Homecoming

When the evening breathes golden rest Forest and dark meadow before which Man is a looker, A shepherd, dwelling in the flocks' dusking stillness, The patience of the red beeches; So clearly since it has become autumn. By the hill The lonely one listens to the flight of birds, To dark meaning and the shadows of the dead Have gathered more seriously around him; Cool mignonette scent fulfills him with shudders, The huts of the villagers the elder, Where in former times the child dwelled. Memory, buried hope Is preserved by these brown rafters, Over which dahlias hang So that the hands strive after them, In the brown garden the shimmering step Forbidden loving, dark year, That from blue eyelids the tears Of the stranger fell irresistibly. From brown treetops dew drips, When that one, a blue deer, awakes on the hill, Listening to the loud calls of the fishermen By the evening pond To the amorphous cry of the bats; But in golden stillness The drunken heart dwells Full of its noble death.