Winter days when cold grips
the burgh, the fold, the wood, the mire,
stakes of misery and of hate,
in open country that never ends,
the beggars have the look of madmen.
In the morning, still heavy with night,
they sink in holes in the roads,
their bread sodden with rain
and their hats like soot
and their great backs like arches
and their slow step in rhythm with boredom;
in the ditches noon halts them
for their repast or their doze;
one would think them immensely weary
and resigned to the same gestures;
yet, on the thresholds of lonely farms,
they sometimes spring up, like rogues,
at evening, in the sudden light
of a door abruptly opened.
The beggars have the air of madmen.
They advance, through the harshness
and sterility of the landscape
which is reflected in the depths of
the sorrowful eyes of their faces;
with their old clothes and their rags
and their walk that breaks them,
in summer, amidst the fresh fields,
they scare away the birds;
and now that, on the moors, December
tears and bites
and freezes the dead
to the depths of caskets,
one by one, they come to a stop
on the roads to the church,
bleak, stubborn and upright,
the beggars, like crosses.
With their backs like a burden
and their hats like soot
they inhabit the crossroads
of wind and rain.
They are the monotonous tread
– that which comes and goes
ever the same and never weary –
from horizon to horizon.
They are agony and mystery
and their sticks are the hammers
of misery’s bells
that toll for death on the earth.
So, when they finally drop
parched with thirst, pierced by hunger
and go to ground like wolves,
at the bottom of a hole,
those who come
after the day’s labour,
to bury their bodies in haste
are scared to look full face
at the eternal threat
that still glitters, beneath the lid.