And Now That the Tall Foliage Has Fallen

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

And now that the tall foliage has fallen
That held the garden sheltered beneath its shade,
One sees, through the bare branches, rising
Over there, toward the horizon, the roofs of the old villages.

As long as summer darted its joy, not one of us
Saw them gathered not far from our door,
But today that flowers and leaves are dead
We think of them often with gentle thoughts.

Other people live there, between stone walls,
Behind a worn threshold protected by a canopy,
Having as their only friends the rain and the wind
And the lamp whose friendly light shines,

In the shadow, at falling evening, when the fire awakens
And the clock in which time sways falls silent,
As much as we, no doubt, they love silence
To feel themselves thinking through their eyes.

Nothing troubles, neither for them nor for us, these hours
Of deep and tranquil and tender intimacy
Where one blesses the moment that was for having been
And of which the one to come is always the best.

Tell me, as they too clasp their old happiness
Made of sorrow and joy between their trembling hands,
They know their bodies that have grown old together
And their gazes worn by the same griefs.

The roses of their life, they love them faded
With their dead glory and their last perfume
And the heavy memory of their departed splendor
Wrinkling, leaf by leaf, in the garden of the years.

Against the black winter, like recluses
They stay huddled in their human fervor
And nothing brings them down and nothing leads them
To complain of the days they no longer possess.

Oh! the tranquil people deep in the old villages!
Tell me, do we feel them near to our heart!
And how much, in their eyes, do we find again our tears
And our strength and our ardor in their courage!

They are there, under their roof, seated around the fires
Or lingering sometimes at the edge of their window,
And, on this evening of ample and floating wind, perhaps
They have thought of us what we think of them.

Emile Verhaeren

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-and-now-that-the-tall-foliage-has-fallen-emile-verhaeren/