the house where i was born - five

and then the day came
when i heard the extraordinary lines in keats,
the evocation of ruth “when, sick for home,
she stood in tears amid the alien corn.”

i did not need to search for the meaning
of these words,
for it was in me since childhood,
i had only to recognize and to love it
when it came back from the depths of my life.

what could i take
from the evasive maternal presence
if not the feeling of exile and tears
that clouded that gaze searching to find
in things close by the place forever lost?


and then life; and once again
a house where i was born. around us
the granary above what once had been a church,
the gentle play of shadow from the dawn clouds,
and in us that smell of the dry straw
that had seemed to be waiting for us
from the moment the last sack, of wheat or rye,
had been brought in so long ago,
in the eternity of former summers
whose light was filtered through the warm tiles.
i could sense that day was about to break,
i was waking, and now i turn once more
toward the one who dreamed beside me
in the lonely house. to her silence
i dedicate, at night,
the words that only seem to be speaking of something else.

(i was waking,
i loved those days we had, days preserved
the way a river flows slowly, though already
caught in the vaulting rumbling of the sea.
they were passing through us, with the majesty of simple things,
the mighty sails of what is were kind enough to take
precarious human life on board the ship
that the mountain spread out around us.
o memory,
they covered with the flapping of their silence
the sound, of water on the stones, of our voices,
and up ahead, there might well be death,
but with that milky colour you find at the end of beaches
in the evening, when far off
the children still touch bottom, and laugh in the peaceful water,
and keep on playing.)

">yves bonnefoy



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