October Rays (II)

Poem by Charles-Nérée Beauchemin Collection ArrayPeriod 19th century

Scarcely have the reapers barn-stored the sheaves
When already the horses, harnessed to the plow,
Furrow across the thistles and the grasses
The fallow where June will roll the sea of wheat.

Fertility of fields! this steaming glebe,
This rich and tawny humus, harbors in its clods
The sap that nourishes and colors and perfumes
The eternal treasures of future renewals.

The plowings, framed in purple and in emerald,
Soften the checkerboard of meadows of a hundred colors.
From furrow to furrow, the bullfinches on the prowl
Dispute their beakful with the quarrelsome sparrows.

And the man, goading the beast, walks and walks,
Pushes the coulter. He sings, and his plaintive refrains
Evoke the age when one saw the patriarch
Open the sacred soil of the primitive valleys.

Charles-Nérée Beauchemin

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-october-rays-ii-charles-neree-beauchemin/