Contemporary Belgian Poetry Part 31

But she who hailed him from the bank, Beyond the waves, among the rushes rank That rim the rolling heath, Into the mists receded more and more.

The windows, with their eyes, And the dials of the towers upon the sh.o.r.e, Watched him, with doubled back, Straining and toiling at the oar,

And heard his muscles crack.

Of a sudden broke an oar, Which the current bore On heavy waves down to the sea.

And she who hailed him from the mist, In the bl.u.s.tering wind, appeared More madly still her arms to twist, Towards him who never neared.

The ferryman took to the oar remaining With such a might, That all his body cracked with straining, And his heart shook with feverish fright.

A sudden shock, the rudder tore, And the current bore This remnant to the sea.

The windows on the sh.o.r.e, Like eyes with fever great, And the dials of the towers, those widows straight That in their thousands throng A river bank, were obstinately staring At this mad fellow obstinately daring His crazy voyage to prolong.

And she who hailed him there with chattering teeth, Howled and howled in the mists of night, With head stretched out in frantic fright To the unknown, the vast, and rolling heath.

The ferryman, as a statue stands, Bronze in the storm that paled his blood, With the one oar firm in his hands, Beat the waves, and bit the flood.

His old hallucinated eyes See the lit distances rejoice, Whence reaches him the lamentable voice, Under the freezing skies.

His last oar breaks, His last oar the current takes, Like a straw, down to the sea.

The ferryman exhausted sank Upon his bench, with sweat that poured, His loins with vain exertion sore, A high wave struck on the lee-board, He looked, behind him lay the bank: He had not left the sh.o.r.e.

The windows and the dials gazed, With eyes they opened wide, amazed, Where all his strength to ruin ran; But the old, stubborn ferryman Kept all the same, for G.o.d knows when, The green reed in his teeth, even then.

THE RAIN.

As reeled from an exhaustless bobbin, the long rain, Interminably through the long gray day, Lines the green window pane With its long threads of gray, The reeled, exhaustless rain, The long rain, The rain.

It has been ravelling out, since last sunset, Rags hanging soft and low From sulky skies of jet.

Unravelling, patient, slow, Upon the roads, since last sunset, On roads and streets, Continual sheets.

Along the leagues that wind Through quiet suburbs to the fields behind, Along the roads interminably bending, In funeral procession, drenched, resigned, Toiling, bathed in sweat and steam, Vehicles with tilted coverings are wending; In ruts so regular, And parallel so far By night to join the firmament they seem, The water drips hour after hour, The spouts gush, and the trees shower, With long rain wet, With rain tenacious yet.

Rivers o'er rotten dikes are br.i.m.m.i.n.g Upon the meadows where drowned hay is swimming; The wind is whipping walnut trees and alders, And big black oxen wading stand Deep in the water of the polders, And bellow at the writhen sky; And evening is at hand, Bringing its shadows to enfold the plain, and lie Cl.u.s.tered at the washed tree's root; And ever falls the rain, The long rain, As fine and dense as soot.

The long rain, The long rain falls afresh; And its identic thread Weaves mesh by mesh A raiment making naked shred by shred The cottages and farmyards gray Of hamlets crumbling fast away; A bunch of linen rags that hang down sick Upon a loosely planted stick; Here a blue dovecote to the roof that cleaves; Sinister window panes Plastered with paper rank with mildew stains; Dwellings whose regular eves Form crosses on their gable ends of stone; Uniform, melancholy mills, Standing like horns upon their hills; Chapels, and spires with ivy overgrown; The rain The long rain Winter-long beneath them burrows.

The rain, in lines, The long, gray rain untwines Its watery tresses o'er its furrows, The long rain Of countries old, Torpid, eternally unrolled.

THE FISHERMEN.

Up from the sea a flaky, dank, Thickening fog rolls up, and chokes Windows and closed doors, and smokes Upon the slippery river bank.

Drowned gleams of gas-lamps shake and fall Where rolls the river's carrion; The moon looks like a corpse, and on The heaven's rim its burial.

But flickering lanterns now and then Light up and magnify the backs, Bent obstinately in their smacks, Of the old river fishermen, Who all the time, from last sunset, For what night's fis.h.i.+ng none can know, Have cast their black and greedy net, Where silent, evil waters flow.

Deep down beyond the reach of eye Fates of Evil gathering throng, Which lure the fishers where they lie To fish for them with patience strong, True to their task of simple toiling In contradictory fogs embroiling.

And o'er them peal the minutes stark, With heavy hammers peal their knells, The minutes sound from belfry bells, The minutes hard of autumn dark, The minutes list.

And the black fishers in their s.h.i.+ps, In their cold s.h.i.+ps, are clad in shreds; Down their cold nape their old hat drips And drop by drop in water sheds All the mist.

Their villages are numb and freeze; Their huts are all in ruin sunk, And the willows and the walnut-trees The winds of the west have whipped and shrunk; And not a bark comes through the dark, And never a cry through the void midnight, That floated, humid ashes blight.

And never helping one another, Never brother hailing brother, Never doing what they ought, For himself each fisher's thought: And the first draws his net, and seizes All the fry of his poverty; And the next drags up, as keen as he, The empty bottoms of diseases; Another opens out his net To griefs that on the surface swim; And another to his vessel's rim Pulls up the flotsam of regret.

The river churns, league after league, Along the dikes, and runs away, As it has done so many a day, To the far horizon of fatigue; Upon its banks skins of black clay By night perspire a poison draught; The fogs are fleeces far to waft, And to men's houses journey they.

Never a lantern streaks the dark, And nothing stirs in the fisher's bark, Save, nimbusing with halos of blood, The thick white felt of the cl.u.s.tering fogs, Silent Death, who with madness clogs The brains of the fishermen on the flood.

Lonely at the fog's cold heart, Each sees not each, though side by side; Their arms are tired, their vessels ride By sandbanks marked on ruin's chart.

Why in the dark do they not hail each other?

Why does a brother's voice console not brother?

No, numb and haggard they remain, With vaulted back and heavy brain, With, by their side, their little light Rigid in the river's night.

Like blocks of shadow there they arc, And never pierce their eyes afar Beyond the acrid, spongy wet; And they suspect not that above, Luring them with a magnet's love, Stars immense are s.h.i.+ning yet.

These fishers in black torment tossed, They are the men immensely lost Among the knells and far aways And far beyonds where none can gaze; And in their souls' monotonous deeps The humid autumn midnight weeps.

SILENCE.

Since last the summer broke above her A flash of lightning from his thunder-sheath, Silence has never left her cover In the heather on the heath.

Across her refuge peers the steeple, And with its fingers shakes its bells; Around her prowl the vehicles, Laden with uproarious people; Around her, where the fir-trees end, In its rut the cart-wheel grates; But never a noise has strength to rend The tense, dead s.p.a.ce where silence waits.

Since the last loud thunder weather, Silence has stirred not in the heather; And the heath, wherein the evenings sink, Beyond the endless thickets, and The purple mounds of hidden sand, Lengthens her haunts to heaven's brink.

And even winds stir not the slim Larches at the marsh's rim, Where she will gla.s.s her abstract eyes In pools where wondering lilies rise; And only brushes her the clouds'

Shadow when they rush in crowds, Or else the shadow of a flight Of hovering hawks at heavens' height.

Since the last flash of lightning streaked the plain, Nothing has bitten, in her vast domain.

And those who in her realm did roam, Whether it were in dawn or gloam, They all have felt their hearts held fast In spells of mystery she has cast.

She, like an ample, final force, Keeps on the same unbroken course;

Black walls of pinewoods gloom and bar The paths of hope that gleam afar; Cl.u.s.ters of dreamy junipers Frighten the feet of wanderers; Malignant mazes intertwine With paths of cunning curve and line, And the sun every moment s.h.i.+fts The goal to which confusion drifts.