Classic Poem

Moon-white dunes and the water like violets
The days of sun or like a dove's breast the dark ones: each year one bather
Dies in the violet beauty of the water.
Keeps the bay young. How did you fast when men were few and not playful?

No pits nor whirlpools in the violet water;
The tides are clear as breathing, the tall waves honest, the sun in their hollows;
No hidden currents nor secret suctions:
Every summer one bather: no secret currents but a secret desire.

I have seen a mother with the yellow-gray hair
Crossing in strings the convulsed face from the violet water go babbling
Up the white dune; I have seen a young wife
Scream on the beach, writhing among the bystanders, they held her with their hands.

It takes the gain and its face not changes;
It is fed; it is greater than man and much more beautiful: we that eat beeves
Accuse fair beauty if indeed it is fed
With the thin infusion of one young life in the water, each weary summer?

How did you fast, you water like violets,
When men were few and not playful, brown fishers of the ebb, not one in ten years?
How you will feast in the thronged years coming,
The exuberance of women makes you so many playfellows, you choose among thousands.