Fatal Flower, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

Absurdity grows like a fatal flower
In the soil of the senses, hearts and brains;
In vain, over there, new wonders thunder;
We, we stay stagnant in our native reason.

I want to walk toward madness and its suns,
Its white moon-suns at high noon, bizarre,
And its distant echoes, bitten by uproars
And barkings and full of vermilion dogs.

Islands in bloom, on a lake of snow; cloud
Where birds nest beneath the feathers of the wind;
Evening grottoes, with a golden toad in front,
That does not move and eats a corner of the landscape.

Heron beaks, enormously open for nothing,
Fly, in a ray of light, that stirs, motionless —
The gentle unconsciousness and the feeble tick-tock
Of the tranquil death of madmen, I hear it well!

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-fatal-flower-emile-verhaeren/