The Revolution was a young woman, flamboyant and rebellious<\/p>\n
She wore her excesses, her carmine lipstick, carnivorous, as if stained by the blood sometimes shed,<\/p>\n
Her charcoal eyes from the soot of the barricades,<\/p>\n
She danced before the old world and made it lose its mind,<\/p>\n
Igniting all the peoples of the world,<\/p>\n
It was Cromwell\u2019s England, it was Washington\u2019s America<\/p>\n
But it was mostly, it was mostly France, and Paris, and 1789.<\/p>\n
The Revolution changed the order of things and overthrew the privileges<\/p>\n
She refused the suitors<\/p>\n
She preferred her freedom<\/p>\n
She loved to sing, and her songs went around the world<\/p>\n
When an ambitious beau from Corsica made a pass at her with an Empire, she took refuge in Literature.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She felt trapped, seduced but elusive<\/p>\n
Never conquered, always inaccessible<\/p>\n
She had other loves and didn\u2019t want to be exclusive<\/p>\n
Who grasps all, loses all, she never found a fianc\u00e9 worthy of her<\/p>\n
She was always disappointed, always cheated,<\/p>\n
Those who promised marriage and eternal love wanted her docile, submissive, standing behind her stoves<\/p>\n
She was suspicious.<\/p>\n
In 1848 however, she still wanted to believe<\/p>\n
But ultimately was the victim of the same family curse<\/p>\n
Decidedly, she had to be wary of the young Napoleons.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She made herself little, went into exile, shrunk, on the Channel Islands,<\/p>\n
Jersey, Guernesey,<\/p>\n
In Belgium<\/p>\n
In those refuges of great men not yet transformed into a paradise for tax exiles<\/p>\n
She consoled herself in the warm, always generous arms of Victor Hugo,<\/p>\n
He brought her back to Paris, triumphant, to slum it on the pavements of the Butte aux Cailles, with the Communards<\/p>\n
She liked the lusty lads of the people,<\/p>\n
And Louise Michel was her best friend<\/p>\n
When she saw her go to the galleys with their comrades, her hair turned grey at once.<\/p>\n
She would never forget.<\/p>\n
Resigned to her fate, a marriage of convenience with the Republic,<\/p>\n
Third in name.<\/p>\n
Settled down.<\/p>\n
Started knitting, for the children of Liberty, her eldest daughter,<\/p>\n
Great laws and beautiful victories<\/p>\n
Secular, free and mandatory public schools, freedom of association, of the press, workers unions\u2026<\/p>\n
But the 20th century came<\/p>\n
The young girl was no longer: Victor Hugo was dead and Jaur\u00e8s had been murdered<\/p>\n
She went to face the great Russian winter<\/p>\n
Yet even her oldest passion, her greatest love, Karl Marx,<\/p>\n
Had advised against it.<\/p>\n
She couldn\u2019t resist.<\/p>\n
Saw all her handsome friends of 17 fall one by one , carried away by the Stalinist turmoil.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She couldn\u2019t take it anymore.<\/p>\n
Didn\u2019t have the strength<\/p>\n
Weakened, defenseless, she was assaulted and bullied<\/p>\n
Trampled by the totalitarians of the 30s who didn\u2019t even hesitate to steal her name.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She was done with politics.<\/p>\n
May 68 was her swan song<\/p>\n
It was magic, she lived a second youth<\/p>\n
Was this the last time she would shiver, distraught, in lovers\u2019 arms?<\/p>\n
The trauma was still too sharp.<\/p>\n
She watched her lover move away.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She kept her last strength for her sisters, the women, the great forgotten<\/p>\n
She gave them her energy and made them her heirs<\/p>\n
And she continues today: #MeToo, she cries,<\/p>\n
I too was abused<\/p>\n
By all who, with Leopardi<\/p>\n
Wanted to seduce me the better suffocate me<\/p>\n
Sang my beauty for one purpose only:<\/p>\n
That everything changes so that nothing does.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Translated by Charleyne Biondi<\/em><\/p>\n [Original in French here<\/a>]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n