Contemporary Belgian Poetry Part 28

In smoky inns whose loft is reached by ladders, And with a grimy ceiling splashed by shocks Of hanging hams, black-puddings, onions, bladders, Rosaries of stuffed game, capons, geese, and c.o.c.ks Around a groaning table sit the gluttons Before the bleeding viands stuck with forks, Already loosening their waistcoat b.u.t.tons, With wet mouths when from flagons leap the cork Teniers, and Brackenburgh, and Brauwer, shaken With listening to Jan Steen's uproarious wit, Holding their bellies dithering with bacon, Wiping their chins, watching the hissing spit.

Their heavy-bodied Hebes, with their curving Bosoms in linen white without a stain, Are going round, and in long jets are serving Wine that a sunbeam filters through the pane, Before it sets on fire the kettles' paunches The Queens of Tippling are these women, whom Their swearing lovers, greedy of their haunches, Belabour as befits their youth in bloom, With sweating temples, blazing eyes, and lolling Tongue that keeps singing songs obscenely gay, With brandished fists, bodies together rolling, Blows fit to bruise their carcases, while they, With mouth for songs aye ready, throat for b.u.mpers, And blood for ever level with their skins, Dance fit to split the floor, they are such jumpers, And b.u.t.t their dancer as around he spins, And lick his face in kisses endless seeming, Then fall with ransacked corsage, wet with heat.

A smell of bacon fat is richly steaming From the huge platters charged with juicy meat; The roasts are pa.s.sed around, in gravy swimming, Under the noses of the guests, and pa.s.sed Around again, with fresh relays of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g.

And in the kitchen drudges wash up fast The platters to be sent back to the table; The dressers bulge, crowded with crockery; The cellars hold as much as they are able; And round the estrade where this agape In glowing red, from pegs hang baskets, ladles, Strainers, and saucepans, candlesticks, and flasks.

Two monkeys in a corner show their navels, Throning, with gla.s.s in hand, on two twin casks; A mellow light on every angle glimmers, Shines on the door-k.n.o.b, through the great keyhole, Clings to a pestle, filters through the skimmers, Is jewelled on the monster gala bowl, And slanting on the heated hearthstone sickens, Where, o'er the embers, turns to brown the flesh Of rosy sucking-pigs and fat c.o.c.k-chickens, That whet the edge of appet.i.te afresh.

From dawn to eve, from eve to dawn, and after, The masters with their women revel hold-- Women who play a farce of opulent laughter: Farce cynical, obscene, with sleeves uprolled, In corsage ript a flowering gorge not hiding, Belly that shakes with jollity, bright eyes.

Noises of orgy and of rut are gliding, Rumbling, and hissing, till they end in cries; A noise of jammed iron and of vessels banging; Brauwer and Steen tilt baskets on their crowns; Brackenburgh is two lids together clanging; Others with pokers fiddle gridirons, clowns Are all of them, eager to show their mettle; They dance round those who lie with feet in air; They sc.r.a.pe the frying-pan, they sc.r.a.pe the kettle; And the eldest are the steadiest gluttons there, Keenest in kisses, and the last to tumble; With greasy nose they lick the ca.s.seroles; One of them makes a rusty fiddle grumble, Whose bow exhausts itself in cabrioles; Some are in corners vomiting, and others Are snoring with their arms hung round their seats Babies are bawling for their sweating mothers To stuff their little mouths with monster teats.

Men, women, children, all stuffed full to bursting; Appet.i.tes ravening, and instincts rife, Furies of stomach, and of throats athirsting, Debauchery, explosion of rich life, In which these master gluttons, never sated, Too genuine for insipidities, Pitching their easels l.u.s.tily, created Between two drinking-bouts a masterpiece.

THE COWHERD.

In neckerchief and slackened ap.r.o.n goes The girl to graze the cows at dawn's first peep; Under the willow shade herself she throws To finish out her sleep.

Soon as she sinks she snores; around her brow And naked toes the seeded gra.s.ses rise; Her bulging arms are folded anyhow, And round them buzz the flies.

The insects that all heated places love Come flitting o'er the gra.s.s to bask in swarms Upon the mossy patch she lies above, And by her sprawling warms.

Sometimes her arm, with awkward empty sweep, Startles around her limbs the gratified Murmur of bees; but, greedy still of sleep, She turns to the other side.

The heavy, fleshy flowers the cattle browse Frame in the sleeping woman as she dreams; She has the heavy slowness of her cows, Her eye with their peace gleams.

Strength, that the trunk of oaks with knots embosses, Shines, as the sap does, in her; and her hair Is browner than barley in the fields that tosses, Or the sand in the pathways there.

Her hands are raw, and red, and chapped; the blood That through her tanned limbs rolls its waves of heat, Lashes her throat, and lifts her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as would The wind lift bending wheat.

Noon with a kiss of gold her rest surprises, Low willow branches o'er her shoulders lean, And blend, while heavier slumber in her eyes is, With her brown hair their green.

THE ART OF THE FLEMINGS.

I.

Art of the Flemings, thou didst know them, thou, Who well didst love them, wenches big of bone, With ruddy teats, and bodies like flowers blown; Thy proudest masterpieces tell us how.

Whether a G.o.ddess glimmers from thy painting, Or nymphs with dripping hair a shepherd sees Rising among the lonely irides, Or sailors to the sirens' kisses fainting,

Or females with full contours symbolizing The seasons beautiful, O glorious Art, These are the Masteries love-born in thy heart, The wenches of thy colours' gormandizing.

And to create their bodies' carnal splendour, Naked, and fat, and unashamed, thy brush Under their clear and glossy skin made blush A fire of unimagined colours tender.

They were a focussed light that flashed and glinted; Their eyes were kindled at the stars, and on Thy canvases their bosoms rose and shone, Like great bouquets of flesh all rosy-tinted.

Sweating with love they rolled about a clearing 'Mid in the wood, or bathed their feet in springs, While in the thickets full of noise of wings, Satyrs were prowling and through branches leering,

And hid their legs, salacious, s.h.a.gged, distorted; Their eyes, like sparks holing the darkness, lit Some leafy corner, their long mouths were slit With greasy smiles, their l.u.s.tful nostrils snorted,

Till, dogs in rut, they leapt to their b.i.t.c.hes; these Feign flight, and shiver coldly, blushing roses, Pushing the satyr off the part that closes, Squeezing their thighs together under his knees.

And some, by madness more than his ignited, Rounding their naked haunches, and rich flesh Of glorious croups beneath a showering mesh Of golden hair, to wild a.s.saults invited.

II.

You with the life with which yourselves abounded Conceived them, masters dear to fame, with red Brutalities of blood upon them shed, The bodies of your beauties richly rounded.

No pallid women sunk in listless poses Morosely on your canvases are seen, As the moon's face shimmers in waters green, Mirroring their phthisis and chlorosis,

With foreheads sad as is the day's declining, Sad as a dolorous music faints and dies, With heavy-lidded, sick and gla.s.sy eyes, In which consumption and despair are pining,

And false, affected grace of bodies faded Upon the sofas where their time they pa.s.s, In scented dressing-gowns of taffetas, And in chemises with a dear lace braided.

Nothing your brushes knew of painted faces, Nor of indecency, nor of the nice Hints of a cunning and perverted vice Which with its winking eye our art debases,

Nor of the pedlar Venuses whose draping Of curtains of the cushioned chamber hints, Nor corners of a venal flesh that glints In nests out of the low-necked dress escaping,

p.r.i.c.king, suggestive themes you knew not, faintings Of shepherdesses in false pastorals, No, nor voluptuous beds in hollow walls-- The pulsing women, masters, of your paintings,

In landscapes bright, or waited on by pages Crimsonly clad in panelled halls with gold, Or in the purple sumptuousness unrolled Of the G.o.d-guarded, mellow cla.s.sic ages,

Your women sweated health; they were serenely Crimson with blood, and white with corpulence; Ruts they did hold in leashed obedience, And led them at their heels with gesture queenly.

PEASANTS.

Not Greuze's ploughmen made insipid in The melting colours of his pastorals, So neatly dressed, so rosy, that one laughs To see the sugared idyll chastening The pastels of a Louis Quinze salon, But dirty, gross, and b.e.s.t.i.a.l--as they are.

Penned round some market town in villages, They know not them who traffic in the next, But hold them enemies to cheat and rogue.

Their fatherland? Not one believes in it, Except that it makes soldiers of their sons, To steal their labour for a span of years.

What is the fatherland to yokels? They See only, in a corner of their brains, Vaguely, the king, magnificent man of gold, In the braided velvet of his purple robes, A sceptre, and gemmed crowns escutcheoning The panelled walls of gilded palaces, Guarded by sentinels with ta.s.selled swords.

This do they know of power. It is enough.

And for the rest their heavy feet would march In clogs through duty, liberty, and law.

In everything by instinct ankylosed, A dirty almanac is all they read; And though they hear the distant cities roaring, So terrified are they by revolutions, That they are riveted to serfdom's chains, Fearing, if they should rear, the iron heel.

Along the black roads hollowed out with ruts, Dung-heaps in front and cinder-heaps behind, Stretch with low roofs and naked walls their huts Under the buffeting wind and lashing rain.

These are their farms. And yonder soars the church, Stained, to the north, with ooze of verdigris, And farther, squared with ditches, lie their fields, Fertile in patches, thanks to fat manure, And to the harrow's unrelenting teeth.

There they keep tilling with their obstinate hands The black glebe mined by moles, and rotten with Detritus, pregnant with the autumn's sperm.

With dripping brow they drive the spade in deep, Doubled above the furrows they must sow, Under the hail of March that whips their back.

And in the summer, when the ripe rye rocks With golden glints under the pouring sun, Here, in the fire of long and torrid days, Their restless sickle shaves the vast wheat-field, While from their wrinkled foreheads runs the sweat, Opening their skin from shoulders down to hips; Noon darts its brazier rays upon their heads; So raw the heat is that in meslin fields The too dry ears burst open, and the beasts, Their necks with gadflies riddled, pant in the sun.

And let November slow to die arrive, Rolling his hectic rattle through deaf woods, Howling his sobs and ending not his moans, Until his death-knell sounds--still runs their sweat.

Always anew preparing future crops, Under a sky spouting from swollen clouds, While the north wind tears big holes in the woods, And sweeps the broken stubble from the fields, So that their bodies soon in ruin fall: Let them be young and comely, broadly built, Winter that chills, summer that calcines them, Makes their limbs loathsome and their lungs short-breathed; Or old, and bearing the down-weighing years, With blear eyes, broken backs, and useless arms, And horror stamped upon their hedgehog face, They stagger under the ruin-loving wind.

And when Death opens unto them its doors; Their coffin sliding into the soft earth Seems only to contain a thing twice dead.