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Let us lose ourselves, my soul, in these baleful crypts,
Where sorrow, through crimes, is defined,
Where each slab, along the wall, attests
That a dark murder, for all eternity,
Is crushed there, beneath granite.
Tears fall there upon the dead;
Tears upon dead bodies
And their remorse,
Fall there;
Hearts bloodied with love
Once loved each other,
Killed each other, though still loving,
And hear each other, by night, and hear each other, by day,
Fall silent or call out, among these tombs.
The wind that passes and that the shadow breathes there,
Is moist and heavy and old with memories;
We listen to it, in the evening, breath suspended;
And we surprise effluvia flying
And attracting each other and brushing past.
Oh! these marble vaults in twisted sculpture.
Life, beyond death still living,
Life deepened into dread,
Endures there, so strongly,
That one believes one feels, within the walls,
With superhuman efforts,
Still beating and exalting
All those mad hearts, all those dead hearts,
That have conquered their funerals.
There rest mistresses of kings
Whose caprice and delirium
Set empires to fighting;
Conquerors, whose swords of dread
Were broken, between fingers of a woman;
Poets fervent and clear
With their intoxication and their flame,
Who perished, singing the air
Sad or joyous that their lady loved.
Here are the ravagers and the ardent
Whose kiss masked the bite;
The mad whose vertigo loved the abyss
Who carved up love by cutting a crime into it;
The violent and the vanquished of fate
Drunk on the unknown that death offered them;
Finally, the princesses, the queens,
Dead—since what times and on what scaffolds?—
When the people carried the dead, like banners,
Before their steps rushing toward human conquest.
Let us lose ourselves, my soul, in these crypts of mourning,
Where, under each tomb, where, in each shroud,
We hear the dead so terribly live.
Their superb despair and their sorrow intoxicate,
For, beyond agony, they planted
So strongly and so tragically their will
That their dust is still full
Of the clear ferments of their love and their hatred.
Their passions, though today voiceless,
Bite each other, as in former times,
More ferocious since they feel themselves
Free, in this palace of absent light.
Glance of pride, glance of prey,
Melt into each other, without being seen,
To pierce and plunge each other into darkness.
Around the old granites and the famous stones,
Sometimes, a stirring of warrior steps is heard
And such a hero standing in his pride, waits
That, on his pedestal adorned with red combats,
Suddenly the bronze and gold of battle move.
Every drama lives there, eyes haggard, fist clenched,
And drags, at its side, armed despair;
Envy and suspicion meet at the crossroads;
Words are stifled, by hands, on mouths;
Arms knot and unknot, ardent and weary;
In the shadow, one would think one saw an assassination gleam;
A thousand desires that rise and abort,
With a broad vanquished impulse, still beat the doors;
The intermittent reflection of old bronze torches
Passes, along the walls, in superhuman gestures;
One feels, around oneself, passions drawn taut,
On the silent bow of the darkest ideas;
All is mute and all is panting;
At night, the fever still increases and we hear
A heavy noise rise from the earth
And the lead seals break and the coffins split!
Oh, this sharp life and all in depth,
So tenebrous and so troubled, that it frightens!
This bitter life, where struggles grow
By force of will,
Until giving eternity
As measure to its anguish,
My heart, do you feel, how unbridled it is
In its supreme spasm and its damned fervor?
Whether out of pity, or because it
Concentrates, in its ardor, all the rebellious soul,
Bow down, toward its mystery and its terror,
O you, who want life through everything, my heart!
Weigh its fear and reckon its rages
And its stubbornness, in these conflicts of storms,
Always exasperated, to the supreme effort;
Feel the influxes of joy and the refluxes of pain
Pass, through the atmosphere, and fever death;
Think of all your loves, think of all your hatreds,
And plunge yourself, savage and excessive,
Like a red bundle of lances,
Into this terrible and swarming brazier
Of violence and silence.
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-crypt-emile-verhaeren/