The Watering Place, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

In a hollow of ground as deep as a lair,
Ponds spread out in their moiré sleep,
And served as a watering place for the mottled cattle,
That bathed there, their bodies in the water up to mid-belly.

The herds came down by sloping paths:
Cows with very slow steps, horses led at an amble,
And the black and red oxen that often, all together,
Bellowed, necks outstretched, toward the setting suns.

Everything was fading into customary death,
In the fall of the day: colors, perfumes, light,
Explosions of sap and splendors of horizons;

Mists spread like shrouds over the harvests,
Roads sank into the evening – infinite,
And the great oxen seemed to rasp out these agonies.

Emile Verhaeren

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