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The garlands of the pretty wind
Turn, gaily, around the Masts;
Along the quay sleep, in heaps,
The bright and polished oars.
And the bells ring in the towers of Ostend.
At the crossroads, at the windows, on the sidewalks,
Those from the dunes, the fields, the towns, the moors,
All have come running to see
The holy women and holy men of the legend
Pass by, and the Good Lord and the Virgin his Mother
Reach the dike and then, from there, bless the sea.
First come the schoolchildren
Passing beneath a flight of banners;
And then the heads and the regents
Of the hospital and the hospice,
And the nuns and the novices;
And then Saint Peter and then Saint John.
In double file follow the confraternities,
Of Saint Joseph and of Mary,
And the archers hoisting the bird
On a reed;
And the shepherds and the shepherdesses
Gently waving light crooks
And advancing like a moving garden;
And the fishermen holding tiny boats,
Between their arms muscled like the arms of Hercules;
And rough men with faces of wood;
And little ones capped with a bright Chinese hat;
And then the heavy beadles and their sturdy helpers,
Who, holding the staff at the height of their chests,
Push, with a great effort, all together, forward,
The fervor of the flags swollen with shadow and wind.
In the distance, while the grave and stiff step
Of her servants precedes her,
There advances then,
Beneath a heavy canopy, like a treasure,
Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows:
A black veil hangs down from her head,
Her long robe is violet,
And the silver knives that pierce her heart
Appear, among her funeral garments,
Like a martyred sun in the darkness.
And after her file by, the swarm
Of white Carmelites and ruddy Capuchins,
And the cantors clamoring the lofty biblical verses,
Eyes bulging, mouths askew.
Then all falls silent — and nothing more is heard
Save the tinkling
Furtive and clear
Of a little bell:
A flood of choirboys passes clothed in red:
The torrid and blue incense
Smokes toward the Good God.
And here he is, the solemn dean,
Beneath the fringes of the baldachin,
Holding straight, in his hands,
The golden monstrance that sways.
And the crowd that has thrown itself to its knees
Bends and rises, with great surges,
And follows devoutly, all the way to the shore,
Through the squares and the markets,
The long plumed procession
Of its belief and its dream.
The altar is there; the sea facing it.
Between them, nothing but the sky and space.
And the priest steps forward and climbs and is dazzled,
And spreads suddenly, with his trembling hands,
Before the ardent and violent crowd,
His sign of the cross over the infinite.
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-blessing-of-the-sea-emile-verhaeren/