Beggar music in Toulouse
What early cocks of morn
Are crowing in my porch, into my lazy bed
To press, quite without need, on me that here is dawn?
What? Did the Sun reach out and grasp his bridle yet?
Oh no! My ears are erring.
It's not a crowing cock, it seems the sweeter sound
Of strings. But how would strings here happen to be stirring?
My sleep has been too short: morn is not yet around.
My ears are drunk, I say,
From sleep. And yet I wake, talk, hear fiddling and all.
Away, dark curtains! Look: there is the Sun's display
In neighbor's window panes and high upon the wall.
Where did I go to sleep?
Was it not in Toulouse, the city praised so dearly
Second of France's towns. Didn't I slumber deep
Here, in this room, not used to violins so early?
One reads in learned books
Of such, who, deep in dreams, get up as if awake
And talking walk about, explore crannies and nooks.
I still doubt if my brains here only dreams, a fake.
But hush, the strings begin
To make with every stroke a louder, stronger sound
As if to pierce my ears and get still deeper in,
Enticing me away from the warm nest I'd found.
Now I see clearly: Frenchies,
Bums of the fiddling kind, beggars as one descries
In Paris, during meals; these with their sprightly dances
Are begging "for Gods sake"; thus praying I arise.
Up sluggard, seek some sovereigns
Of Swedish metal, or seek pennies, clipped and marked.
Go, prompt as almoner this piteous bunch to move on.
With charity at dawn, one makes a holy start.
© August F. Harms
Eerder verschenen in: Maria A. Schenkeveld: Dutch literature in the age of Rembrandt: themes and ideas. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1991, p. 90.