EASTER

 

This very long poem is a good meditation for Easter. Having come out of Lent and Holy Week, we find that spring has sprung us many colors and light.  May the risen Lord, bring light and joy to all.  This poem is by SERVANT of GOD MARIE ROUGET (called “the Warbler of Auxerre”) who died in 1967, at the age of  84. Some consider her the greatest French poet of their time.

                                        Kateryna Shadrina

Hallelujah! Make, O sun, the house new! 

My sisters, let each of you move

With the hands of a housewife and cheerful fingers...

It’s Easter! Let's throw out the dark dust,

Let's scrub the keys and locks with fine sand,

So that the door can open in peace. Resurrection: Ivanka Demchuk- Ukraine

 

Wax gently, wax lively the cupboard doors,

The window laughs in their shimmer!

Scrub! Let it gleam in the glow of the floor.

Let's dress her curtains in fresh muslin...

What a work! Did we bake the filbert cake

            And put a bouquet on the table?

 

Hallelujah! We are done being dead,

From fasting, from closing our doors,

The heart closed and guarded by pious fears.

The priest delivered the flame and the wild waters,

Our soul goes out and has fun with our words

And our youth in our eyes.

 

Open wide the door to Holy Week.

My heart inside me skips and rings   

As well as a bright gold bell that fell silent

And returns from Rome after the mystical times

Giving me flight and the tone of the hymns

For the joy of salvation.

 

But with my basket I have to go away

Looking for fresh eggs in the straw...

In the surrounding vineyards the crocuses have bloomed

In circles of gold and holding their green hands.

I've seen in the ditch nests of violets

And cuckoos on the slopes.

The chickens have laid eggs far away in the countryside.

In the morning who accompanies me?

Come alone with me, my beloved...

What word did I say before I thought about it?

Where is this beloved, says, my little one?

Whom by such a name have you named?

 Is it Jesus, O I who knows no man?

The martyred God that in his sleep

Yesterday we stayed up all night in the choir,

Crying out for love over his tomb, of veiled grief?

Is it sweet Spring and his winged seeds

Who blew into our hearts?'

My beloved, it is only a word, it is no one,

            But to have said it makes me shudder

And I am fragrant and I am rumored

Like a fiancée to the king who loves her as a gift,

I shudder and feel like the earth, open

All big at the feet of the sower.

 

What seed in the distance floating is going to steal my soul?

            What is the grain she is claiming

To be with the flowers a flower of the summer

And to bear fruit when autumn comes? ...

He is soft, invisible and light, he hums

Through the enchanted wind.

 

What is Spring, O Jesus, my sweet Master?

            The Angel of revolt perhaps

Who changes at a glance both the earth and the waters

To seduce me and make me restless and rebellious,

-- I, who should be a quiet chapel to you --

            Like the grass and the twigs.

 

Ah! from him now will you be able to defend me?

            O Christ, you had to wait for him

On your cross of salvation every day without healing

And make me sink to my heart, from your wounds,

Your blood, so that looking for your thorns in the hedges,

            At your feet I love to die.

 

But this morning the Angel stirred the stone,

            O You standing in the light,

Resurrected from the dawn to the feet color of time,

You who in the garden met Mary,

What will you do, gardener of Easter in bloom,

To defend me from Spring?

(1907) Translation by Benjamin Crockett