In the Immense Sadness

Lili Boulanger

In the immense sadness and in the heavy silence,

A step makes itself heard, a form advances,

And towards a humble tomb she comes to lean over;

O, woman, in this holy place, what do you come to seek?

Why do you come to disturb the peace of the cemetery?

Do you have a treasure hidden under some stone,

Or do you come to beg, in the shadow of the tombs,

Poor living woman, from the dead, a bit of their rest?

No, none of that brings her here,

(The moon at that moment illuminated this scene,)

And what this woman, (Alas! The heart breaks,)

What this woman comes to seek is a frail and graceful child,

Who sleeps on this grave, and who, in his fallacy,

Since it was there that he saw his mother disappear,

(Sweet being!) imagines in his naïve hope

That she is only hidden and that he will see her again.

And they say that at night in a secret vision,

When the blond child feels his head grow heavy,

And his little soul is weary of sighing,

His mother returns to sing him to sleep.