The Submarine

It sinks. In the twilight of the water the conquered submarine falls straight to the bottom and seems like a black corpse thrown to the coral below, thrown to the tomb that devours with liquid joy the refuse and remains of the old world. The propellers, devourers of motion, buzz no more, the rudder has ceased turning, the prow no longer points its sharp beak, but the submarine extends itself on the viscid bed, and a multitude of unknown fish, coral and sea-nettles try to enter the closed apertures. And yet once you leaped in the sun like a sentinel of burnished steel shining in the distance, and then rapidly returned to the green gorge where the sun never reaches, but where you find the tremendous task that is always with you and that whispers courage in the void of your soul. And once with your agile metallic prow you agitated the green water all around your shining body, and you did not feel the torments of the winds nor the black clouds of the hurricane that remained like spiteful women in a corner of the horizon, with hair dishevelled and the eye eager to spy below, from the firmament, the lost, the shipwrecked, the unknown that have no pilot. Once from your sonorous sides, quietly, but vigilant and mad, the torpedo shot out, making its track in silence, and carrying within its thin body death, and the infinite power of dynamite. As you passed the sharks fled, as you passed the corals suspended their tenacious and clumsy work, and the fish with rapid movement swam away. You seemed like an enormous monster of a fantastic destiny and yet you are only a light submarine, a slender ship that the blow of a beam could sink, that a whirlpool could submerge in the abyss. I do not know your story, but I will sing your glory that is part of the desire of audacious men. Submarine, Destiny may have willed you to sink silently, and remain lost forever in the viscid bed of the sea-weed, (O submarine, able to challenge the unconsciousness of the seas and the impotence of the lighthouses,) but you are alive and strong; there is no death, but only an appearance of death that remains. Destiny newly moulds you in a long phantom and you are run, submarine, by the courage of men who, in the unfathomable silence of the water, are piloted by the will of the strong. New brothers will arise and pursue you because your shining back carries a banner, not tri-colored, nor French, but the only color that dazzles; the banner of the battle that amidst disasters combats with this ferocious mystery that is foolishly determined to shut us out from the doors of Nature.