Soul

My soul!
O my soul too sheltered verily!
And these flocks of my desires in a hot-house!
Waiting for a tempest on the meadows!

Let us go to the most feverish patients!
They have strange exhalations.
In the middle of them, I cross a battlefield with my
mother.
They are burying a fallen comrade at noon,
While the sentinels are eating their repast.

Let us go also to the weakest:
They have strange perspirations!
Here is a sick bride,
Treason on the Sunday,
And little children in prison.
(And further on, through the vapour,)
Is this a dying woman at a kitchen's door!
Or a sister shelling peas at the bed's foot of an
incurable?

And last of all let us go to the most sad:
(Last of all, for they have poisons.)
O! my lips accept the kisses of a wounded one!

All the chatelaines have died of hunger, this summer, in
the turrets of my soul!
Here is the daybreak entering the festival!
I catch a glimpse of sheep that stray on quays,
And there is a sail at the windows of the hospital.

There is a long road from my heart unto my soul!
And all the sentinels are dead at their post!

One day there was a poor little banquet in the suburbs of
my soul!
Hemlock was being mown one Sunday morning;
And all the virgins of the convent were watching vessels
passing on the canal, one day of fasting and of
sunshine,
While the swans were pining under a poisonous bridge;
They were pruning trees round the prison,
They were bringing medicines one afternoon in June,
And meals of patients were being spread at all the
horizons!

My soul!
And the sadness of it all, my soul! and the sadness of
it all!