Contemporary Belgian Poetry / Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell

by Unknown

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.

---

VICTOR KINON.

1873—.

THE RESURRECTION OF DREAMS.
It is as warm as when the lilacs' scent
Is with the fragrance of magnolias blent,
When you can hear the seeds crack in the ground,
When first your face and hands are summer-browned
When every now and then in heavy drops
The rain begins, and all as sudden stops....
Slate and rust clouds voluptuously mass
Their bulk o'er the green corn and nibbled grass
Of fields that billow to yon purpled woods,
Which, through bronzed clouds, a sheaf of sunbeam floods.
Sweating, I climb the slope, where, like a long
White ribbon, runs the brook and sings his song.
A noisy cock pursues a clucking hen.
A sparrow flies with bits of hay. And then
Such is the silence you can hear from far,
Where the red roof-tiles of the village are,
The heavy, steady humming of the bees ...
(Can there be blossoms on the willow-trees?)
Here is the wood.—Pale with surprise you see
The ardent silence and the mystery
Whose sap swells in the branches which it studs
With downy catkins and with sticky buds.
Under the elm-trees' violaceous shade
The fresh anemones have snowed the glade;
The undergrowth bathes in a fawn half-light;
The pure air crackles with a lizard's flight;
And there, where on the hazel bough is poured
A ray of sunshine darted like a sword,
A trembling cloud of yellow pollen rises....
And now mysterious mirth my heart surprises
With words and cries of love and tenderness,
And an intoxicated glow and stress,
Because the spring with legendary dyes,
The white of snow and blue of Paradise,
And tender green of leaves all dewy sprent,
With nightingales, and honeysuckle's scent,
And chafers hanging heavily from blue
Lilacs, wet with rosy diamonds too,
With the clear crystal and mad pearls that gush
Out of the beak of quail and pairing thrush,
All the divine, forgotten spring reminds
My heart of ardours where the pathway winds!...
I love! My breast is full of flowers and birds!
I shall break out in ecstasy of words!
I love!—But whom?—I care not whom nor how!
I love, with all my blood in frenzy now,
And all the sighs that heave my breast, the maid
Who smiling comes beneath her cool sunshade....

MIDNIGHT.
The earth is black with trees of velvet under
A low sky laden with great clouds of thunder.
The gnomes of midnight haunt the dark, whose ears,
With luxury veiled, hear as a deaf man hears.
One is uneasy in one's stifling sheets,
And so uneasily the poor heart beats
That, bathed in sweat, at last you leave your bed,
And as in dream about the chamber tread.
You throw the window open. Not a sound.
Surely the wind is swooning on the ground,
And listening to some holy, mystic birth
Preparing in the entrails of the earth.
You listen, earnest, to your heart's loud shock
Beating with pained pulsations like a clock.
Then to the window-sill you pull a chair,
And watch the clouds weigh down the helpless air
Over the gardens whence, in sick perfumes,
Exudes the sweat of trees and wildered blooms.
HIDING FROM THE WORLD.
Shall not our love be like the violet, Sweet?
And open in the dewy, dustless air
Its dainty chalice with blue petals, where
The shade of bushes makes a shy retreat?
And we will frame our daily happiness
By joining hearts, lips, brows in rapt caress
Far from the world, its noises and conceit ...
Shall we not hide our modest love between
Trees wafting cool on flowers and grasses green?

THE GUST OF WIND.
I closed my window, lit my lamp, reclined
My temple on my hand, and sadly thought:
"Now let me read, and dream, and rest my mind ...
But, O my God, my heart is so distraught!
Yet, let me read." It was a traveller's book.
O sailing on broad rivers, on whose shore
Are baobabs and mangroves, while the song
Of curious birds wafts with the ship along,
Together with the tiger's grating roar....
A sudden gust of wind the window shook,
Followed afar off by continued whining.
I throw the window open wide, to look
Into the night, and see, with white teeth shining
In mocking grin, Death pass upon a steed
With yellow teeth, making its wet flanks bleed
With spurs of bone, and in the wind its mane
Tossing, together with his winding-sheet;
See Death, while all the trees moan out in pain,
Race under clouds lit by a livid sheet,
And brandishing above him his bright scythe!
Afar, Italian poplars curve their slim
And parallel trunks beneath the wind of him;
Dishevelled willows in the shadow writhe,
And the earth, looking at the monster, pants....
Now he is swallowed by the raucous squall.
Long I stand gazing at the rise and fall
Of foliage broken by a rending sob,
When suddenly the wind, with hollow throb,—
Lugubrious present from the Reaper!—heaves
Into the room a flight of withered leaves.
THE SETTING SUN.
The stainless snow and the blue,
Lit by a pure gold star,
Nearly meet; but a bar
Of fire separates the two.
A rime-frosted, black pinewood,
Raising, as waves roll foam,
Its lances toothed like a comb,
Dams the horizon's blood.
In the tomb of blue and white
Nothing stirs save a crow,
Unfolding solemnly slow
Its silky wing black as night.

---

CHARLES VAN LERBERGHE.

1861-1907.

ERRANT SYMPATHY.
From some unknown horizon,
Wafted from far away,
Fraternal sympathy flies on
The scented breath of the May.
Now dreamers in cloudland turrets,
And maidens ripe with the time,
Up the white steps of their spirits
Feel loves invisible climb.
They know not from what glances,
In the pensive peace of the hour,
There are unknown lips in their fancies
Opening with theirs in flower.
So keen and kind the bliss is,
That their foreheads, younger made
By these intangible kisses,
Guard dreams that never fade.
THE GARDEN INCLOSED.
Fulcite me floribus.
Dear is thy bandage, Love,
To my heavy lids that it closes;
It weighs like the sweet burden of
Sunshine on frail, white roses.
I walk as to voices that call,
I seem over waters to hover,
And every wave, like a lover,
Folds round my feet as they fall.
Who has unloosened my tresses,
As through the dark places I came?
Girdled with unseen caresses,
I plunge into billows of flame.
My lips, where my soul is crooning,
Open in rapt desire,
Like a burning blossom swooning
Over a river on fire.
* * * * * * * * *
Dormis et cor meum vigilat.
My hands lie for my breasts to soothe,
Of playing and of distaffs tired;
My white hands, my hands desired,
Seem asleep on waters smooth.
Far from futile, waste repining,
On this my beauty's throne,
Frail, calm, gentle Queens reclining,
My royal hands dream of their own.
And while mine eyes are closed, and still is
The golden hair my breast that robes,
I am the virgin holding lilies,
I am the infant holding globes.
* * * * * * * * *
Si floruit vinea.
In mulberry time they sang my lips that yield
To keen caresses,
And, like the rain upon the summer field,
My long, warm tresses.
In time of vintaging they sang mine eyes,
Mine eyes half-closed,
Veiled by tired lids and lashes unreposed,
Like autumn skies.
I have all gleams and savours, I am supple
As a bindweed in hedgerow bowers,
My breasts are curved as flames are, or a couple
Of sister flowers.
* * * * * * * * *
Ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus mihi.
When thou dost plunge into mine eyes thine eyes,
I am all within mine eyes.
When thy mouth unties my mouth,
My love is nothing save my mouth.
When thy fingers lightly touch my hair,
I am not if it be not there.
When they touch my breasts at any time,
Like a sudden fire to them I climb.
Is it this which is to thee most dear?
Here my soul is, all my life is here.
* * * * * * * * *
In a perfume of white roses
She sits, dream fast;
And the shadow is beautiful as though an angel there
were glassed.
The gloam descends, the grove reposes;
The leaves and branches through
On the gold Paradise is opening one of blue.
A last faint wave breaks on the darkening shore.
A voice that sang just now is murmuring.
A murmuring breath is breathing ... now no more.
In the silence petals fall....
* * * * * * * * *
The angel of the morning star came down
Into her garden, and he spake to her:
"Come with me, I will show thee many a lake,
Valleys delightful, secret forest bowers,
Where still, in other dreams than ours,
The subtle spirits wake
Of the earth."
She stretched her arms, with laughter
Looking between her lashes on
The angel flaming in the sun,
And, when he moved, in silence followed after.
And while they wandered to the groves of shade
The Angel round her laid
His arm, and set
Among her bright hair longer than his wings
The flowers he gathered dewy wet
Upon the branches over her.
THE TEMPTATION.
Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,
Glittering sons and radiant daughters.
—D.G. ROSSETTI.
A silence softened the declining day,
A moan, and then a love-sigh died away.
Apples were falling one by one between
The grasses warm and shadows emerald green.
The sun sank down from branch to branch; a bird
Singing among the stirless leaves was heard.
A scent of soft and swooning blossoms strayed,
Like a slow sea-wave, through the deepening shade.
And, to hear better her who comes, with bent
Eyes, as in dream, and heart to meet her sent,
By paths where never sound the silence jars,
Voluptuous evening, in the heated air,
With hands of subtle and accomplice care,
Spread the insidious net of oblique stars.
ART THOU WAKING?
Art thou waking, my perfume sunny,
My perfume of gilded bees,
Art thou floating along the breeze,
My perfume of sweet honey?
In the hush of the gloam, when my feet
Roam through the rich garden-closes,
Dost thou tell I am coming, thou smell
Of my lilacs, and my warm roses?
Am I not like in this gloam a
Cluster of fruit concealed
By the leaves, and by nothing revealed,
Save in the night its aroma?
Does he know, now the hour is dim,
That I am half opening my hair,
Does he know that it scents the air,
Does its odour reach to him?
Does he feel I am straining my arms?
And that the lilies of my valleys
Are dewy with passion-balm
That for his touching tarries?
ALL OF WHITE AND OF GOLD.
All of white and of gold
Are the pinions of my angels;
But Love
Hath pinions changing.
His sweet wings are turn by turn
The colour of purple and roses,
And the crimson sea where uncloses
The kiss of the sun.
The beautiful wings of my angels
Are very slow,
And open closed.
But the agile wings of Love
Are impatient,
And like hearts never rest.
THE RAIN.
The rain, my sister dear,
The summer rain warm and clear,
Gently flees, gently flies,
Through the moist atmosphere.
Her collar of white pearls
has come undone in the skies.
Blackbirds sing with all your might,
Dance magpies!
Among the branches downward pressed,
Dance flowers, dance every nest,
All that comes from the skies is blest.
To my mouth she approaches
Her wet lips of strawberries wild;
She has touched me with a mouth that smiled,
Everywhere at once,
With her millions of little fingers.
On a lawn
Of sounding flowers,
From the dawn to the evening hours,
And from the evening to the dawn,
She rains and rains again,
She rains with might and main.
Then the sun with golden hair
Dries the bare
Feet of the rain.
AT SUNSET.
At sunset,
Swans of jet,
Or fairies sombre,
Come out of the flowers, and things, and us
These are our shadows.
They advance: the day retreats.
Into the dusk they go,
With a gliding movement slow.
They gather, to each other call,
Seek with noiseless footfall,
And together all
With their wings so light
Make the great night.
But the dawn in the sea
Awakes and takes
His torch, then he
Climbs gleam by gleam,
Climbs in a dream.
Out of the waves arise
His tresses fair,
And blue eyes.
At once, as they were blown
Away, the shadows flee.
Where? Who can see?
Into the earth? Into the sea?
Into a flower? Into a stone?
Into us?
Who knows?
Their wings they close,
And now repose.
It is the morn.
A BARQUE OF GOLD.
In a barque of the Orient
Maidens three are coming back,
Maidens three from the Orient
Are coming in a barque of gold.
One is black,
Her hands the rudder hold,
On her curving lips with their essences of roses
She brings to us strange stories,
In the silence.
One is brown,
She holds the full sail down,
And on her feet are wings,
An angel's mien to us she brings
In her motionless bearing.
But one is fair,
At the prow she is sleeping,
As from the rising sun her hair
The wave is sweeping,
She brings us back in her eyes so bright
All the light.
LILIES THAT SPIN.
Now in this April morning, sweet
With folded shadows and doves cooing,
The dear child with her shy conceit
What is she busy doing?
The blonde trace where her footsteps go
Is lost in the grated garden's alleys;
I do not know, I do not know
The meaning of her cunning sallies.
With a long gown down to her heel,
Pensive and slow, with a silent gesture
Upon the sun at a white wheel
She is spinning a blue linen vesture.
And with blue eyes of bridal bliss
Smiling at her dream that glances,
Weaving golden foliages
Among the lilies of her fancies.