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To Léon Cladel.
The kerchief on her nape and her skirt undone,
At dawn she came to the pasture, from afar;
But still drowsy, she lay herself back down,
There beneath the trees, in a corner.
At once she sleeps, mouth open and snoring;
The grass grows around her brow and bare feet;
The arms are folded in a nonchalant way,
And the flies wander over them.
The insects of the grass, friends of gentle warmth
And of tepid soil, come with slow flight,
To nestle, in swarms, beneath the layer of moss,
Which she warms by sprawling out.
Sometimes she makes a clumsy gesture, into emptiness,
Startling around her a clamorous murmur
Of bees; but soon, still greedy for sleep,
She turns to the other side.
The pasture, with its heavy and carnal flora,
Frames the sleeper just as one would wish: as in it,
The heavy slowness of the oxen is embodied in her
And their heavy peace shines in her eye.
The strength, knotting with burls the trunks of oaks,
Bursts with blood throughout her whole body:
Her hair is more blond than the barley in the plains
And the sands on the path.
Her hands are of raw and rough redness; the sap
That rolls, in floods of fire, through her sun-tanned limbs,
Beats her throat, swells it, and, slowly, lifts it
As the winds lift the wheat.
Noon, with a golden kiss, surprises her under the willows,
And still sleep grows heavier on her eyes,
While branches float over her shoulders
And mingle with her hair.
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-the-cowherd-emile-verhaeren/