Tête-d'Or. Paul Claudel

lips, and with artless arms she clasped me to her breast!

      And I brought her here that this place whence I had set out might mock me! There she lies fallen at my feet!

      My curse on this country! A murrain on the cattle! May the pigs die of plague!

      Ah! Ah! This place! O soil of sticky clay!

      I am worthless! What could I do! What was the use! Ah, why should I try to be

      Different from what I am? And it is here

      That alone and with my feet in the earth I raise my bitter cry,

      While the wind masks my face with rain!

      O woman, ever faithful

      Who followed me, uncomplaining

      Like a fairy in thrall, like a queen

      Who wraps her bleeding feet in tatters of cloth of gold!

      I cried to her, "Come, down into the mud!"

      Horror incarnate, shame, infamy teeming with desires, this is the knowledge I have gained at the last!

      Listen! When she was dying she pressed my hand against her cheek,

      And kissed me, keeping her eyes on mine,

      And she said that she could sing me prophecies

      Like an old ship that has come to the end of the world.

      And at the last when she was dying she tried to speak,

      Tears were in her eyes! Who knows what she saw, what she regretted!

      Cébès: Alone and so pale!

      Simon: She looked at me and wept and kissed my hands with burning lips!

      "Are you in pain?" I said.

      She shook her head.

      She looked at me and I do not know what she wished to say. Who can understand a woman?

      Into the grave with you!

      (He lifts the body.

      Cébès: May I help you?

      Simon: Yes. I shall be glad of your help. It shall not be forgotten.

      I will take her shoulders, you take her feet.

      (They take up the body.

      Not like that! Let her sleep face downward.

      (They lower her face downward, into the grave.

      Cébès: May she sleep well!

      Simon: There! Go! Enter, enter into the raw earth! Lie at your ease, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, your mouth pressing against the clay,

      As in the days when prone upon our pillows we rushed towards sleep!

      And now I shall load a burden of earth on your back!

      (He throws the earth into the grave. When it is full he walks on it, stamping it down.

      Fill it up! Room must be found for the earth whose place you have taken.

      —So there are none of my family left?

      Cébès: Not one. The house is closed. The fields lie fallow.

      (Silence.

      Her father is still alive.

      Simon: Would you have me ask him for a night's lodging?

      Cébès: He is old. He has known much sorrow.

      He lives alone, an object of charity, despised by everyone.

      He is bent like a scythe. His hands hang down below his knees. He has never been the same since his daughter went away.

      Simon: I shall come to this place no more.

      Can you see where the grave was?

      Cébès: There is not a sign of it. How it rains!

      Simon: O gentle Giver of Knowledge,

      Twofold teacher who while you spoke held your face before me like a book,

      Here take your rest, deeper than the buried grain!

      Here, where you cannot hear the noise of the roads or the fields, the sounds of ploughing and sowing,

      Remembered only by me, in a place that no one knows,

      And let not even this spade nor your staff like the broken oar of a sailor

      Remain to mark your grave!

      (He throws away the spade.

      And now let us go!

      Cébès: May I go with you?

      Simon: Come.

      You do not talk, comrade.

      (They walk along together.

      Cébès: Oh, I am sad! I am exceedingly sad!

      Simon: Death!

      Thoughts,

      Actions that sleep, like new-born babes

      Drawing up their knees to their bellies reassume

      The shape of the maternal mold.

      One ceases to live.

      Old age obscures the memory. The sick man

      Wakes all alone and while the rain drives against the windows, he hears the sound of a falling silver spoon.

      And the smile has mercifully been given to the old.

      Cébès: She is dead.

      Simon: A woman has withdrawn her hand from mine, mysteriously veiling her eyes.

      And I, her mate, am left alone.

      To what pale region of the air shall I raise my yearning mouth?

      What shall I repeat in my silence, "I shall find strength, I shall make the effort. … "

      Ah, where shall I look? Where shall I go? The skies are like iron and I remain here, the woman's legacy, full of vague menaces and anguished cries.

      —What is there left in life? I have travelled. I have seen the world. O worthless calendar of petty days!

      Though the members of my body

      Should bristle as thick as fir saplings upon a mountain side,

      For what would I employ that multitude?

      The woman I loved is no more!

      And yet … When she was sleeping yesterday, I went out

      Knowing that the next day I should be alone.

      It was night and my heart was heavier than a suspended stone.

      But, as I walked to and fro, slowly there came to me

      A sense of the living force within my soul, the vital essence,

      That does not enter into marriage, nor pass through the gates of birth,

      The secret purpose of my being.

      Cébès: O that I also might …

      But no one has ever bothered about me.

      Simon: What did you say?

      Cébès: I could tell you …

      I could lament in such a fashion that you would comprehend. …

      Simon: Some woman already … ?

      Cébès: No.

      Simon: Indeed the desire

      For this being who has the face of a child

      Is strange. I do not believe