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XI
Poor woman! The milk went to her head.
And, in its cold salons, the world repeated,
Among the vain words that each day carries away,
Yesterday, that she was mad, today, that she is dead;
And, alone in the field of the dead, I tread this grass,
This grave where her life has followed her reason!
Mad! dead! why? My God! for so little!
For a fragile child whose eyelid is closed,
For a sweet newborn, head of fresh colors,
Who lately at her breast, like a fly on flowers,
Hung, laughed, wept, and, despite her prayers,
Disturbing all their sleep for whole nights,
Made a thousand speeches, poor little friend!
And who says nothing more, for he is asleep.
When she saw her son, on the evening of a very dark day,
For she called him her son, that vain shadow!
When she saw the child frozen in his pallor,
— Oh! do not console such grief!
She did not weep. The milk with the fever
Suddenly troubled her head and made her lip tremble;
And from that day on, without seeing and without speaking,
She walked before her and watched things pass.
She sought in the shadow a lost thing,
Her child vanished into the vast wave;
And at moments she leaned her ear as she walked,
As if beneath the earth she heard a song.
A woman of the people, one day when in the street
A crowd come running pressed upon her steps,
Merely from seeing her suffer guessed her misfortune.
The men, seeing this fair brow without color,
And this cold eye always following a chimera,
Cried out: Poor madwoman! She said: Poor mother!
Poor mother, indeed! A stifled sigh
Sometimes cut off her voice that murmured: The child!
Sometimes she seemed, in the buried ash,
To seek a glimmer from the sky that had faded;
For the young soul fled, alas! from her house
Had in departing carried off her reason!
In vain they told her, speaking in a low voice,
That life is thus; that all dies, that all passes;
And that there are children, — mothers, know it well!
Whom God, who lends all and gives nothing,
To refresh our brows with their white wings,
Places like birds for a day on our branches!
In vain they told her, she did not hear.
Her eye fixed, she still saw before her steps
Open the charming arms of the child who calls her.
She had made of rattles a humble chapel.
For nothing is more powerful than these little dead arms
To draw mothers promptly into the grave.
Where the child has fallen soon the woman falls.
What is a house whose threshold is deserted?
What is a bed without a cradle? Merciful God! what use is
The maternal gaze without the child who sleeps?
What good is this white breast without that pink mouth?
After having long, her heart dead, her eyes dead,
Wandered on the tomb as if being outside,
— Long! these are human words here,
Alas! a very few weeks sufficed! —
Unhappy one! in two months all has vanished.
Yesterday she was mad, she is dead today!
It suffices that a bird comes onto a shore
For a second bird to follow it there in all haste.
Of two there is always one that goes before.
After having scarcely opened its wing to the wind,
He came, the beautiful child, to swoop down on the tomb;
She came there after him, like another dove.
The earth was dug, and there, beneath the grass,
The nurse was placed beside the nursling.
And I say: — Lord! your reign is austere!
Lord! you have placed everywhere a dark mystery,
In man and in love, in the tree and in the bird,
And even in this milk that a cradle demands,
Ambrosia and poison, sweet honey, bitter liquor,
Made to nourish the child or to kill the mother!
Victor Hugo
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-fiat-voluntas-victor-hugo/