Chapter 292: The Year One

On the twenty-second of September, 1792, the day the French Republic was proclaimed, The autumn equinox fell, the day and the night of equal length. A year later the Convention decided: that day shall be named The first day of the Year One. Time itself would show the strength Of the Revolution: the old calendar was the Church's and the kings', Its saints' days and its Sundays, its years counted from a birth in Bethlehem. The new one would be reason's. A mathematician, Gilbert Romme, the things Of the stars in his hands, and a poet, Fabre d'Églantine, the hem Of the language in his: they made it. Twelve months of thirty days each, And five days left over at the end of the year, six in a leap year, Festivals of the citizens. Each month three weeks of ten days, the reach Of the decimal into time: the *décade*, and on the tenth the rest. The clear Logic of it. And the poet named the months for what the season does: *Vendémiaire*, the grape harvest; *Brumaire*, the fog; *Frimaire*, the frost; *Nivôse*, snow; *Pluviôse*, rain; *Ventôse*, wind; *Germinal*, the buzz Of seeds sprouting; *Floréal*, flowers; *Prairial*, meadows; the cost And the gift of summer, *Messidor*, harvest, *Thermidor*, heat, *Fructidor*, fruit. And every single day of the year he named, not for a saint, but for a living thing Or a tool of the farm: the grape, the saffron, the chestnut, the root Of the turnip, an animal on every fifth day, a tool on the tenth. The ring Of the year was a field. That is beautiful. Hold it. A whole year Where each day was a plant to be thankful for. And they went further: Ten hours to the day, a hundred minutes to the hour, the sheer Decimal clock, with faces made for it. And the murmur Of the people was against it. The week of ten days gave them one rest in ten, Not one in seven: the workers lost a day of rest in every three weeks, And the old Sunday went on in secret. The decimal hours, then, Were given up within two years. The clocks with their odd peaks Of ten numbers sit in museums. And the poet who named the months, Fabre, Was caught in a fraud and in the factions, and went to the guillotine In April 1794, before his calendar had gone once round, the macabre Joke of the season: he died in *Germinal*, the month of the green. The days of the calendar became the names of what happened on them: The ninth of *Thermidor*, when Robespierre fell; the eighteenth of *Brumaire*, When Napoleon took the Republic. And Napoleon ended it, the hem Of the new time cut: on the first of January, 1806, the old year Came back, and the Sundays, and the saints. The Revolution's time Lived twelve years, and in the Paris Commune for a few weeks in 1871, And in the names: *Germinal*, the novel; *Thermidor*, the lobster; the rhyme Of the months still sung. Now hold the mirror. This book is one Of the calendars that came after. The Gaian calendar remakes time too: A new era, counted from the deep past of the human story, not a birth; Thirteen months of twenty-eight days, every date on the same weekday, the true Perpetual year. And it learned from the French: the week was not worth Breaking. The seven days stay. The rest stays: three sabbaths, not one in ten. And every day of the year is named, as the poet named them, but not for a plant: For a chapter of the scripture, read that day; and now the dead, the women and men Of the ancestors, kept on their day. The poet's slant Was right: give every day a meaning, and the year becomes a liturgy. His error was to break the rhythm of the body's rest For the sake of a number. Learn both. A calendar is a theology And a promise to the tired. The French made the year a field, the best Of their gift, and broke the Sunday, the worst of their error. Keep the field. Keep the rest. Name the days. Do not let the number rule the body. And remember the poet who named *Germinal* and died in it, the terror Of his times around him: the grape, the fog, the frost. The year is a story.