Arthur Rimbaud

I

La chambre est pleine d’ombre ; on entend vaguement
De deux enfants le triste et doux chuchotement.
Leur front se penche, encore alourdi par le rêve,
Sous le long rideau blanc qui tremble et se soulève…
– Au dehors les oiseaux se rapprochent frileux ;
Leur aile s’engourdit sous le ton gris des cieux ;
Et la nouvelle Année, à la suite brumeuse,
Laissant traîner les plis de sa robe neigeuse,
Sourit avec des pleurs, et chante

Jeanne-Marie a des mains fortes,
Mains sombres que l’été tanna,
Mains pâles comme des mains mortes.
– Sont-ce des mains de Juana?

Ont-elles pris les crèmes brunes
Sur les mares des voluptés?
Ont-elles trempé dans des lunes
Aux étangs de sérénités?

Ont-elles bu des cieux barbares,
Calmes sur les genoux charmants?
Ont-elles roulé des cigares
Ou trafiqué des diamants?

Sur les pieds ardents des Madones
Ont-elles fané des fleurs d’or?
C’est le sang noir des belladones
Qui dans leur paume éclate et dort.

Mains

LUI – Ta poitrine sur ma poitrine,
Hein ? nous irions,
Ayant de l’air plein la narine,
Aux frais rayons

Du bon matin bleu, qui vous baigne
Du vin de jour?…
Quand tout le bois frissonnant saigne
Muet d’amour

De chaque branche, gouttes vertes,
Des bourgeons clairs,
On sent dans les choses ouvertes
Frémir des chairs:

Tu plongerais dans la luzerne
Ton blanc peignoir,
Rosant à l’air ce bleu qui cerne
Ton grand oeil noir,

Amoureuse de la campagne,
Semant partout,
Comme une mousse de champagne,
Ton rire

O see-saws! O Lilies!
Enemas of silver!
Disdainful of labours,
disdainful of famines!
Dawn fills you with
a (wound-searching,) cleansing love!
A heavenly sweetness
butters your stamens!
Armand Silvestre
-Arthur Rimbaud

In Rome within the Sistine Chapel,
Covered over with Christian signs,
There is a scarlet coloured casket
Where most ancient noses dry:
Noses of Thebaid ascetics,
Noses of Sangreal canons
In which livid night firmset is,
And the old sepulchral anthems.
Into their aridity mystical
Is introduced each morningtide
Some filthiness schismatical
Ground into a powder fine.
Léon Dierx
Original French
Les lèvres closes.

Vu à Rome
Il est, à Rome, à la Sixtine,
Couverte d’emblèmes chrétiens,
Une cassette écarlatine
Où sèchent des nez fort anciens :
Nez d’ascètes

I

O the enormous avenues of the Holy Land, the temple terraces! What has become of the Brahman who explained the proverbs to me? Of that time, of that place, I can still see even the old women! I remember silver hours and sunlight by the rivers, the hand of the country on my shoulder and our carresses standing on the spicy plains. – A flight of scarlet pigeons thunders

Je m’en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées ;
Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal ;
J’allais sous le ciel, Muse ! et j’étais ton féal ;
Oh ! là là ! que d’amours splendides j’ai rêvées !

Mon unique culotte avait un large trou.
– Petit-Poucet rêveur, j’égrenais dans ma course
Des rimes. Mon auberge était à la Grande Ourse.
– Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou

Et je les écoutais, assis au bord

I

Clear water; like the salt of childhood tears,
the assault on the sun by the whiteness of women’s bodies;
the silk of banners, in masses and of pure lilies,
under the walls a maid once defended;

the play of angels;-no…the golden current on its way,
moves its arms, black, and heavy, and above all cool, with grass. She
dark, before the blue Sky as a canopy, calls up
for curtains the shadow of the hill and

Un hydrolat lacrymal lave
Les cieux vert-chou:
Sous l’arbre tendronnier qui bave,
Vos caoutchoucs

Blancs de lunes particulières
Aux pialats ronds,
Entrechoquez vos genouillères
Mes laiderons!

Nous nous aimions à cette époque,
Bleu laideron!
On mangeait des oeufs à la coque
Et du mouron!

Un soir, tu me sacras poète,
Blond laideron:
Descends ici, que je te fouette
En mon giron;

J’ai dégueulé ta bandoline,
Noir laideron;
Tu couperais ma mandoline
Au fil du front

Pouah ! mes salives desséchées,
Roux laideron,
Infectent encor les tranchées
De ton sein rond!

0 mes petites

From the indigo straits to Ossian’s seas,
on pink and orange sands washed by the vinous sky,
crystal boulevards have just risen and crossed,
immediately occupied by poor young families
who get their food at the greengrocers’.
Nothing rich.– The city! From the bituminous desert,
in headlong flight with the sheets of fog spread
in frightful bands across the sky,
that bends, recedes, descends,
formed by the most sinister black smoke
that Ocean in mourning can produce,
flee helmets, wheels,

Morts de Quatre-vingt-douze et de Quatre-vingt-treize,
Qui, pâles du baiser fort de la liberté,
Calmes, sous vos sabots, brisiez le joug qui pèse
Sur l’âme et sur le front de toute humanité;

Hommes extasiés et grands dans la tourmente,
Vous dont les coeurs sautaient d’amour sous les haillons,
O Soldats que la Mort a semés, noble Amante,
Pour les régénérer, dans tous les vieux sillons;

Vous dont le sang lavait toute grandeur salie,
Morts de Valmy, Morts de

The swaying motion on the bank of the river falls,
The chasm at the sternpost,
The swiftness of the hand-rail,
The huge passing of the current
Conduct by unimaginable lights
And chemical newness
Voyagers surrounded by the waterspouts of the valley
And the current.

They are the conquerors of the world
Seeking a personal chemical fortune;
Sports and comfort travel with them;
They take the education
Of races, classes, and animals, on this Boat.
Repose and dizziness
To the torrential light,
To the terrible

A winding movement on the slope beside the rapids of the river.
The abyss at the stern, The swiftness of the incline,
The overwhelming passage of the tide,
With extraordinary lights and chemical wonders.
Lead on the travelers Through the wind spouts of the valley
And the whirlpool. These are the conquerors of the world,
Seeking their personal chemical fortune;
Sport and comfort accompany them;
They bring education for races, for classes, for animals
Within this vessel, rest

I went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets;
My overcoat too was becoming ideal;
I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;
Oh dear me! what marvellous loves I dreamed of!

My only pair of breeches had a big whole in them.
– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.
My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.
– My stars in the sky rustled softly.

And

A lacrymal tincture washes
The cabbage-green skies:
Under the drooling tree with tender shoots,
Your raincoats

White with special moons
With round eyes
Knock together your kneecaps
My ugly ones!

We loved one another at that time,
Blue ugly one!
We ate soft boiled eggs
And chickweed!

One evening you consecrated me poet,
Blond ugly one:
Come down here, that I can whip you
On my lap;

I vomited your brilliantine,
Black ugly one;
You would cut off my

A tincture of tears washes
The cabbage-green skies:
Beneath the dripping tree with tender shoots,
Your waterproofs

Whitened by peculiar moons
With round staring eyes,
Knock your kneecaps together,
My ugly ones!

We loved each other in those days,
Blue ugly one!
We used to eat boiled eggs
And chickweed!

One evening you anointed me poet,
Blond ugly one:
Come down here, let me smack you
Across my knees;

I have puked up your brillantine,
Black ugly one;
You would stop the sound of my mandolin
Before it

HE – Your breast on my breast,
Eh? We could go,
With our nostrils full of air,
Into the cool light

Of the blue good morning that bathes you
In the wine of daylight?
When the whole shivering wood bleeds,
Dumb with love

From every branch green drops,
Pale buds,
You can feel in things unclosing
The quivering flesh:

You would bury in the lucerne
Your white gown,
Changing to rose-colour in the fresh air the blue tint which encircles
Your great black eyes,

In

I.

No one’s serious at seventeen.
–On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade
And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need
–You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade.
Lindens smell fine on fine June nights!
Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes;
The wind brings sounds–the town is near–
And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . .

II.

–Over there, framed by a branch
You can see a little patch of dark

I
On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils…
In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.

For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts and

Al Godillot, Gambier, Galopeau,
Wolf-Pleyel – O Robinets! –
Menier, – O Chirsts! – Leperdriel!
Kinck, Jacob, Bonbonnel!
Veuillot, Tropmann, Augier!
Gill, Mendes, Manuel, Guido Gonin! –
Basket of the Graces! L’Herisse!
Unctuous waxes!
Old loaves, spirits!
Blind men! –
but then who knows? –
Beadles, Enghien. –
In one’s own home!
Let’s be Christian!
-Paris by Arthur Rimbaud

Spring is evidently here; for
The ascent of Thiers and Picard
From the green Estates lays
Its splendours wide open!
_

O May! What delirious bare bums!
O Sèvres Meudon, Bagneux, Asnières,
Listen now to the welcome arrivals
Scattering springtime joys!
_

They have shakos, and sabers, and tom-toms,
And none of the old candleboxes;
And skiffs which have nev nev
Are cutting the lake of bloodstained waters!
_

More than ever before, we roister,
As on to our ant-heaps come
Tumbling the yellow heads,
On these

Penned between oaken pews,
in corners of the church which their breath stinkingly warms,
all their eyes on the chancel dripping with gold,
and the choir with its twenty pairs of jaws bawling pious hymns;
Sniffing the odour of wax if it were the odour of bread,
happy, ad humbled like beaten dogs,
the Poor offer up to God, the Lord and Master,
their ridiculous stubborn oremuses.
For the women it is very pleasant to wear the

At four o’clock on a summer morning,
The Sleep of love still lasts.
Under the spinneys the dawn disperses scents
Of the festive night.
But down there in the huge workshop
Near the Hesperidean sun,
The carpenters in their shirtsleeves
are already astir.
Peaceful in the midst of their wilderness of foam,
They are preparing the costly canopies
Where the riches of the city
Will smile beneath painted skies.
Ah ! for these charming labourer’s sakes
Subjects of a king of Babylon,
Venus

Elle était fort déshabillée
Et de grands arbres indiscrets
Aux vitres jetaient leur feuillée
Malinement, tout près, tout près.

Assise sur ma grande chaise,
Mi-nue, elle joignait les mains.
Sur le plancher frissonnaient d’aise
Ses petits pieds si fins, si fins

– Je regardai, couleur de cire
Un petit rayon buissonnier
Papillonner dans son sourire
Et sur son sein, – mouche ou rosier

– Je baisai ses fines chevilles.
Elle eut un doux rire brutal
Qui s’égrenait en claires trilles,
Un joli rire de

L’Homme pâle, le long des pelouses fleuries,
Chemine, en habit noir, et le cigare aux dents :
L’Homme pâle repense aux fleurs des Tuileries
– Et parfois son oeil terne a des regards ardents…

Car l’Empereur est saoul de ses vingt ans d’orgie !
Il s’était dit : “Je vais souffler la liberté
Bien délicatement, ainsi qu’une bougie!”
La Liberté revit ! Il se sent éreinté !

Il est pris. – Oh ! quel nom sur ses