Boaz Asleep

Boaz, overcome with weariness, by torchlight
made his pallet on the threshing floor
where all day he had worked, and now he slept
among the bushels of threshed wheat.

 

The old man owned wheatfields and barley,
and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded.
No filth soured the sweetness of his well.
No hot iron of torture whitened in his forge.

 

His beard was silver as a brook in April.
He bound sheaves without the strain of hate
or envy. He saw gleaners pass, and said,
Let handfuls of the fat ears fall to them.

 

The man’s mind, clear of untoward feeling,
clothed itself in candor. He wore clean robes.
His heaped granaries spilled over always
toward the poor, no less than public fountains.

 

Boaz did well by his workers and by kinsmen.
He was generous, and moderate. Women held him
worthier than younger men, for youth is handsome,
but to him in his old age came greatness.

 

An old man, nearing his first source, may find
the timelessness beyond times of trouble.
And though fire burned in young men’s eyes,
to Ruth the eyes of Boaz shone clear light.

Donc, Booz dans la nuit dormait parmi les siens
Près des meules, qu’on eût prises pour des décombres,
Les moissonneurs couchés faisaient des groupes sombres;
Et ceci se passait dans des temps très anciens.

 

Les tribus d’Israël avaient pour chef un juge;
La terre, où l’homme errait sous la tente, inquiet
Des empreintes de pieds de géants qu’il voyait,
Etait mouillée encor et molle du déluge.

 

Comme dormait Jacob, comme dormait Judith,
Booz, les yeux fermés, gisait sous la feuillée;
Or, la porte du ciel s’étant entre-bâillée
Au-dessus de sa tête, un songe en descendit.

 

Et ce songe était tel, que Booz vit un chêne
Qui, sorti de son ventre, allait jusqu’au ciel bleu;
Une race y montait comme une longue chaîne;
Un roi chantait en bas, en haut mourait un Dieu.

 

Et Booz murmurait avec la voix de l’âme:
«Comment se pourrait-il que de moi ceci vînt?
Le chiffre de mes ans a passé quatre-vingt,
Et je n’ai pas de fils, et je n’ai plus de femme.

 

»Voilà longtemps que celle avec qui j’ai dormi,
O Seigneur! a quitté ma couche pour la vôtre;
Et nous sommes encor tout mêlés l’un à l’autre,
Elle à demi vivante et moi mort à demi.

 

»Une race naîtrait de moi! Comment le croire?
Comment se pourrait-il que j’eusse des enfants?
Quand on est jeune, on a des matins triomphants;
Le jour sort de la nuit comme d’une victoire;

 

»Mais vieux, on tremble ainsi qu’à l’hiver le bouleau;
Je suis veuf, je suis seul, et sur moi le soir tombe,
So, Boaz slept among his heaps of grain
in darkness, as among the ruins of summer.
Reapers sprawled nearby like fallen troops.
And this took place in very ancient times.

 

Then, judges led the tribes of Israel.
People wandering with tents as herdsmen saw
the footprints left by giants where the earth
was soft still from the waters of the flood.

 

As Jacob slept, as Judith slept,
so now did Boaz on his threshing floor,
while overhead a door came open, and a dream
fell from the sky into the old man’s mind:

 

he saw a live oak grow out of his belly
far up into the blue; and many people
climbed it in a long chain, while a king sat
singing at the root, and a god died at the crown.

 

And Boaz murmured, sleeping,
in his soul: Could this come forth
from me, past eighty? Still,
I have no son. I have no wife.

 

The one who shared my bed, Lord! years ago,
you took from my house into yours,
though she and I are yet one soul—hers
half-alive in me and mine half-dead in her.

 

And shall a nation come from this ruined flesh?
Shall I now have a child? I might believe it,
young, when I could still see mornings
rise out of the night as if in triumph.

 

Now, I tremble like a birch in winter.
Old, a widower, alone at nightfall,
Et je courbe, ô mon Dieu! mon âme vers la tombe,
Comme un bœuf ayant soif penche son front vers l’eau.»

 

Ainsi parlait Booz dans le rêve et l’extase,
Tournant vers Dieu ses yeux par le sommeil noyés;
Le cèdre ne sent pas une rose à sa base,
Et lui ne sentait pas une femme à ses pieds.

 

Pendant qu’il sommeillait, Ruth, une moabite,
S’était couchée aux pieds de Booz, le sein nu,
Espérant on ne sait quel rayon inconnu,
Quand viendrait du réveil la lumière subite.

 

Booz ne savait point qu’une femme était là,
Et Ruth ne savait point ce que Dieu voulait d’elle.
Un frais parfum sortait des touffes d’asphodèle;
Les souffles de la nuit flottaient sur Galgala.

 

L’ombre était nuptiale, auguste et solennelle;
Les anges y volaient sans doute obscurément,
Car on voyait passer dans la nuit, par moment,
Quelque chose de bleu qui paraissait une aile.

 

La respiration de Booz qui dormait
Se mêlait au bruit sourd des ruisseaux sur la mousse.
On était dans le mois où la nature est douce,
Les collines ayant des lys sur leur sommet.

 

Ruth songeait et Booz dormait; l’herbe était noire;
Les grelots des troupeaux palpitaient vaguement;
Une immense bonté tombait du firmament;
C’était l’heure tranquille où les lions vont boire.

 

Tout reposait dans Ur et dans Jérimadeth;
Les astres émaillaient le ciel profond et sombre;
Le croissant fin et clair parmi ces fleurs de l’ombre
Brillait à l’occident, et Ruth se demandait,
I have turned my soul to face the grave,
an old ox turned by thirst down to the river.

 

So said Boaz in his dream, his ecstasy still
turning him toward God, eyes blurred with sleep.
The cedar does not feel the rose bloom at its root,
and Boaz did not feel, at his feet, the young woman.

 

Ruth, a Moabite, had come while Boaz slept,
and now lay at his feet, who knows what light
from what door in the heavens finding her breast
naked, tender to its stirring as his dreams.

 

But Boaz did not know Ruth came to him,
and Ruth did not know what God asked of her.
The night breathed out a freshness from wild
clumps of asphodels over the hills of Judah.

 

The dark was nuptial, and august, and solemn.
Hidden angels must have hovered over them,
for Ruth saw in the night sky, here and there,
a dark blue movement like a wing.

 

The breath of Boaz sleeping mixed
with a dull hush of brookwater in the moss.
It was the time of year when lilies open
and let go their sweetness on the hills.

 

Ruth was dreaming. Boaz slept. The grass looked black.
And little bells of sheep were trembling on the verge
of silence. Goodness came down clear as starlight
into the great calm where the lions go to drink.

 

All slept, all, from Ur to Bethlehem.
The stars enameled the deep black of the sky.
A narrow crescent in the low dark
of the west shone, while Ruth wondered,

Immobile, ouvrant l’œil à moitié sous ses voiles,
Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l’éternel été,
Avait, en s’en allant, négligemment jeté
Cette faucille d’or dans le champ des étoiles.
1^er mai 1859.

lying still now, eyes half opened,
under the twinging of their lids, what god
of the eternal summer passing dropped
his golden scythe there in that field of stars.