Angels in Despair

(Prometheus)

Les anges de la inhabitation urbaine
S'appellent la bonne
Mais il n'y pas nous qui crions
dans la nuit noire
et qui dancons comme des enfants
sans savoir at qui oublions?
Mon dieux, pourquoi vous avez me depardu
pour trouve ca que n'existe pas
ca que nous voisons seul parce ce que
toujours encore nous espérons

Peter Paul Rubens, Prometheus Bound (1618)

Rivers of the Underground: Styx

This promise that leads to our death, is to desire life. We are so faithful and stand at the side of the father like a flock of children. Zeus is grateful and tragically obliges our wishes without much thought. Yet what is happiness but the absence of unhappiness, what is pleasure but the absence of pain. To avoid our suffering, we desire to live. To fulfill my yearning, all I crave for is to avoid unhappiness. So I seek more pleasure, I must fulfill this desire, even if it means my certain death. So I enter this underworld of the subway at Grand Army Plaza, and every morning, dutifully, to avoid discomfort, I repeat this same, civic ritual, I descend, I wait. Then I see the head lights approaching, growing larger as they roll near. There I see the shadow of the driver of souls, appearing on the dreary side of the traced, yellow line on the platform. I step back at the roaring proximity of the flashing eyes. I get on, and am shaken silently, tens of meters under the East river to the island of Manhattan, where rivers are split, bordering the marshes of Jersey. Who is immersed here, finds eternity, invulnerable to the suffering of life, but lost of all human measure.

Rivers of the Underground: Lethe

Of all the evil my eyes have seen, oblivion was the most unforgiving. Who escaped it, never spoke of it again. Of all sins, to forget the wrongs committed, the most cruel is, more gruesome than the wrong that suffers of it, to forget. The closest to death in deed, oh she is not sleep, for even sleep will be forgotten. Here I sink into this hole of liquid, here I am washed clean of myself, and so not only drowned into this river of the living dead, also to know nothing of it. Three times crows the rooster, three times I disown, three times disowned, so I deny the love I loved, so I deny the friend I once knew. Is there greater sin than to stop loving, than to forget. Man, I do not know what you are talking about! and the Lord turns and looks straight at us. Oh Lethe, who washes with your waters my love. Oh Lethe, don't leave me denied. As I sink I feel her sense of great, calm soothing. There is no deeper river in the mind, there is no broader realm in the soul of man. To forget is the devil's water, and more than death, Matilda's hand I fear. Matilda, most beautiful woman, most gracious and fair, it is her who makes me forget what in my dreams I longed. She is covered in her veil, and by the spell of magic in her eyes, the breath of her soft breasts in her tender voice, the Siren draws me onto her clips. Here it is I strand, on the shore of Lethe, while on my long sea way home.