October – Paul Claudel, Translated from French by Stephan Crown-Weber

June 23, 2026

Fruitlessly, I’m seeing unturned trees.

Whether funerary mists shroud it or the sky’s lengthy serenity removes it, the year is not a day further from the fatal solstice. This sun does not disappoint me—nor does opulence far off in this region; an excessive calm that I find enigmatic is present, rest without waking. The cricket has barely started in chirping when it stops—lest it go beyond amidst the fullness that alone is an absence of the right to speak, and one would say that into the solemn safety of these golden countrysides would it only be proper to venture with bare feet. No, what is behind me no longer casts the same light on the massive harvest, and depending on whether the road leads me through the stubbled fields, whether I round a pond, or happen upon a village, getting farther from the sun, I am turning my face toward that wide, pale daytime moon.

Right when I was exiting laden olive trees, when I saw the shining plain opening before me all the way off to barrier mountains, the opening line was conveyed to me. O final fruits of a condemned season! At this close of day, the supreme maturity of the irrevocable year: “It is over.”

Winter’s impatient hands will not come despoil the earth barbarously. No tattering winds, cutting frosts, or drowning waters. But more tenderly than in May—or when insatiable June hews to the life source in possession of midday—Heaven smiles upon Earth with ineffable love. Here, like a heart that yields to constant counsel, the grain and stalk part, the fruit leaves the tree, the Earth slowly gives way to the invincible—soliciting everything, death loosens an overfull hand! This line she hears now is holier than her honeymoon, deeper, sweeter, richer: “It is over!” The bird is sleeping, the tree falling asleep in the shadow reaching it, the sun on the horizon overlaying it with an even ray; the day is done; the year consummated. At the celestial interrogation, “It is over” is the loving reply.