Black Republic of Letters

La Lyre Haïtienne: Le Soir Près de l'Onde (Poem)

Our readers will taste these charming little verses even better in learning that death has just taken this young poet of 23 years whose precocious talent was improving day by day.

Le Soir Près de l'Onde

I was alone near the surges of a starry night 
V. Hugo (Les Orientales)

I love to sit.
In the evening,
Alone near the water
As it rumbles,
Contemplating, joyful,
The skies
And the night where billows
The fog:

I love the night,
The confused
Noise of the
Plaintive shore,
The moaning
Of the wind,
And the moon,
Blond and round.

But sometimes
When I see
Through the clouds
The image
Of the sleeping star,
Again,
Hardly lighting
The plains;

When on the blue waves
Through the fog
My eyes focus on the foam
That covers the rock face
Of the wild coastline
In white;

When I sometimes hear
The wind
Crying through the 
Outstretched branch
I cry out: "O night,
The noise
Of a love supreme,
I love it!"

Arnold Laroche

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