Leeg

Joris Iven

5 Observation

Where the coast is rocky and the tidal flow is wide,

A woman raises her arms, in her hands the hem

Of her dress, which she lays on a stone,

With her back bent; her shoulders,

Golden in the waning evening sun

Which caresses the seas with its last strength.

The woman straightens up, in the twilight her full round forms

Between the fir trees which twist themselves strongly into the air,

On the other side of the bay.

She lets loose her pinned up hair and shakes it free,

Shakes it free; and mysteriously graceful, languidly,

Like a shadow, darker than darkness,

She strides across the pebble beach and wades into the seawater,

Which closes round her loins with a wide sweep of its arms,

Slides full of siltiness against her breasts,

Until she disappears completely

Into the water, darker than darkness,

And it seems as if her hair, a bundle of black branches,

Is carried along by the waves

As far as the sun, which has flamed up in itself,

Over there, at the far edge of the water.