Contemporary Belgian Poetry / Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell

by Unknown

GRÉGOIRE LE ROY.

1862—.

THE SPINSTER PAST.
The old woman spins, and her wheel
Is prattling of old, old things;
As though to a doll she sings,
And memories over her steal.
The hemp is yellow and long,
The old woman spins the thread,
Bending her white, weary head
Over the wheel's lying song.
The wheel goes round with a whirl,
The yellow hemp is unwound,
She turns it round and round,
She is playing like a girl.
The yellow hemp is unwound,
She sees herself a girl,
As blonde as the skeins that whirl,
She is dancing round and round.
The wheel rolls round with a whirr,
And the hemp is humming as well,
She hears an old lover tell
And whisper his love for her.
Her tired hands rest above
The wheel, its spinning is done,
And with the hemp are spun
Her memories of love.
ROUNDEL OF OLD WOMEN.
Little old women, my thoughts,
The snow falls from the vast,
Death and uncertainty palls
All the things of the past.
Why is my heart so chill
Under these skies overcast,
In these winters that last and last,
These winters calm and still?
You little old women who glean,
Make a bonfire of your past,
Of your reeds snapped by the blast,
And of all your barren dreams.
All that your sorrow remembers,
Burn it like dry brushwood,
And sit and warm your blood
Over the dying embers.
And mumble in grief and dejection
Of the happy days of your youth,
And empty with fingers of ruth
The spindles of blue recollection.
And when the cottage is damp
With the weeping of the night,
One of you will light,
Like a shaded, smoky lamp,
—Oh! why must I weep and perish,
And nothing, nothing forget?—
The best of memories yet,
The memory of Her you cherish.
HANDS.
Glued like the eyes of a thief
At my heart's window-pane, gazing in,
Were two pale hands, hands of grief,
Hands as of Death, bone and skin.
I shivered to see them stare,
Weird as the moon in the blue,
Lifting to me their despair,
As the hands of the damned might do.
And He of those desolate hands,
Who was my visitor grim?
Death on my threshold stands,
Since I gazed on the hands of Him.
It was not a blessing they shed,
Curst of a truth were they,
For I have longed to be dead,
Since I saw their ghastly ray.
For the wine of my loving is sour,
And full of tears and of harm,
And deadens the bread of the hour
That is signed with their fatal charm.
Hands of poison! Hands of despair!
Gestures of virgins of gloom!
You have shone on my house as a pair
Of candles a corpse illume!
I have seen Hope close her door,
And my mourning is watching Death,
While the North wind is blowing o'er
My candle dead in His breath.
MY EYES.
Poor eyes, you lamps that are failing,
How little remains of your glow?
Encroaching night is veiling
The things of the here-below.
Or is your gathering gloaming
Indifference alone?
O eyes that once went roaming
To Beauty and the Unknown!
You sink your lids like a curtain,
When Love goes by, a flame;
You know your sorrow is certain,
And age to you is shame.
And yet, my heart's best praising,
O flameless lamps, is for you;
Through you my spirit gazing
First saw, and felt, and knew!
You showed me the mountain steep, with
The sea and the stars above,
And all that my life is deep with:
My child, and death, and Love.
MY HANDS.
My poor hands, so wan and faded,
Agile once as a bird,
My rhythms of speech you aided,
And by my brain you were stirred;
Poor wrinkled hands, like two
Old women worn and wizened,
My thoughts run on, but you
In listlessness are prisoned.
Yet I bless you, my hands, now that strife
Is done, and the heart reposes;
You taught me the touch of roses;
And the caresses of life.
All the hands you touched, hands of brothers,
And of women I loved in dole,
And the faithful hands of mothers:
I bear you yet in my soul.
SILENCES.
There is an age, sad age, and hour obscure,
When man, aweary of adventurous dreams,
Turns from the far horizon's lure
His eyes towards the Inn of Good Repose.
Then simple Thoughts and staid,
Like an eager, humble serving-maid,
With delicate cares discreet
Lull infinite regrets to sleep,
And kindle in the heart once more
The fire of memories of the yore,
And from the hearth drive hopes importunate,
That one by one may steal within the great
Silences.
The silence of our memories
Whereon already falls the snow of years;
Love's silence, whose abandoned tomb
No tender hand makes bloom;
Silence of hopes long seeking, which
Have died like beggars in the ditch;
Silence of faith, whose torch has been put out
By life and doubt.
These silences our brothers, in they glide,
Like white monks, rigid, stern,
And sit down, without speaking, at our side....
Then we with Truth sojourn.
Ere they had come we saw but of the world
Its flowers and orchards pasturing our eyes,
But, when they entered in, our deeper souls
Explored, together with our thought, the night.
One of life's secrets each of them reveals,
One of fate's shadows each of them dispels,
And they can tell us whether we have walked
Along the road where God's hand pointed us.
Our friends, our children, all whose life seemed bound
Together with our own most intricately,
We see them far, alone in the great fight
Waged with Infinity, and Pain, and Death.
We thought that their hands which our hands have clasped,
And the long gazing of our eyes in theirs,
And that our voices uttering one thought,
And all our common hopes and self-same griefs,
And all our evenings lived beneath one lamp,
And all those hours upon one dial told,
The self-same clock of destiny—
Sealed our converging fates for evermore!
Now suddenly we are alone, so far
From life that we can scan the vast expanse
That separates us and divides us all.
These pure child's eyes, these beautiful fondled hands,
These voices intertwined like woven flowers,
Have touched perhaps, and recognized each other,
But like to friends, or strangers almost, who
To-morrow will resume their separate way.
And now that silence from us far removes
The lies of love for which our senses longed,
Lo, in the universe our soul is lost!
The child of our own blood, who, piously,
Some last, last night will come to close our eyes,
How he is one, his fate how otherwise
Than ours, how far removed, and how alone!
He enters life! He is no more our own!
Thus shall they go towards the call,
Till, lonely and despoiled of all,
Naked and poor we face the eternal hour!
And, seeing our heart as a temple with no god,
And closed our soul to every new delight,
Empty our hands, and in our eyes no sight,
We shall make question of ourselves: What tie
Unites this lowest, lamentable thing
We are ... to Immortality?

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