In the depth of evening the windmill turns, so slowly,
against a sky dejected and melancholy,
it turns and it turns and its sails are the colour of dregs
sad and weak, leaden and weary, endlessly.
Since dawn, its arms, like arms of lament,
have stretched and fallen; and here they are
fallen again, out there, in the darkened ether
and the absolute silence of lifeless nature.
Over the hamlets a suffering day of winter turns to slumber,
clouds are wearied from their sullen journeying,
and along the shrubbery where their shadows throng,
the ruts lead on towards a dead horizon.
Beneath the hem of the ground, a few beech huts
in a circle miserably squat;
from the ceiling hangs a lamp of copper
that lends the fire’s sheen to window and plaster.
In the vast plain and slumbering emptiness
they stare out – the rickety hovels –
with the pauper eyes of their tattered tiles
at the old windmill that turns, weary, turns and dies.