The Tapestry of Our Lady
La Tapisserie de Notre Dame
Star of the Sea behold the heavy ship
On which we row stripped bare beneath your orders;
Behold our distress and our disarming;
Behold the Louvre quay, the lock, the millrace.
Behold our outfit and behold our captain.
He is a lad from home who whistles at moments.
He has not his equal at the helm.
He has a hard head and a brusque manner.
Queen who rise upon every ocean,
You will think of us when we are out at sea.
Today is the day to load our cargo aboard.
Behold the enormous crane and the long bellowings.
If we had to load it with our poor virtues,
This vessel would set out toward your august threshold
More hollow than the hazelnut after the squirrel
Has let it fall back from his pointed claws.
No bales would enter through the gaping hatches,
And we would arrive within the Sargasso sea
Dragging this useless and grotesque carcass,
And the English would say: They put nothing inside.
But we shall fill it and we swear it to you.
It shall be the most beautiful in this illustrious port.
The cargo will go right up to the gunwale.
And when it is full we shall crown it.
We shall not load on it our poor maize,
But the gold and the wheat that we shall bear away.
And it will hold the sea: for we shall load it
With the weight of our sins paid for by your Son.
Double freight vessel on the two banks of the Seine,
Vessel of purple and gold, of myrrh and cinnamon,
Vessel of wheat, of rye, and of soul’s just measure,
Of humility, of pride, and of simple verbena;
Our fathers have filled you with such a long labour,
Since a thousand and a thousand years you come to the wave,
That no cargo is so heavy upon the oar,
And no vessel has its belly so full.
But we shall bring a regret so severe,
And so nourished with honour, and so hollowed with flame,
That the captain will take it for a sack of prayer,
And will have it hoisted up beneath the oriflamme,
A ship rigged out beneath Septimius Severus,
Double freight vessel at the feet of Our Lady.
From the Point du Jour to the biblical cedars
Double galley seated along the great bazaar,
And the great ministry, and the gloomy alcazar,
Amid the private griefs and the public virtues;
Beneath the eighty kings and the three Republics,
And beneath Napoleon, Alexander, and Caesar,
Our fathers have ventured the hundredfold hazard,
Faithfully bent over your oblique oars.
And taking their place at the same oaken bench,
We shall row with our loins, our nape, our soul,
Bent, broken, bruised, bleeding beneath our chain;
And we shall hold the course, riveted to our oar,
Convicts sons of convicts on the two banks of the Seine,
Galley-slaves lying at the feet of Our Lady.
Double ship of the line along the colonnades,
Once a vessel of a hundredfold gunport,
Today a heavy factory, an enormous strongbox
Closed upon the secret of muffled cannonades.
Our fathers have danced you hot serenades,
They have flowered you with the blood of the fairest death,
When upon the forecastle toward one side and the other
Leapt the herd of grave carronades.
But we shall bring to your giant destinies
A heart so serious and so burnt with flame,
A heart so curious about every ocean,
Soldiers sons of soldiers beneath the same oriflamme,
That we shall be set as servants to your gaping cannons,
Green monsters crouched at the feet of Our Lady.
Star of the Sea behold the heavy cloth
And the deep swell and the ocean of the wheat
And the moving foam and our brimming granaries,
Behold your gaze upon this immense cope
And behold your voice upon this heavy plain
And our absent friends and our depopulated hearts,
Behold along us our unclenched fists
And our weariness and our brimming strength.
Star of the morning, inaccessible queen,
Behold that we are walking toward your illustrious court,
And behold the platter of our poor love,
And behold the ocean of our immense sorrow.
A sob roams and runs beyond the horizon.
Hardly a few roofs make like an archipelago.
From the old steeple falls a kind of call.
The thick-set church seems a low house.
Thus we are navigating toward your cathedral.
Far apart there float a rosary of haystacks,
Round as towers, opulent and alone
Like a row of castles on the admiral’s barque.
Two thousand years of labour have made of this earth
An endless reservoir for the ages to come.
A thousand years of your grace have made of these works
An endless resting-altar for the solitary soul.
You see us walking on this straight road,
All dusty, all bemired, the rain between our teeth.
On this wide fan opened to every wind
The national road is our narrow gate.
We go before us, our hands along our pockets,
Without any baggage, without clutter, without speeches,
With a step always even, without haste nor recourse,
From the most present fields toward the nearest fields.
You see us walking, we are the foot-soldiery.
We never advance but a single step at a time.
But twenty centuries of people and twenty centuries of kings,
And all their following and all their poultry
And their plumed hats with all their flunkey-crew
Have learned what it is to be familiar,
And how one may walk, with feet in one’s own shoes,
Toward a last square on the evening of a battle.
We were born for you on the edge of this plateau,
In the curving of our blonde Loire,
And that river of sand and that river of glory
Is there only to kiss your august mantle.
We were born on the edge of this vast plateau,
In ancient Orléans severe and serious,
And the flowing and often muddy Loire
Is there only to wash the feet of this hillside.
We were born on the edge of your flat Beauce
And we have known from our youngest years
The farm gateway and the hardy peasants
And the close within the village and the spade and the grave.
We were born on the edge of your Beauce flat
And we have known from our earliest regrets
What may be hidden of secret despairs
In a sun that descends into a scarlet sky
And that lies down level with an inevitable ground
Hard as a justice, even as a bar,
Just as a law, closed as a pond,
Open as a fair pedestal and flat as a table.
A man from our country, from the fertile soil,
Has made spring up here at a single lifting,
And from a single source and from a single bearing,
Toward your assumption the spire unique in the world.
Tower of David behold your Beauceronne tower.
It is the hardest ear of grain that ever has mounted
Toward a sky of clemency and serenity,
And the most beautiful fleuron within your crown.
A man from our country has made spring up here,
From the level of the ground to the foot of the cross,
Higher than all the saints, higher than all the kings,
The irreproachable spire that cannot fail.
It is the sheaf and the wheat that shall not perish,
That shall not wither in September’s sun,
That shall not freeze in December’s rigours,
It is your servant and it is your witness.
It is the stem and the wheat that shall not rot,
That shall not wilt in the ardours of summer,
That shall not moulder in a spoiled winter,
That shall not be chilled in the common passing.
It is the stone without stain and the stone without fault,
The highest oration ever borne,
The straightest reason ever cast,
And toward a sky without edge the highest line.
She who shall not die on the day of any deaths,
The pledge and the portrait of our wrenchings,
The image and the tracing of our risings-up,
The wool and the spindle of the most modest lots.
We come toward you from the distant Parisis.
We have for three days quitted our shop,
And archaeology along with semantics,
And the meagre Sorbonne and its poor little ones.
Others shall come toward you from the distant Beauvaisis.
We have for three days left our business,
And the giant rumour and the colossal city,
Others shall come toward you from the distant Cambrésis.
We come toward you from Paris the capital.
That is where we have our government,
And our time lost in dawdling,
And our deceiving and total liberty.
We come toward you from the other Notre Dame,
From the one that rises in the heart of the cité,
In her royal robe and in her majesty,
In her magnificence and her soul’s just measure.
As you command an ocean of ears of grain,
There you command an ocean of heads,
And the harvest of mournings and the harvest of feasts
Lies down each evening before your parvis.
We come toward you from the noble Hurepoix.
It is a beginning of Beauce for our use,
With farms and fields cut after your image,
But cut more often by curtains of wood,
And cut more often by hollow valleys
For the Yvette and the Bièvre and their swellings,
And their cunning detours and their clearings,
And by the fine châteaux and the long alleys.
Others shall come toward you from the noble Vermandois,
And from the rolling slopes of birch and willow.
Others shall come toward you from palaces and gaols,
And from the Picard land and the green Vendômois.
But it is always France, whether small or larger,
The land of the fine wheats and the framings,
The land of the cluster and the running waters,
The land of broom, of heather, of moor.
We come toward you from distant Palaiseau
And from the outskirts of Orsay by Gometz-le-Châtel,
Otherwise called Saint-Clair; it is not a castle;
It is a village on the edge of a sloping road.
We came out, climbing up from this hillside,
On the level of the plain and onto Gometz-la-Ville
Above Saint-Clair; it is not a town;
It is a village on the edge of a road on the plateau.
We came down the slope of Limours.
We met three or four gendarmes.
They watched us, not without some alarm,
Consulting the signposts at the corners of crossroads.
We were able to sleep in calm Dourdan.
It is a large rich market-town that smells of its province.
Proud we skirted, watched like a prince,
The castle moats cut like a redan.
In the friendly house, hostess and fraternal,
They had us sleep in the boy’s bed.
Twenty years of memories were our cupbearer.
The bread was cut for us by a maternal hand.
All our youth was there solemn.
For us the Benedicite was pronounced.
Four centuries of honour and fidelity
Made of the bedsheets an eternal couch.
We pretended to be a gay pilgrim
And even a bon vivant fond of travel,
And to have traversed a hundred and thirty-one bailiwicks,
And to be accustomed to be on the road.
The clarity of the lamp dazzled the tablecloth.
We were taken to visit the kitchen garden.
It looked onto the trellis and a fine orchard.
Such was the first lodging and the head of the day’s stage.
The garden was enclosed in a bend of the Orge.
Toward the right it gave onto a hedgerow wall
Surmounted by branches and a light arch.
Opposite a farrier, and the anvil, and the forge.
We rose this morning before the dawn.
We took our leave after fine farewells.
The weather looked fine. We were told so much the better.
We were given a taste of some beef in daube,
For it is understood that the good pilgrim
Is one who drinks firmly and holds his place at table,
And needn’t play the accountant,
And that it is well enough to rise in the morning.
The day was on the road and the sun was rising
When we passed Sainte-Mesme and the others.
Already we were going forward like two good apostles.
And the left and the right were what counted.
We climbed back up by the Gué de Longroy.
Done now with our delays,
And with the iniquity of the inclines:
Behold the just plain and the secret terror
Of finding ourselves all alone, and behold the wain
And the wheel and the oxen and the yoke and the barn,
And the even dust and the equitable mire
And the even distress and the equal disarray.
Here we are arrived on the high terrace
Where nothing more can hide the man before God,
Where no disguise of time or of place
Can save us, Lord, from your pursuit.
Behold the immense sheaf and the immense bundle,
And the grain under the millstone and our crushings,
And the hailing javelins and our renunciations,
And the immense horizon that the gaze embraces.
And our unworthiness this immutable mass,
And our low fear in such a moment,
And the just terror and the secret torment
Of finding ourselves all alone before your face.
But behold that it is you, queen of majesty.
How could we have let ourselves be deceived,
And walk before you without perceiving you.
We shall then always be this unconcerted people.
This country is more level than the most level table.
Hardly a hollow in the ground, hardly a slight fold.
It is the judge’s bench and the accomplished fact,
And the sentence without appeal and the inescapable order.
And it is the pronouncement of the insurmountable text,
And the brimming measure and it is the fate fulfilled,
And it is the becalmed life and the man entombed,
And it is the herald-at-arms and the dreadful seal.
But you appear, mysterious queen.
That point yonder amid the billowing
Of the harvests and the woods and amid the floating
Of the farthest horizon is not a holm oak,
Nor the known profile of an interchangeable tree.
It is already more distant, and lower, and higher,
Firm as a hope upon the last slope,
Upon the last hillside the inimitable spire.
From here to you, O queen, there is nothing left but the road.
This one watches us, we have walked many another.
You have your glory and we have ours.
We have begun it, we shall eat it all.
We know what it is, a stretch added
To the stretch already done and what a kilometre
Asks of the hams and what one must put in:
We shall pass this evening by the bridge and the vault
And this deep ditch that girdles the rampart.
We walk in the wind cut by the autos.
Here is the country unseizable in photographs,
The bare and grave road going from one end to the other.
We had a good wind to set out from daybreak.
We shall sleep this evening two steps from your house,
In that old inn where for forty sous
We shall sleep close by your illustrious tower.
We shall be so worn out that we shall gaze,
Seated on a chair beside the window
In a crushing of body and of all our being,
With weary eyes, almost with round eyes,
And the brows raised even into our foreheads,
The angle once found by a single man in the world,
And the unique ascending and profound rising,
And we shall be done in and we shall contemplate.
Behold the axis and the line and the giant flower.
Behold the hard slope and contentment.
Behold exactitude and consent.
And the severe tear, O queen of sorrow.
Behold nakedness, the rest is clothing.
Behold the clothing, all the rest is finery.
Behold purity, all the rest is defilement.
Behold poverty, the rest is ornament.
Behold the only strength and the rest is weakness.
Behold the unique ridge and the rest is overflow.
And the only nobility and the rest is filth.
And the only greatness and the rest is baseness.
Behold the only faith that is no perjury.
Behold the only soaring that knows somewhat to rise.
Behold the only instant that is worth counting.
Behold the only purpose that completes itself and endures.
Behold the monument, all the rest is lining.
And behold our love and our understanding.
And our carriage of head and our appeasement.
And the trifle of lace and the exact moulding.
Behold the fair oath, the rest is forfeiture.
Behold the unique prize of our wrenchings,
The wages paid for our retrenchments.
Behold the truth, the rest is imposture.
Behold the firmament, the rest is procedure.
And toward the tribunal behold the adjustment.
And toward paradise behold the achievement.
And the leaf of stone and the exact vein.
We shall remain nailed to the straw-bottomed chair.
And we shall not hear and we shall not see
The tumult of voices, the tumult of steps,
And in the room below the innocent feasting.
Nor the carters come for market day.
Nor the feigned anger and the burst of oaths:
For we shall contemplate and we shall meditate
In a single embrace the sinless spire.
We shall feel neither our stiffened faces,
Nor the hunger nor the thirst nor our renunciations,
Nor our stiff knees nor our reasonings,
Nor within our trousers our numbed legs.
Lost in this chamber and amid so many inns,
We shall not go down at the hour of the meal,
And we shall not hear and we shall not see
The city prostrate at the feet of your altars.
And when the sun of tomorrow rises,
We shall wake in a lustral dawn,
In the shadow of the two arms of your cathedral,
Happy and unhappy and broken by the road.
We come to pray to you for this poor lad
Who died like a fool in the course of this year,
Almost in the week and around the day
When your son was born in the straw and the chaff.
O Virgin he was not the worst of the flock.
He had but one flaw in his young cuirass.
But death which dogs and tracks us
Passed through that hole he had made in his skin.
He was born toward us in our Gâtinais.
He was beginning the road on which we are coming back down.
He was gaining each day all that we are losing.
And yet it was for him that you were destined,
O death who wast vanquished in a first sepulchre.
He had set his steps in our same imprints.
But the single failing of a single one of the fears
Let death pass through by a new path.
Behold him now within your regency.
You are queen and mother and will know how to show it.
He was a pure being. You will bring him back
Into your patronage and into your indulgence.
O queen who read in the secret of the heart,
You know what life is and what death is,
And you know thus in what secret of fate
The hunter’s ruse is sewn and unsewn.
And you know thus on what accent of the choir
An accompaniment is tied and untied,
And what space and what clearing is needed
To let the huntsman’s pack burst forth.
And you know thus in what recess of the port
A noble carrying-off is prepared and finished,
And by what feat of skill and of governance
An illustrious support steals away or is fixed.
And you know thus on what edge of the blade
A terror is played and outplayed,
And by what nudge of the thumb and what swaying
One of the scales descends so that the other may rise.
And what the mocker’s lip can cost,
And what strength and what crossing-over is needed
To make by the stroke of a single turning
From an unhappy vanquished an unhappy victor.
Mother behold him then, he was of our lineage,
And twenty years after us our redoubling.
Queen receive him into your amendment.
Where death has passed, grace will surely pass.
We, we shall return by this same road.
It shall again be the land with no hiding-place,
The castle without a corner and without an oubliette,
And this soil better engraved than a perfect parchment.
Et nunc et in hora, we pray to you for us
Who are greater fools than that poor lad,
And no doubt less pure and less in your hand,
And less far on the way toward your sacred knees.
When we shall have played our final characters,
When we shall have laid down the cape and the cloak,
When we shall have thrown off the mask and the knife,
Be pleased to recall our long pilgrimages.
When we shall return into this cold earth,
As it was prescribed for the first Adam,
Queen of Saint-Chéron, Saint-Arnould, and Dourdan,
Be pleased to recall this solitary road.
When they shall have put us in a narrow grave,
When the absolution and the mass shall have been said over us,
Be pleased to recall, queen of the promise,
The long journeying that we make in Beauce.
When we shall have quit this sack and this cord,
When we shall have trembled our last tremblings,
When we shall have rattled our last rattlings,
Be pleased to recall your mercy.
We ask for nothing, refuge of the sinner,
But the last place in your Purgatory,
To weep long over our tragic history.
And contemplate from afar your young splendour.
1. — prayer of residence
O queen behold then after the long road,
Before setting out again by this same road,
The only asylum open in the hollow of your hand,
And the secret garden where the soul opens entirely.
Behold the heavy pillar and the rising vault;
And forgetting for yesterday, and forgetting for tomorrow;
And the uselessness of every human reckoning;
And more than sin, wisdom in rout.
Behold the place in the world where everything becomes easy,
The regret, the departure, even the event,
And the temporary farewell and the turning-aside,
The only corner of the earth where everything becomes docile,
And even this old heart that played the rebel;
And this old head and these reasonings;
And these two arms stiffened in the barracks;
And this young girl that played too much the beauty.
Behold the place in the world where everything is acknowledged,
And this old head and the source of tears;
And these two arms stiffened in the trade of arms;
The only corner of earth where everything is contained.
Behold the place in the world where everything has come back
After so many departures, after so many arrivals.
Behold the place in the world where everything is poor and bare
After so many hazards, after so many drudgeries.
Behold the place in the world and the only retreat,
And the unique return and the recollection,
And the leaf and the fruit and the unleafing,
And the boughs gathered for this unique feast.
Behold the place in the world where all comes home and grows silent,
And the silence and the shadow and the carnal absence,
And the beginning of eternal presence,
The only nook where the soul is all that she was.
Behold the place in the world where temptation
Turns itself around and sets itself reversed.
For what tempts here is submission;
And it is blindness within the immense universe.
And the laying-down is here what tempts,
And what comes of itself is abdication,
And what comes by itself and what presents itself
Is here only grandeur and presentation.
It is revolt here that becomes impossible,
And what presents itself is the resignation.
And it is effacement that becomes invincible,
And all is but good day and salutation.
What everywhere else is an accession
Is here but a total and muffled abrasion.
What everywhere else is a heaping-up
Is here but baseness and depression.
What everywhere else is an oppression
Is here but the effect of a noble crushing.
What everywhere else is an eagerness
Is here but heritage and succession.
What everywhere else is a rude war
Is here but the peace of a long abandonment.
What everywhere else is a sinking-down
Is here the very law and the common norm.
What everywhere else is a bitter battle
And on the outstretched neck the butcher’s knife,
What everywhere else is the graft and the pruning
Is here but the flower and the fruit of the peach.
What everywhere else is the rough climbing
Is here but a descent and an arrival.
What everywhere else is the heaving sea
Is here but calm weather and settling.
What everywhere else is a harsh law
Is here but a fair fold beneath your commands,
And in the liberty of our amendments
A fidelity more tender than faith.
What everywhere else is an obsession
Is here under your laws but a place restored.
What everywhere else is a sold-out soul
Is here but prayer and intercession.
What everywhere else is a weariness
Is here but keys on a humble tray.
What everywhere else is the vicissitude
Is here but a vine on the very hillside.
What everywhere else is the long habit
Seated by the fireside, fists under chin,
What everywhere else is a solitude
Is here but a lively and firm shoot.
What everywhere else is decrepitude
Seated by the fireside, fists upon the knees
Is here but tenderness and solicitude
And two maternal arms that turn toward us.
We have washed ourselves of such a bitterness
Star of the Sea and of the salt reefs,
We have washed ourselves of such a base foam,
Star of the barque and of the supple nets.
We have rinsed our unhappy heads
Of such a clutter of filth and reasoning,
Behold us henceforth, O queen of the prophets,
Clearer than the water of the well of the old testament.
We have steered such modest arks,
Sail of the only vessel that shall not perish,
We have consulted such poor compasses,
Ark of the only salvation, queen of the patriarchs.
We have completed such distant voyages,
We have no more taste for strange lands.
Queen of confessors, of virgins, and of angels,
Behold us returned to our first villages.
So much has been said to us, O queen of the apostles.
We have no more taste for the peroration.
We have no more altars but those that are yours,
We know nothing more but a simple prayer.
We have weathered such vast shipwrecks,
We have no more taste for transhipment,
Behold us returned, in the decline of our years,
Star of the only North within your ship.
What everywhere else is of dispersion
Is here but the effect of a fair gathering.
What everywhere else is a dismemberment
Is here but cortège and procession.
What everywhere else demands an examination
Is here but the effect of a poor youth.
What everywhere else demands a morrow
Is here but the effect of sudden weakness.
What everywhere else demands a parchment
Is here but the effect of a poor tenderness.
What everywhere else demands a knack
Is here but the effect of a humble awkwardness.
What everywhere else is a derangement
Is here but rightness and declension.
What everywhere else is a hovel-camp
Is here but a thick and lasting house.
What everywhere else is war and peace
Is here but defeat and surrender.
What everywhere else is of sedition
Is here but a fair people and thick ears of grain.
What everywhere else is an immense army
With its supply trains and its encumbrances,
And its baggage trains and its delays,
Is here but decency and good repute.
What everywhere else is a collapse
Is here but a slow and curving inclination.
What everywhere else is of comparison
Is here without peer and without redoubling.
What everywhere else is an overwhelming
Is here but the effect of poor obedience.
What everywhere else is a great parliament
Is here but the effect of the sole audience.
What everywhere else is a framing
Is here but a candid and calm resting-altar.
What everywhere else is an adjournment
Is here but the forgetting of morning and evening.
The mornings have gone toward the times now past,
And the evenings shall go toward the eternal evening,
And the days shall enter into a solemn day,
And the sons shall become resolute men.
The ages shall enter into an absolute age,
The sons shall return toward the paternal threshold
And shall seize by force both the fraternal love
And the ancient heritage and the devolved estate.
Behold the place in the world where everything becomes a child,
And above all this old man with his grey beard,
And his hair mingled with the breath of the breeze,
And his modest gaze once triumphant.
Behold the place in the world where everything becomes novice,
And this old head and its dawdlings,
And these two arms stiffened in the governments,
The only corner of earth where everything becomes accomplice,
And even this great fool that played the clever one,
(He is your servant, O first handmaid),
And who turned round and round in a learned orbit,
And who carried water in the millrace of the mill.
What everywhere else is a wrenching
Is here but the flower of the young season.
What everywhere else is a retrenchment
Is here but a sun on the rim of the horizon.
What everywhere else is a hard ploughing
Is here but harvest and relinquishment.
What everywhere else is the decline of an age
Is here but a candid and dear aging.
What everywhere else is a resistance
Is here but a sequence and accompaniment;
What everywhere else is a prostration
Is here but a gentle and long obedience.
What everywhere else is a rule of constraint
Is here but release and abandonment;
What everywhere else is a hard compulsion
Is here but weakness and uplifting.
What everywhere else is a rule of conduct
Is here but happiness and reinforcement;
What everywhere else is savings produced
Is here but an honour and a grave oath.
What everywhere else is a stiffness
Is here but the flower of the young prayer;
What everywhere else is the heavy armature
Is here but the wool and the white fleece.
What everywhere else would be a tour de force
Is here but simpleness and respite;
What everywhere else is the rough bark
Is here but the sap and the tears of the vine-shoot.
What everywhere else is a long wearing-down
Is here but reinforcement and renewed growth;
What everywhere else is upheaval
Is here but the day of good fortune.
What everywhere else keeps to the reserve
Is here but abundance and overflowing;
What everywhere else is won and conserved
Is here but expenditure and relinquishment.
What everywhere else keeps to the defensive
Is here but jubilation and dismantling;
And the forgetting of the injury and the forgetting of the offence
Is here but idleness and banishment.
What everywhere else is a tie
Is here but a faithful and noble attachment;
What everywhere else is an encirclement
Is here but a passer-by within your house.
What everywhere else is an obedience
Is here but a sheaf at mowing-time;
What everywhere else is done by surveillance
Is here but a fine hay at haymaking time.
What everywhere else is a forcing-frame
Is here but the plant at home in the garden;
What everywhere else is a wager
Is here but the threshold at the very step.
What everywhere else is a retaliation
Is here but relaxation and disarming;
What everywhere else is a contraction
Is here but a mute and calm engagement;
What everywhere else is a perishable good
Is here but a tranquil and brief release;
What everywhere else is a puffing-up
Is here but a rose and footsteps on the sand.
What everywhere else is a straining
Is here but the flower of the young reason;
What everywhere else is a straightening-up
Is here but the slope and the fold of the lawn.
What everywhere else is a flaying
Is here but a modest and fair unclothing;
What everywhere else is a scouring
Is here but a lasting and sure stripping.
What everywhere else is a stiffening
Is here but a supple and candid fountain;
What everywhere else is an illustrious pain
Is here but a deep and pure springing-forth.
What everywhere else is quarrelled and taken
Is here but a fair river at the borders of its source,
O queen and it is here that every soul yields itself
Like a young warrior fallen again in his course.
What everywhere else is the road climbed,
O queen who reign in your illustrious court,
Star of the morning, queen of the last day,
What everywhere else is the table served,
What everywhere else is the road followed
Is here but a peaceful and strong detachment,
And in a calm temple and far from a flat torment
The awaiting of a death more living than life.
2. — prayer of petition
We do not ask that the grain beneath the millstone
Be ever replaced in the heart of the ear,
We do not ask that the wandering and lonely soul
Be ever set to rest in a flowering garden.
We do not ask that the crushed grape-cluster
Be ever replaced on the pediment of the trellis,
And that the heavy hornet and the young bee
Ever return there to gorge themselves on dew.
We do not ask that the vermilion rose
Be ever replaced upon the hoops of the rose-bush,
And that the bread-basket and the heavy hamper
Return to the river and become osier again.
We do not ask that this written page
Be ever erased from the book of memory,
And that the heavy suspicion and the young story
Come to recall this prescribed sorrow.
We do not ask that the bent stem
Be ever straightened in the book of nature,
And that the heavy bud and the young vein
Ever pierce the bark and be redeployed.
We do not ask that the broken bough
Ever grow green again in the book of grace,
And that the heavy sucker and the young lineage
Ever spring forth again from the blasted tree.
We do not ask that the unleafed branch
Turn ever again toward a young spring,
And that the heavy sap and the young season
Save at least one crown in the drowned forest.
We do not ask that the fold of the cloth
Be smoothed before the master returns,
And that your handmaid and an unhappy being
Ever be freed from this heavy cope.
We do not ask that this august table
Be ever set again, unless for a God,
But we do not hope that the great constable
Warm his hands twice at so meagre a fire.
We do not ask that a soul gone astray
Be ever replaced upon the road of happiness.
O queen it is enough for us to have kept our honour
And we do not wish that a pitying help
Ever set us back upon the road of pleasure,
And we do not wish that a bribed love
Ever set us back upon the road of allegiance,
O sole governance of a soul that has warred.
Regent of the sea and of the illustrious port,
We ask nothing in these amendments,
Queen, but to keep beneath your commands
A fidelity stronger than death.
3. — prayer of confidence
We do not ask that this beautiful cloth
Be ever folded back into the shelves of the cupboard,
We do not ask that a fold of memory
Be ever erased from this heavy cope.
Mistress of the way and of the joining,
O mirror of justice and of soul’s just measure,
You alone know, O great Our Lady,
What the halt and the recollection are.
Mistress of the lineage and of the crossing-over,
O temple of wisdom and of jurisprudence,
You alone know, O severe prudence,
What the judge and the balancing are.
When it was necessary to sit at the cross of the two roads
And to choose regret along with remorse,
When it was necessary to sit at the corner of double fates
And to fix the gaze upon the key of the two vaults,
You alone know, mistress of the secret,
That one of the two roads went downward,
You know which one our steps chose,
As one chooses a cedar and the wood of a casket.
And not at all from virtue for we have little,
And not at all from duty for we love it not,
But as a carpenter arms himself with his compass,
From a need to set ourselves at the centre of misery,
And to place ourselves rightly in the axis of distress,
And by that muffled need to be the more unhappy,
And to go toward the hardest and to suffer more deeply,
And to take the evil in its full just measure.
By this old knack, by this same skill,
That will serve no more to chase happiness,
May we, O regent, at least hold honour,
And keep for honour alone our poor tenderness.
4. — prayer of conveyance
We have governed such vast kingdoms,
O regent of kings and of governments,
We have so often slept in straw and stubble,
Regent of the great beggars and the upheavals.
We have no more taste for the great majordomos,
Regent of power and of overthrows,
We have no more taste for the great commotions,
Regent of pediments, of palaces, and of domes.
We have fought such fervent wars
Before the Lord and the God of armies,
We have traversed such shifting lands,
We have acquired such high renowns.
We have no more taste for the trade of arms,
Queen of the great peaces and of the disarmings,
We have no more taste for the trade of tears,
Queen of the seven sorrows and the seven sacraments.
We have governed such vast provinces,
Regent of prefects and of procurators,
We have dawdled with so many august princes,
Queen of the painted panels and the two donors.
We have no more taste for the departments,
Nor for the prefecture and for the capital,
We have no more taste for embarkations,
We no longer breathe toward our native land.
We have incurred such high fortunes,
O key of the only honour that shall not perish,
We have stripped off such base grudges,
Queen of the testimony and of the double witness.
We have no more taste for boastings,
Mistress of wisdom and of silence and of shadow,
We have no more taste for silver-plate,
O key of the only treasure and of a happiness without number.
We have seen so much, lady of poverty,
We have no more taste for new gazings,
We have done so much, temple of purity,
We have no more taste for new hazards.
We have sinned so much, refuge of the sinner,
We have no more taste for delays,
We have searched so much, miracle of candour,
We have no more taste for teachings.
We have learned so much in school-houses,
We know nothing more but your commandments,
We have failed so much by act and by word,
We know nothing more but our amendments.
We are those soldiers who grumbled through the world,
But who always marched and have never yielded,
We are this Church and this bound bundle,
We are this internal and profound lineage.
We ask no more for these perishable goods,
We ask no more for your graces of happiness,
We ask no more but for your graces of honour,
We shall build no more our houses upon these sands.
We know nothing more of what was read to us,
We know nothing more of what was said to us.
We know no more but an eternal edict,
We know nothing more but your absolute order.
We have taken too much, we are resolved.
We wish no more save by obedience,
And to remain beneath the strokes of an august power,
Mirror of times to come and of times now past.
If it is permitted however that one who has nothing
May one day dispose, and bequeath some thing.
If it is not forbidden, mysterious rose,
That one who has not should one day convey his goods;
If it is permitted to the beggar to make a testament,
And to bequeath the shelter and the straw and the thatch,
If it is permitted to the king to bequeath his kingdom,
And if the great dauphin pledges a new oath;
If it is yet allowed that one who owes everything
Should have an account opened and a credit posted,
If the transfer goes through and is not forbidden,
We ask for nothing, we shall go to the end.
If then it is allowed that a humble debtor
May raise his voice for what is not owed,
If he may receive a price when he has not sold,
And cause a balance to swing by credit standing;
We who have known only your graces of war
And your graces of mourning and your graces of pain,
(And your graces of joy and this heavy plain),
And the journeying of the graces of misery;
And the procession of the graces of distress,
And the ploughed fields and the beaten paths,
And the lacerated hearts and the aching loins,
We ask for nothing, vigilant mistress.
We who have known only your adversity,
(But let it be blessed, O temple of wisdom),
O be pleased to convey, marvel of largesse,
Your graces of happiness and of prosperity.
Be pleased to lay them upon four young heads,
Your graces of gentleness and of consent,
And braid for those brows, queen of the pure wheat,
A few ears gathered in the harvest of the feasts.