One gives a blossom to a soldier who is blind.
I go into the beautiful Cathedral, which stands heaped
Against an ancient heaven,
Like a gray cloud that never comes to storm...
On the threshold sits a beggar without legs;
He is whining for alms and doing a good business,
For have they not signed the armistice in the Forest of Compiègne?
Within the solemn transept, where the eye
Finds melody in every lifted line,
Are gentle constellations scattering star-fire through the gloom—
And the veiled women kneel before the shrines with their hands crossed on their breasts as white as lilies—
O the pale hands on the black cloth!
And they light their slender candles before the image of the Mother of God,
Which is in marble,
And go away, out of the stained dusk that falls through the sacred windows,
To the light in the street, to the light that sears their souls, to the light that must be borne...
What does it mean to them that a paper has been signed in the Forest of Compiègne?
