Frantically, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

Though flabby and whining and so poor! so dreary!
So weary! Straighten up, conqueror of yourself;
Lift up your will that falls against the milestone
And start up, on your feet, jade thrown to the ground, my heart!

Exasperate sinisterly your all bloodless
Carcass and drive into the wind, along roads reddened
With blood, your course; and sniff and lick with your tongue
Your wound, and struggle and stumble and fall — and rise again!

You can take no more and you hope no more; what does it matter!
Since your immense hatred still neighs its mourning,
Since fate enrages you and you are not dead
And your whipped pain rears up in your pride.

And let it be torture still! still!
And beautiful and mad and red and drunk — and the desire
To drink down sorrow through every pore,
And dizziness and horror — and pleasure,

O my jade of sulfur and bone that I drive to exhaustion
That one, long ago, over there, in those midnights of the North,
Of knights of lightning, on their ebony horses,
Who bolted, fiery with the void and with death.

Emile Verhaeren

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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