End of the Year, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

Beneath skies made of tow and soot,
Whence falls the rain, dreary and long,
Here, to rot
In the stubborn and monotonous wind,
The golds of autumn;
Here the golds and the purples die.

O you who trembled, gently willing,
Up there, against the sky, all along the path,
Sad leaves like hands,
You lie, black, on the ground.

The hour wears itself out composing the days;
The south wind, like a prowler, circles through the plains;
Life, ample and sacred, with muffled regrets,
Beneath a vague tomb of shadow and twilight,
Down to the depths of the soil, settles and recedes.

Tell me, do you hear it coming to the sound of the death knell,
Coming from the depths of the infinite, over there,
The old and dreary destiny?
She who casts immeasurably onto the heap
Of ancient centuries, of weary centuries,
Like a sack of dead wood, the year.

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-end-of-the-year-emile-verhaeren/