THE MAN. Here I am. I’m back. I am the River.7
GLODION — THE SEA(who until then remained motionless, moves forward in greeting). Ah! The one I was waiting for!
For a long time I’ve been hearing you rolling in the fields and the marshes.
Finally, here you are with your dead trees, your dead beasts.
You have crushed a lot of things to get here!
Ah! Earth! If you believe that one, we’re not done laughing yet.
He drags himself along beating his head everywhere he goes like a blind snake. He has knocked down hills, he has slashed the great skin of grass. He’s a carrier of dead things.
He only knows reflections.
THE SARDINIAN (He raises his hand. There is no more music except the sound of the harps). Don’t say anything bad about reflections!
Or about death!
The universe is a globe of reflections.
GLODION — THE SEA. Yes!
But this river that’s before you and that comes to tell you: “I’m the one who knows!”
I’m telling the truth, now: he doesn’t know the worth of reflections, and he takes them and leaves them. He doesn’t carry them.
THE SARDINIAN. He carries them.
In a thousand times a thousand years they will find in his mud the reflection of that little willow leaf which is mirrored this day.
That reflection which is like a seal in wax, like a good or bad thought that leaves its mark.
THE RIVER. Why try to debate with the Sea?
Look at the beasts: they come forward, they sniff, they smell this odor of salt; then they turn tail and run off in the other direction.
You know what I call her?
The sweaty one.
There she is with her big breasts, leaping and sweating.
But me, the beasts come to me, and they drink.
GLODION — THE SEAThey drink!
I know.
I heard the cries of those you forced to drink in the recesses of a high hill. And then, I heard the silence.
THE RIVER. We have ways that are written from eternity in the script of the stars.
And we have our work all laid out.
Do you want the world to shift places because the does and the stags are there in the cul-de-sac of the rocks?
Yes, they drank, and beyond their thirst.
But it was decreed that I had to push my head against that rock and make that pocket of earth into a great whirlpool.
That was done.
What are a thousand stags in the wheels of the world?
THE SARDINIAN. Tell me, River.
Did you encounter man?
THE RIVER. I encountered what he left.
Here it is:
You know that I’m made of sky; you can believe me. In descending from the mountain, I got tangled up in a large forest and for a long time I looked for my proper course, and I slept there, laid flat, under the trees, and I was eaten by the big green flies.
There, I remained a long time, my muscles building up for nothing. Everyday, my flesh swelled a little more all along the length of my skin, but that was all.
The trees lay over me; long grasses pushed through me as through a dead snake and I began to smell bad.
It was a mountain forest and, from one place, it leaned over the steps of the mountain.
When I learned that, in the fold of the grass, I inflated my head. It became round and glistening, and all my weight, all my strength inflated my head. It became like one of those big drops which are the stars; it weighed down, it tore itself away, and finally it made the leap toward that wide hillocky plain, greenish-gray as an old cauldron, and my whole body followed.
During the leap, I saw the great herds of beasts running and, there in front, a beast who walked on its two hind feet.
And I threw out my huge arms from all sides and I ripped out great trees by the fistful, and I saw wolves who climbed into the oaks and chamois who ran in the flat grass with the regular trot of horses, heavy bears who leaped, like bubbles, over the marshes, mares and forests of foals so thick you could only see their backs and heads, and all of that trembling like leaves in the wind.
And I forced myself to catch up with a wide forest that fled before me. There were branched stags and so many does they seemed like clouds pushed by the wind. At the end of the world there was a high red hill and it barred the route and I hit it with all the strength of my white forehead and my idea.
It was to this that the Sea referred earlier with her bitter words, typical of those who have green lips and tongues of salt. It’s true, I made the great forest of stags drink, but listen, Sea, and learn, Sea, what the law is, and the good balance:
They turned toward me, and head to head, we battled.
Me, with my soft blue head. Them, with their heads of stone and those pointed branches that spread out above them like the branches of oaks.
And I began to climb over the does and the fawns, softer than the limp new branches of the fig tree and I packed all that under me till I felt the quivering of its blood.
Finally, from the height of this platform, I attacked the stags and I retreated, then I hit with my whole head, and, each time, I was torn open, and the water ran between the deers’ antlers and they shook their heads with anger, and they bared their teeth and bit into me, and everything was a chaos of spray and sweat.
And then, I felled them like huge trees, and in my depths, they became mud.
That’s the law.
Am I the one who will teach you, Sea, what mud is, you who saw your bitter greenness flower with life, at the time when life descended upon the earth like a seed, at the time when earth entered through that door of the sky into the regions where life is permitted. You who saw that bitter mud of your shores lift like the back of a serpent and toss to bits all the creatures of the world.8
Earth!
It was one evening.
And I had no more anger, no more fight, and I was flowing.
It was evening; in peace I crossed a large blue forest and the whole sky sang our two songs.