The Boat

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

It freezes and trees, grown pale with bright frost,
Rise in the distance, like sheaves of moonlight;
In the purified sky, not a cloud; no
Stain on the silent infinity of the air.

The river where the starlight is refracted
Seems paved with steel and mortared with silver;
Only a boat is there, keeping watch and waiting,
Its two oars caught in the compact ice.

What angel or what hero, suddenly seizing them,
Will scatter this vast winter with strokes of the oars
And guide the boat into a land of flames
Toward the golden oceans of distant paradises?

Or must it wait forever for its master,
Prisoner of the cold and of the great white midnight,
While free birds, lashing
The winds, fly, up there, toward the springs to be born?

Emile Verhaeren

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

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