When I must make my way toward you, O Lord, grant that it be a day when the countryside is dusty with the fair. I wish, as here below, to choose my way for going, as I please, to Paradise, where stars shine in broad day. I shall take my staff and set out on the highway, and I shall call to the asses, who are my friends: I am Francis Jammes and I'm going to Paradise, for there is no hell in the land of the good Lord. I shall say to them: Come, friends of the blue sky, poor cherished beasts, who with a sudden flip of the ear drive off the lean flies, and the blows, and the bees ... May I appear unto You amid these beasts whom I love so much because they lower the head gently, and stand still locking their little feet in a gentle fashion that stirs the pity in you. I shall arrive followed by their thousands of ears followed by those whose flanks bear shallow baskets by those who draw the carts of mountebanks or wagons of feather dusters and tin plates, by those whose backs bear piles of dented cans, by she-asses, gravid as a wolf-bitch, with broken pace, by those on whom small pantaloons are put because of the blue and sweating sores inflamed by stubborn flies that group and swarm around. Lord, let it be with the asses that I come to you. Let angels in that peace conduct us toward the bush-grown streams where cherries hang as sleek as is the laughing flesh of tender maids, and grant that, bending in this garden of souls above your holy waters, I may be like unto the asses, whose meek, sweet poverty mirrors the brightness of eternal love. |