Oceano Nox

How many captains, how many sailors,
glad to set off toward some distant port,
have vanished forever under this dark horizon!
How many went down with their luck
into the sea, under a night sky with no moon,
under a black wave, never to touch the earth again!

 

How many coxswains with their gear
have hurricanes thrown into the waves—like pages
torn from books unread!—the ends of them
secret in the abyss, breakers stealing away
downwind, each with its keepsakes, one
with the skiff, one with a dead man and an oar.

 

Nobody knows your fate, poor boys!—
who tumble under that dark expanse,
dead foreheads bumping into the hidden reefs.
Your families age with nothing to take your place
but thoughts. They die still looking out
from shore for sons who never come!

 

We talk about you still, some nights,
a few of us, hunkering by the rusted anchor.
Your names console us after dark. We laugh,
we envy you your adventures, we remember
the kisses we stole from the girls who wanted you back,
while you slept under burgeoning rafts of kelp.

 

Somebody asks: Where are they? Are they kings
of islands somewhere? Have they left us
for a paradise on earth? Then, your names fade.
Bodies sink in the water, names in the mind.
Le temps, qui sur toute ombre en verse une plus noire,
Sur le sombre océan jette le sombre oubli.

 

Bientôt des yeux de tous votre ombre est disparue.
L’un n’a-t-il pas sa barque et l’autre sa charrue?
Seules, durant ces nuits où l’orage est vainqueur,
Vos veuves aux fronts blancs, lasses de vous attendre,
Parlent encor de vous en remuant la cendre
De leur foyer et de leur cœur!

 

Et quand la tombe enfin a fermé leur paupière,
Rien ne sait plus vos noms, pas même une humble pierre
Dans l’étroit cimetière où l’écho nous répond,
Pas même un saule vert qui s’effeuille à l’automne,
Pas même la chanson naïve et monotone
Que chante un mendiant à l’angle d’un vieux pont!

 

Où sont-ils, les marins sombrés dans les nuits noires?
O flots, que vous savez de lugubres histoires!
Flots profonds redoutés des mères à genoux!
Vous vous les racontez en montant les marées,
Et c’est ce qui vous fait ces voix désespérées
Que vous avez le soir quand vous venez vers nous!
Time, dimming even the darkness, pours
oblivion into the nethermost gulf.

 

Soon from every eye your shadow fades.
One friend has a boat to keep, another a plow.
Alone, when the storms come after dark, your widows
pale from years of worry, now no longer fret
to speak of you, stirring the embers on the grate,
their memories like ash!

 

And after the coffins over their eyelids shut, no one
is left to say your name, not even a small stone
in the churchyard where the echoes visit,
not even a willow yellowing in the fall,
not even a simple, tuneless ballad
a beggar sings at the corner beside the bridge!

 

Where did they go, the sailors quenched in the dark?
Waves! what terrible stories you could tell
to the disbelieving mothers on their knees!
You keep repeating the details to yourself.
This is what makes the disconsolate voices
we hear crushing into the rocks at night!