Homage To Robert Brasillach Poem by Michael Esdaile Walker

Homage to Robert Brasillach

Comme le temps passe
Robert Brasillach.

Comme le temps passe
Robert Brasillach


My homage is for the way you lived to die
That I a coward cannot emulate.
You knew and wrote,
Reason turns malevolent
after childhood disperses
And slumps into mature consideration.
You could not have lived with yourself after failing.
So the leaden sentence was a gift:
Better to die as you died
In the fluency and grace of certainty and light
Like poor Pucelle
Than grapple with compromise and penance
To win years in retirement and shame,
Dying defiant
Sin pañuelo
The Castilian way.
Happiness a bagatelle
To a fascist
Dying well essential
Dying well redeems
The quintessence
Not delaying
Nor complaining
Nor dreading
Unbitter witness.

The theatrical end..
Many shrink and strive to safety
Delay complain and dread
And run away and hide
And sacrifice their pride
For doubtful grace;
Not you a thief or cheat,
Perhaps a busy undertaker:
Coffins lined in neatly ordered rows
"The Bubonic East has
Broken out" -the facts.
Each issue packed and bracketed
Childhood spoilt and spilled
Venom packed away in lofts or cellars
Then taken out and filmed.
Nothing like that within you
So they held their tryst with you
Many shrink and strive to safety
They show their heads
Where they fear no censure
The dumb speak no treason
The illiterate pen no error
They called you traitor and acolyte to murder
But no betrayal was within you
Those
Who mattered to you
Will wait who understood:
Carlists on horseback
Ragamuffin Spain
The islands of childhood...
You walk out to them
Punctual formal and correct
In the fields of Great Faith-
Le paradis terrestre-
Martyr's etiquette at the shore
At the beginning and later
Running and returning
Your last breath faithful.
Hear the sea roar...

Comme le temps passe
Robert Brasillach