Return from the Ball

The old fathers in their stiff habits

Also passed the door one summer evening,

And for a honeybee's age,

The little immortal flame

Danced in their eyes.

Late that night, back from the ball,

They peed in the canal,

Against the cemetery wall,

And out of the surrounding silence powerful as a mountain,

The silk deluge descended from the poplars.

Many of the dead were already working underground,

But Sunday and even forgetting appeased them,

And the upside-down harrow at the start of the field gleamed,

Holding hay mixed with stars between its teeth.

Halfway up the hill, they shouted:

For nothing, for the pleasure of hearing

Their voices disappear into the depths of the barns, the granaries

Filled with wheat as billowy as the bodies of women,

And then into the noise always underway beneath the night.