Growing Old

In some summers there is so much fruit, the peasants decide not to reap any more. Not having reaped you, oh my days, my nights, have I let the slow flames of your lovely produce fall into ashes? My nights, my days, you have borne so much! All your branches have retained the gesture of that long labor you are rising from: my days, my nights. Oh my rustic friends! I look for what was so good for you. Oh my lovely, half-dead trees, could some equal sweetness still stroke your leaves, open your calyx? Ah, no more fruit! But one last time bloom in fruitless blossoming without planning, without reckoning, as useless as the powers of millenia. Translated by A. Poulin