Germinal

And now the Spring. The peevish breezes vex

Bulbs that are thrust before the equinox.

Ambition and the cruel flux of love

Burn black and deep, imprisoned in a mirror

Whose one reflection is the season's terror,

Nor can we sate ourselves, or cry enough.

The sky is curdled, buds dissolve in glue,

We 'bruise the meadows that we trample through.

Dead tubers blossom into feet and hands,

While on earth's patient breast whose veins are danger

Still cracked, still withered by the winds of hunger,

The ulcer wreathes itself in flowers and fronds,

O tomb-tormented, rising from his sleep,

The buried stranger has begun to creep.

Blood flows on leaves and limbs. He snaps the sheath

Which holds him captive from the curious light.

Brute frenzy and the bestial drum await

His advent at this hour of birth and death.

Rib of ourselves, whom once we fed upon,

Now have you clothed your crumbled skeleton,

Till every vein and sinew germinates.

O dying boy, whom our indifference slew,

Your bones have sprouted where we buried you.

You come to punish and make desolate.

The Winter gave you sour roots for food:

You would have loved us in your servitude.

Gentle, the weakly son, who knew no hope,

You asked for sanctuary, you begged for bread,

But now you will not see us comforted.

You come with turbulence, with barbarous rape.

We should oppose the tyrant. Yet the will

Cannot control its secret oracle

Which thrusts him yearly from the laboring soil.

Now dense with sweat, now dark with menaces

He drags the seething burden of his thighs

Across our passive flesh. The huge seeds fall.