Contemporary Belgian Poetry Part 34

THE BUTCHER'S STALL.

Hard by the docks, soon as the shadows fold The dizzy mansion-fronts that soar aloft, When eyes of lamps are burning soft, The shy, dark quarter lights again its old Allurement of red vice and gold.

Women, blocks of heaped, blown meat, Stand on low thresholds down the narrow street, Calling to every man that pa.s.ses; Behind them, at the end of corridors, s.h.i.+ne fires, a curtain stirs And gives a glimpse of ma.s.ses Of mad and naked flesh in looking-gla.s.ses.

Hard by the docks.

The street upon the left is ended by A tangle of high masts and shrouds that blocks A sheet of sky; Upon the right a net of grovelling alleys Falls from the town--and here the black crowd rallies To reel to rotten revelry.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, Time out of mind erected on the frontiers Of the city and the sea.

Far-sailing melancholy mariners Who, wet with spray, through grey mists peer, Cradled among the rigging cabin-boys, and they who steer Hallucinated by the blue eyes of the vast sea-s.p.a.ces, All dream of it, evoke it when the evening falls; Their raw desire to madness galls; The wind's soft kisses hover on their faces; The wave awakens rolling images of soft embraces; And their two arms implore, Stretched in a frantic cry towards the sh.o.r.e.

And they of offices and shops, the city tribes, Merchants precise, keen reckoners, haggard scribes, Who sell their brains for hire, and tame their brows, When the keys of desks are hanging on the wall, Feel the same galling rut at even-fall, And run like hunted dogs to the carouse.

Out of the depths of dusk come their dark flocks, And in their hearts debauch so rudely shocks Their ingrained greed and old accustomed care, That they are racked and ruined by despair.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, Time out of mind erected on the frontiers Of the city and the sea.

Come from what far sea-isles or pestilent parts?

Come from what feverish or methodic marts?

Their eyes are filled with bitter, cunning hate, They fight their instincts that they cannot sate; Around red females who befool them, they Herd frenzied till the dawn of sober day.

The panelling is fiery with lewd art; Out of the wall nitescent knick-knacks dart; Fat Bacchuses and leaping satyrs in Wan mirrors freeze an unremitting grin; Flowers sicken on the gaming-tables where The warming bowls twist fire of light blue hair; A pot of paint curds on an etagere; A cat is catching flies on cus.h.i.+oned seats; A drunkard lolls asleep on yielding plush, And women come, and o'er him bending, brush His closed, red lids with their enormous teats.

And women with spent loins and sleeping croups Are piled on sofas and arm-chairs in groups, With sodden flesh grown vague, and black and blue With the first trampling of the evening's crew.

One of them slides a gold coin in her stocking; Another yawns, and some their knees are rocking; Others by baccha.n.a.lia worn out, Feeling old age, and, sniffing them, Death's snout, Stare with wide-open eyes, torches extinct, And smooth their legs with hands together linked.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, Time out of mind erected on the frontiers Of the city and the sea.

According to the jingle of the purses The women mingle promises with curses; A tranquil cynicism, a tired pleasure Is meted duly to the money's measure.

The kiss grows weary, and the game grows tame.

Often when fist with fist together clashes, In the wind of oaths and insults still the same, Some gaiety out of the blasphemy flashes,

But soon sinks, and you hear, In the silence dank and drear, A halting steeple near Sounding, sick with pity, In the darkness over the city.

Yet in those months by festivals sanctified, St. Peter in summer, in winter Christmastide, The ancient quarter of dirt and light Soars up to sin and pounces on its joys, Fermenting with wild songs and boisterous noise Window by window, flight by flight, With vice the house-fronts glow Down from the garret to the grids below.

Everywhere rage roars, and couples heats.

In the great hall to which the sailors throng, Pus.h.i.+ng some jester of the streets, Convulsed in obscene mimicry, along, The wines of foam and gold leap from their sheath; Women fall underneath Mad, brawling drunkards; loosened ruts Flame, arms unite, and body body b.u.t.ts; Nothing is seen but instincts slaked and lit afresh, b.r.e.a.s.t.s offered, bellies taken, and the fire Of haggard eyes in sheaves of brandished flesh.

The frenzy climbs, and sinks to rise still higher, Rolls like exasperated tides, And backwards glides, Until the moment when dawn fills the port, And Death, tired of the sport, Back to s.h.i.+ps and homesteads sweeps and harries The limp debauch and human weed That on the pavement tarries.

It is the flabby, fulsome butcher's stall of luxury, Wherein Crime plants his knives that bleed, Where lightning madness stains Foreheads with rotting pains, Time out of mind erected on the frontiers that feed The city and the sea.

A CORNER OF THE QUAY.

When the wind sulks, and the dune dries, The old salts with uneasy eyes Hour after hour peer at the skies.

All are silent; their hands turning, A brown juice from their lips they wipe; Never a sound save, in their pipe, The dry tobacco burning.

That storm the almanac announces, Where is it? They are puzzled.

The sea has smoothed her flounces.

Winter is muzzled.

The cute ones shake their pate, And cross their arms, and puff.

But mate by mate they wait, And think the squall is late, But coming sure enough.

With fingers slow, sedate Their finished pipe they fill; Pursuing, every salt, Without a minute's halt, The same idea still.

A boat sails up the bay, As tranquil as the day; Its keel a long net trails, Covered with glittering scales.

Out come the men: What ho?

When will the tempest come?

With pipe in mouth, still dumb, With bare foot on _sabot,_ The salts wait in a row.

Here they lounge about, Where all year long the stout Fishers' dames Sell, from their wooden frames, Herrings and anchovies, And by each stall a stove is, To warm them with its flames.

Here they spit together, Spying out the weather.

Here they yawn and doze; Backs bent with many a squall, Rubbing it in rows, Grease the wall.

And though the almanac Is wrong about the squall, The old salts lean their back Against the wall, And wait in rows together, Watching the sea and the weather.

MY HEART IS AS IT CLIMBED A STEEP.

My heart is as it climbed a steep, To reach your kindness fathomlessly deep, And there I pray to you with swimming eyes.

I came so late to where you arc, You with your pity more than prodigal's surmise; I came from very far Unto the two hands you were holding out, Calmly, to me who stumbled on in doubt!

I had in me so much tenacious rust, That gnawed with its rapacious teeth My confidence in myself;

I was so tired, I was so spent, I was so old with my mistrust, I was so tired, I was so spent With all the roads of my discontent.

So little I deserved the joy how deep Of seeing your feet light up my wilderness, That I am trembling still with it, and nigh to weep, And lowly for ever is the heart you bless.

WHEN I WAS AS A MAN THAT HOPELESS PINES.

When I was as a man that hopeless pines, And pitfalls all my hours were, You were the light that welcomed home the wanderer, The light that from the frosted window s.h.i.+nes On snow at dead of night.

Your spirit's hospitable light Touched my heart, and hurt it not, Like a cool hand on one with fever hot!

A element word of green, reviving hope Ran down the piled wrack of my heart's waste slope; Then came stout confidence and right good will, Frankness, and tenderness, and at the last, With hand in hand held fast, An evening of clear understanding and of storms grown still.

Since, though the summer followed winter's chill, Both in ourselves and under skies whose deathless fires With gold all pathways of our thoughts adorn, Though love has grown immense, a great flower born Of proud desires, A flower that, without cease, to grow still more, In our hearts begins as e'er before, I still look at the little light Which first shone out on me in my soul's night.