittsburgh,
with its black towers,
as in a New Shadowland,
as black as the Hell’s Smithies.
There,
where the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers,
flow together,
forming the Ohio River, the French “Belle Rivière”Julio Enrique Brugos
31/12/94 - 01/05/04 - 27/03/05
NOTES TO TICONDEROGA AGAIN
(1)Rest in Peace
(2)In Memento moris, to the remembering
TICONDEROGA means in Algonkin or perhaps Huron (both enemies) languages, “Ringing, Sounding or Resounding Water”.
NUMOKH P’TATUSHA was an indian friend to Ticonderoga, his name means “The Man that Travels or the Ghost that Walks”
FORT DUQUESNE, a French Fort, later an English Fort, renamed Fort Pitt, in honour of the English Minister by that time, and then Pittsburgh, “Town of Pitt”.
OHIO means “Beautiful Place” or in French Language “La Belle Rivière” (the handsome, comely river).
KATCHINAS or KITCHINAS are the spirits of Death and Desperation in the Hopi Mythology, also the masks the utilised in their rites. We can compare the Katchinas with the Erinyes or Furies, from Greek Mythology.
DOPPELGÄNGER the German myth about the double one of oneself. When we see our double, we will die. Doppelgänger signifies “the Double One who goes” in the German tongue.
BANSHEES are the spirits whose wail portends death in a house. This names comes from “bean sidhe”, modern Gaelic Irish an Scottish, and “bean síde” in Old Irish. Woman of the fairies, wife from the burrows. They werer a long time ago, the wives of the Irish gods, in special, the wives of the Tuàtha dé Dannann, the Great Irish Gods.
TO FETCH: to go for and bring back persons or things. Here is utilised as an entity, specially the Entity of Death.
Julio Enrique Brugos 28/03/05