Contemporary Belgian Poetry Part 19

WINTER DESIRES.

I weep for lips whose brief Red no kisses hath known, And for longing left to moan In a reaped, rich harvest of grief.

The rain must pour and pour!

Or the snow is thick on the sward, While crouching wolves do ward My threshold of dreams evermore,

And watch in my soul ever sighing, With eyes in the past nigh dead, All the blood that of old was shed Of lambs on the hard ice dying.

Only the moon with its chill, Monotonous sadness lights, While autumn the thin gra.s.s blights, My longing with hunger ill.

ROUNDELAY OF WEARINESS.

I sing the dirges pale Of kisses lost and cold; On love's thin gra.s.s I behold Weddings of them that ail.

In my slumber voices sing; How nonchalant they are!

And in streets without sun or star Lilies are opening.

These things my heart desired, These flights that backward fall, Are the poor in a palace hall, And in the dawn candles tired.

At the grim night's threshold I launch Mine eyes far out, and know That the moon, with its linen slow And blue, my dreams will stanch.

BURNING GLa.s.s.

Ancient hours I behold Under regrets ripening, And fairer flora spring From their secrets' azure mould.

Desires blow through my spirit.

O gla.s.s upon my desires!

And the withered gra.s.s my soul fires, When breathing memories stir it.

It grows with my thoughts for mould, And in the blue fleeing fast I see the griefs of the past Their flower-petals unfold.

My soul through memories gropes, Feels the touch of their Curtaining dead mohair; And greens with other hopes.

LOOKS OF EYES.

O these looks of poor, tired eyes!

And yours and mine!

And those that are no more and those that shall be!

And those that never shall arrive and those that notwithstanding do exist!

Some seem to be visiting the poor on a Sunday; Some are like sick people with no home; Some are like lambs in a meadow covered with linen.

And these unusual looks!

There are some under whose vault are people watching the execution of a virgin in a closed room, And some that make one think of unknown melancholies!

Of peasants at the windows of a factory, Of a gardener who has turned weaver, Of a summer afternoon in a museum of waxen images, Of the thoughts of a queen who watches a sick man in the garden, Of an odour of camphor in the forest, Of shutting a princess up in a tower, some festal day, Of sailing for a whole week on a warm ca.n.a.l.

Pity all those who come out with short steps like convalescents at harvest time!

Pity all those who look like children gone astray at meal-time!

Pity the eyes of the wounded man who looks up at the surgeon, His looks like tents under the storm!

Pity the looks of the tempted virgin!

(O! rivers of milk are going to flee in the darkness!

And the swans are dead amid the serpents!) And the looks of the virgin who succ.u.mbs!

Princesses abandoned in swamps without an issue!

And these eyes wherein vessels in full sail vanish lit by the tempest!

And the pity of all these looks which suffer with not being otherwhere!

And all the sufferings indistinct and yet diverse!

And these that never any one will understand!

And these poor looks nigh mute!

And these poor looks that whisper!

And these poor stifled looks!

Here in our midst one thinks one is in a castle which serves as a hospital!

And so many others look like tents, lilies of war, on the convent's narrow lawn!

And so many others look like wounded men being tended in a hot-house!

And so many others look like a sister of charity on an ocean liner where there are no sick!

O! to have seen all these looks!

To have taken all these looks into oneself!

And to have exhausted mine in meeting them!

And henceforth not to be able any more to close my eyes!

THE SOUL IN THE NIGHT.

My soul in the end is tired; Tired of her sad, sad state, And of being undesired.

Sad and tired I await Your hands upon my face.

I await your pure hands, still As angels of ice might be, Till they bring the ring to me: On my face your fingers chill, Like a treasure under the sea.

I await their healing deep, Not to die in the sun, To die without hope in the sun!

They wash my burning eyes, Where so many poor ones sleep.

Where so many swans on the sea, Are stretching, lost on the main, Their necks morose in vain, Where along the gardens of winter, The sick break roses in rain.

I wait for your pure fingers yet, Like angels of ice are they, I wait till mine eyes they wet, The withered gra.s.s of mine eyes, Where the tired lambs are astray!