The Spade, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

The frost hardens the waters; the wind pales the clouds.

At the eastern edge of the meadow, in the stubborn soil,
There it stands rising and shivering, the spade,
Lamentable and bare.

– Make a cross on the yellow ground
With your long hand,
You who are going away, along the path –

The cottage green with damp
And its two lindens struck by lightning
And ashes in the hearth
And on the wall still the plaster pedestal,
But the Virgin fallen to the ground.

– Make a cross toward the cottages
With your long hand of peace and light –

Dead toads in the endless ruts
And fish among the reeds
And then a bird’s cry ever poorer and slower,
Infinitely, over there, a cry in agony.

– Make a cross with your hand,
Pitiful, on the path –

In the empty loophole of the stable
The spider has woven the star of dust;
And the farm on the river,
Through its lamentable thatch,
Like arms with severed hands,
Crosses its beams from end to end.

– Make a cross on tomorrow,
Definitive, with your hand –

A double row of trees and bare trunks are cut down,
Along the roads in rout,
The villages – no more even bells to ring there
The hiccuping dies irae
Desperate, toward the empty echo and its broken mouths.

– Make a cross at the four corners of the horizons.

For it is the end of the fields and it is the end of the evenings;
Mourning at the bottom of the skies turns, like millstones,
Its black suns;
And larvae hatch alone
In the rotted flanks of women who are dead.

At the eastern edge of the meadow, in the stubborn soil,
On the scattered corpse of old plowings,
There it dominates, and forever,
Bright iron plate, cold wooden lath,
The spade.

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-the-spade-emile-verhaeren/