Departure, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

The sea clashes its blocks of waves against the rocks
And the granites of the quay, the sea demented,
Thundering and moaning, in the storm
Of its rising swells.

The sheds and the hangars as if torn away,
And the great bridges, knotted with iron but whipped
By wind; the bridges, the sheds, the stations
And the tiered fires of the lanterns and the lighthouses
Tremble in the cyclones
With their roofs, their towers and their columns.

And its tall creaking masts and its flapping sails,
My ship through it all breaks its anchors;
And, course set for the zenith,
Leaps, toward the tempest,
Beast of lightning, amid the sea.

Tell me, toward what mad unknown,
And toward what sleepwalking awakenings,
And toward what beyonds and toward what anywhere
Convulsionary suns?

Toward what dementias and what terrors
And what reefs, rearing like palfreys,
Toward what golden breaking
Of prow and of porthole,
Tell me, toward what mirages or toward what laughter
Leaps the bit between the teeth of my ship?

While alas! she who was my reason,
Holding out her pale lamp-posts,
Watches it tack, on the horizon,
From atop old landing stages.

Emile Verhaeren

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