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Listen: it is the noise of the joyful threshing floor
that, in the dust of a golden light,
as lively at work as nimble at the dance,
beats the wheat of rich Messidor, singing.
What a gala! for a setting, the straw that frays;
the elms, the lindens, the garden, the orchard,
whose scattered greenery garlands the barn,
floats on the streams and strews the path.
For music, the wandering breath of the mornings;
the song of the cylinder shelling the ears of grain;
the birds and those sounds of mischievous bees
made by the merry children crouched in the stacks.
Up above, on the sheaf-pile its peak tousles,
the pitchfork lifts and holds out the rippling armful.
Down below, the straw rolls and slips in sheaves
and flies with the chaff in a light whirlwind.
On the threshing floor, the boys whose torsos arch,
and the girls, their laughing sisters, loosening
the blond barley and the oats in fine amber clusters,
form a group at once picturesque and smiling.
In this concert of frank and rustic glee,
the country girl gives a note of love.
Among these rough tanned brows, her prettiness
evokes the morning freshness of the day.
The thresher’s ceaseless jolts
shake the massive beams of the building.
The golden grain bursts forth in superb cascades.
All are proud of the unheard-of surplus of wheat.
Already all the granaries are full. The laborers
stagger under the weight of the sacks. In the midst
of his own, the father, happy, with each fuller measure,
measures and sets aside the tithe of the good Lord.
He goes, comes. Weighing the precious load
and turning toward the sky his proud brown face,
the peasant blesses Him whose broad hand
gives the pious sower thirty setiers for one.
Charles-Nérée Beauchemin
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-october-rays-iii-charles-neree-beauchemin/