Contemporary Belgian Poetry / Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell

by Unknown

ALBERT GIRAUD.

1860—.

THE TRIBUNES.
The people have had masters whose strong faces,
Charged with imperious will, their masses cowed,
Who spoke with regal voices ringing loud
To draw out of their sleep lethargic races.
The word they cast down from the market-places
In the four winds of Heaven vibrated proud
With bitter love and majesty unbowed,
Threatening to make of cities desert spaces.
The crowd remember yet their magic names,
And echo them with thunderous acclaims
Of welcome to the coming victory.
The legendary marble where they stand
Rises on history's threshold, and their hand
Wrathfully sways the billowing days to be.
CORDOVANS.
You leathers red with autumn's, victory's dyes!
In some old oratory's night you blaze,
Where sleeps the heavy splendour of dead days;
You with your hues of epic, evening skies,
Mysterious as fiery meres of gold,
You dream of those who trailed their swords, and bowed
Above your cushions stamped with wafers proud
Their gashed, tanned faces in the days of old,
With an odour of adventure in their capes.
Red leathers whom the peace of hangings drapes,
You are like tragic sunsets, worn were ye
By legendary heroes, who enriched
The Kings they served, and all the world bewitched,
And who upon a copper, kindled sea,
You Cordovans dyed deep with war and pride,
Embarked in summer cool of eventide!
You are chimerical with gathered lives;
Of new Americas you guard the gleams,
You sunk in dazzled and vermilion dreams,
In you the soul of ancient suns survives!
FLORISE.
Richly mature, upon the bed of joy
Strown with crushed flowers, Florise bends lovingly
Her heavy-lidded great eyes o'er the boy
Whom she has made man ere his puberty.
Fair as a sunset that on roses lingers,
Sweet as the wind is he in lilac-trees.
With gratitude he fondles the deft fingers
That guided him into love's mysteries.
Heavy with glad fatigue, their senses thus
Dream, but breaking off their amorous
Embrace, as though a cry she would withhold,
She feels her heart within her pale, and presses
Her face upon the pillow, for she guesses
Her too young lover sees her growing old.

HECATE.
The moon has a kiss that clings
Like those of cold women whom
Minions with fertile womb
Drive from the bed of Kings.
She weeps her white distress
On spires, and lays a sheet
Of suppliant light at the feet
Of crosses pitiless.
But breaks her prayer, which is vain,
And raises herself again,
In pale and barren pride;
And casts, with the cruel glance
Of her lidless eye, far and wide
Hysteric radiance.
IN THE REIGN OF THE BORGIAS.
In the gilt palace where young slave-girls show
Like bunches of gold grapes their breasts erect,
In a soft room with burning drapery decked,
The conclave's end illumes a golden glow.
Near pages who their yellow hair have smoothed,
And whom the evening's kisses feminize,
Sit, red as lava in their gorgeous dyes,
The Roman Cardinals, by music soothed.
They worship flesh; and the unnatural, thinned
Voices of eunuchs quiver o'er their napes
With a thrill of pleasure like the lust of rapes;
And Roman girls dishevel in the wind,
In the fantastic, smoky night of porches,
Their manes of fire like wildly streaming torches.
ABSORPTION.
Woman, my longing to be nothing clings
To thee, whose stagnant eyes are pools of night,
Liquid indifference, where is no light
Save the kaleidoscope of imaged things.
Thy sable hair, so sultry and so fresh,
When I untie it, billows o'er thy shape
Like evening's shadow o'er a pale landscape,
And slowly eats the whiteness of thy flesh.
The sapid kiss of thy rich-moulded mouth
Falls, with no impulse known, and with no sound,
As ripened fruit falls heavy to the ground,
In the slow silence of the autumn's drouth.
As into water I descend in thee;
And I am cradled vaguely on thy breasts,
Which are as white as billows' foamy crests,
And heave above thy breathing like the sea.
Thy cadenced walk is like old liturgies;
It trails with royal rhythm its broad verses,
And with grave grace before mine eyes rehearses
All the Gregorian chant's solemnities.
O save me from my murderous dreams, thou bright
Bosom of silence, mouth that sates the sense,
Urn of oblivion, pillow of indolence;
Annihilate me in thy bosom's night!
My weakness by thy savorous strength is nursed,
And in thy gaping love absorbing me
I taste the time when all I am shall be
In Nature's vast and flowering corpse dispersed.
THE YOUTH AMONG THE LILIES.
In the voluptuous Room of Lilies, made
As a deaf ear by the unhealthy shade
Of vinous tapestry wherein ferments
The sunset, drunk with Church and censer scents
The dying Dauphin, with his woman's slow
Eyes, sees at his feet the ermine snow
Of the hushed carpet, and the oriel's slit
Sifting a trembling glimmer on to it
Of lying lilacs and of faëry roses,
And the pale youth his heavy lids uncloses
And sees upon the heaven's crimson rim
Women whose lifted breasts call unto him.
RESIGNATION.
I have fought against myself, I have cried in pain,
Writhed breathless in my wounded spirit's night,
And with my life in rags, a piteous sight,
I come out of the Hell which is my brain.
I know full well to-day, my dream was mad;
My love of autumn was a crime, no doubt;
And like a nail I tear the yearning out
That my too simple heart for childhood had.
My cross! Lance in my side! I bring to you
This verse like Christmas evenings white and calm,
When the sovran palpitation of the palm
Hovers against the heaven's freezing blue;
This verse whereinto all my grief shall pass,
Verse of a man resigned, misunderstood,
Verse into which my love must shed its blood,
Long bleeding, like a sunset on stained glass.
VOICES.
Voice of my weeping blood, voices you of my flesh,
My panting, frantic flesh, O pensive voices,
Louder than when a surging crowd rejoices,
Hush! lest the dear, dead past should bloom afresh!
Be silent, you long voices! Memory closes
On velvet voices, voices of flowers of old
That dreamt in her flesh and sang in her voice of gold;
Voice of lascivious jasmine and moss roses,
Be silent! Hush my sorrow and my shame!
Into my heart silence and winter came:
Silence is snowing into my heart's dark vast.
Snow, snow, O silence! Spread your cool above
Hell's roses, cover up their fires at last,
And in the shadow slain my only love.
And in the shadow slain my only love.

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