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Weary of words, weary of books,
That make the will grow tepid,
I seek, in the depth of my pride,
The act that saves and delivers.
Life, it is over there, violent and fertile,
Biting, at mad gallops, the great roads of the world.
In the tumult and the dust,
The strong have hung on its mane
And, lifted by it and by its bounds,
From prodigy to prodigy,
They have climbed, through rain and wind, the mountains
Of daring and of vertigo.
Action!
I know some who raise it in the air
Tragically, on a stormy sky,
With arms in blood and cries of rage;
Others who dream it muffled and deep,
Like a sea
Whose abyss repels and rejects the waves.
I know some who hope for it clothed
In the charming silence of flowers and statues.
I know some who evoke it wherever
Pain clenches, where madness boils,
I know some who still seek it,
During the night, until dawn,
When already it stands, at the threshold
Sweet and serene of their pride.
Life in cries or in silence,
Life in struggle or in accord,
With life, with death,
Life harsh, life intense,
It is over there, under poles of white crystal
Where man invents a slow path;
It is here in fervor or in hatred
Of the ascending and red human ardor;
It is among the waves of the seas and their terror
On beaches whose horror no one has explored;
It is in the forests with lyrical blooms,
That decorate the mountains and islands of Africa;
It is where every effort grows,
Gesture by gesture, toward the infinite,
Where genius exterminates glosses,
Shouting facts, showing causes
And preparing the impulse of gigantic metamorphoses.
Weary of words, weary of books,
I seek in my pride
The act that saves and delivers.
And I want it powerful and stubborn,
Lucid and pure, like a beautiful block of ice;
Without fear and without guile,
Worthy of those
Who display the silent pride
Far from the world, only for themselves.
And I want it dipped in a baptism
Of clear and broad humanity,
Showing to all its total sincerity
And pushing back, in a supreme impulse,
The frontiers of goodness.
Oh! to live and live and live and feel better
As the heart boils more fervently;
To live more clearly, as soon as one marches in conquest;
To live even higher, as soon as fate persists
In drying up the sap and the strength of arms;
To dream, with bold eyes, of all that one will do
Of pure, of great, of just in these golden Canaans
That will arise, no matter what, at the end of the holy effort;
Oh! to live and live, madly,
In these hours of solemn isolation,
Where desire stirs, where thought animates,
With their mad hopes, the sublime existence.
Weary of words, weary of books,
I want the sword at last that carves
My victory, in the battle.
And I dream, as one prays, of all those
Who rise, heroes or Gods,
On the horizon of the human family;
Like prodigious rainbows,
They settle on the domains
Of misery and hatred;
The emanations of their example
Penetrate little by little to the depths of temples,
So much so that the crowd, suddenly,
Wanting to love, wanting to know
The new meaning that their being imposes, with ardor,
On the enigmas of destiny,
Already forms its soul in their image,
While still disputing and getting tangled,
With blows of dead texts,
The priests and the wise men.
Then, one sees armed words
Hover over struggles and exploits
And, clear, foreheads rise and, vibrant, voices
And – thunderbolt and gold – Renowns fly into the distance;
Then too, those who warmed their souls
At the old hearth of memories
Abandon it and seize the flaming sword
And rush toward the future!
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-action-emile-verhaeren/