I Believed Our Joy Was Numbed Forever, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

I believed our joy was numbed forever,
Like a sun withered before nightfall had come,
The day when illness, with its leaden arms,
Dragged me heavily toward its chair of ennui.

The flowers and the garden were to me fear or deceit;
My eyes suffered to see the white noons blaze,
And my two hands, my hands, already seemed too weary
To hold captive our trembling happiness.

My desires were no more than noxious plants,
They bit at one another like thistles in the wind,
I felt my heart at once ice and ember
And suddenly arid and rebellious to forgiveness.

But you spoke to me the word that beautifully consoles,
Seeking it nowhere but in immense love;
And I lived with the fire of your word
And warmed myself by it, at night, until daybreak.

The diminished man that I felt myself to be,
For myself and for all, did not exist for you;
You gathered flowers for me at the edge of the window,
And I believed in health, with your faith.

And you brought back to me, in the folds of your dress,
The vigorous air, the wind of fields and forests,
And the perfumes of evening or the scents of dawn,
And the sun, in your deep and fresh kisses.

Emile Verhaeren

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

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