Fin de Siècle - Arthur Rimbaud

Drunken Boat

I drifted on a river I could not control,
No longer guided by the bargemen's ropes,
They were captured by howling Indians
Who nailed them naked to colored stakes.

I cared no more for other boats or cargoes:
English cotton, Flemish wheat, all were gone.
When my bargemen could no longer haul me
I forgot about everything and drifted on.

Through the wild splash and surging of the tides
Last winter, deaf as a child's dark night,
I ran and ran! And the drifting peninsulas
Have never known such conquering delight.

Lighter than cork, I revolved upon waves
That roll the dead forever in the deep,
Ten days, beyond the blinking eyes of land!
Lulled by storms, I drifted seaward from sleep.

Sweeter than children find the taste of sour fruit,
Green water filled my cockle shell of pine.
Anchor and rudder went drifting away,
Washed in vomit and stained with blue wine.

Now I drift through the Poem of the Sea;
This gruel of stars mirrors the milky sky,
Devours green azures; ecstatic flotsam,
Drowned men, pale and thoughtful, sometimes drift by.

Staining the sudden blueness, the slow sounds,
Deliriums that streak the glowing sky,
Stronger than drink and the songs we sing,
It is boiling, bitter, red; it is love!

I watched the lightning tear the sky apart,
Watched waterspouts, and streaming undertow,
And Dawn like Dove-People rising on wings
I've seen what men have only dreamed they saw!

I saw the sun with mystic horrors darken
And shimmer through a violet haze;
With a shiver of shutters the waves fell
Like actors in ancient, forgotten plays!

I dreamed of green nights and glittering snow,
Slow kisses rising in the eyes of the Sea,
Unknown liquids flowing, the blue and yellow
Stirring of phosphorescent melody'

For months I watched the surge of the sea,
Hysterical herds attacking the reefs;
I never thought the bright feet of Mary
Could muzzle up the heavy-breathing waves'.

I have jostled-you know ?-unbelievable Floridas
And seen among the flowers the wild eyes
of panthers in the skins of mien! Rainbows
Bridling blind flocks beneath the horizons!

In stinking swamps I have seen great hulksi
A Leviathan that rotted in the reeds!
Water crumbling in the midst of calm
And distances that shatter into foam.

Glaciers, silver suns, waves of pearl, fiery skies,
Giant serpents stranded where lice consume
Them, falling in the depths of dark gulfs
From twisted trees, bathed in black perfume!

I wanted to show children these fishes shining
In the blue wave, the golden fish that sing
A froth of flowers cradled my wandering
And delicate winds tossed me on their wings.

Sometimes, a martyr of poles and latitudes,
The sea rocked me softly in sighing air,
And brought me shadow-flowers with yellow stems
I remained like a woman, kneeling . . .

Almost an island, I balanced on my boat's sides
Rapacious blond-eyed birds, their dung, their screams.
I drifted on. Through fragile tangled lines
Drowned men, still staring up, sank down to sleep.

Now I, a little lost boat, in swirling debris,
Tossed by the storm into the birdless upper air
-All the Hansa Merchants and Monitors
Could not fish up my body drunk with the sea;

Free and soaring, trailing a violet haze,
Shot through the sky, a reddening wall
Wet with the jam of poets' inspiration,
Lichens of sun, and snots of bright blue sky;

Lost branch spinning in a herd of hippocamps,
Covered over with electric animals
An everlasting July battering
The glittering sky and its fiery funnels;

Shaking at the sound of monsters roaring,
Rutting Behemoths in thick whirlpools,
Eternal weaver of unmoving blues,
I thought of Europe and its ancient walls!

I have seen archipelagos in the stars,
Feverish skies where I was free to roam!
Are these bottomless nights your exiled nests,
Swarm of golden birds, 0 Strength to come?

True, I've cried too much; I am heartsick at dawn.
The moon is bitter and the sun is sour ...
Love burns me; I am swollen and slow.
Let my keel break! Oh, let me sink in the sea!

If I long for a shore in Europe,
It's a small pond, dark, cold, remote,
The odor of evening, and a child full of sorrow
Who stoops to launch a crumpled paper boat.

Washed in your languors, Sea, I cannot trace
The wake of tankers foaming through the cold,
Nor assault the pride of pennants and flags,
Nor endure the slave ship's stinking hold.

Drunken Morning

Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!
Hideous fanfare where yet I do not stumble!
Oh, rack of enchantments!
For the first time, hurrah for the unheard-of work,
For the marvelous body! For the first time!
It began with the laughter of children, and there it will end.
This poison will stay in our veins even when, as the fanfares depart,
We return to our former disharmony.
Oh, now, we who are so worthy of these tortures!
Let us re-create ourselves after that superhuman promise
Made to our souls and our bodies at their creation:
That promise, that madness!
Elegance, silence, violence!
They promised to bury in shadows the tree of good and evil,
To banish tyrannical honesty,
So that we might flourish in our very pure love.
It began with a certain disgust, and it ended --
Since we could not immediately seize upon eternity --
It ended in a scattering of perfumes.
Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins,
Horror of faces and objects here below,
Be sacred in the memory of the evening past.

It began in utter boorishness, and now it ends
In angels of fire and ice.
Little drunken vigil, blessed!
If only for the mask you have left us!
Method, we believe in you! We never forgot that yesterday
You glorified all of our ages.
We have faith in poison.
We will give our lives completely, every day.
FOR THIS IS THE ASSASSIN'S HOUR.

Eternity

It is recovered.
What? Eternity.
In the whirling light
Of sun become sea.

Oh my sentinel soul
Let us desire
The nothing of night
And the day on fire.

From the applause of the World
And the striving of Man
You set yourself free
And fly as you can

For out of you only,
Soft silken embers
Duty arises
Nor surfeit remembers.

Then shall all hope fail
No orietur.
Science with patience
The torment is sure.

It is recovered.
What? Eternity.
In the whirling light
Of sun become sea.

Remembrance

Water, clear as the salt of children's tears.
Suddenly in sunlight, women's bodies, all white;
Streams of silk, pure lilies, bright banners
Beneath ramparts where an armed Maid appeared.

Diversion of angels; Northern current carries gold
And loads its heavy, black, cool arms with grass,
Sinking beneath its canopy of sky . . . and the arch
And shadows of the hill, like curtains, unfold.

II

Watch! This wet square of stream moves in soft swirls,
In endless glassy gold pavilioning its bed;
Like willow trees where birds hop unhindered
Are the green gauzy dresses of the little girls.

Flowers brighter than coin, warm yellow eyes
That trouble waters-O Wife, your conjugal love!
-The rosy Sun at noon burns sullenly above
This dark mirror, reflected through hazy skies.

III

MADAME in the open field stands too straight
In a swirl of snowy threads, her parasol
Unsheathed; she snaps flower tops to watch them fall
Her children read their red-backed book, and wait,

Wait, in the flowering grass. Alas!
He Like a thousand bright angels scattering in flight
Scales the mountaintops and fades from sight!
Behind him runs the black, unbending SHE!

IV

Regret for the thick young arms of virgin grass!
Gold of April moonlight in the sacred bed!
joy Of abandoned boat docks on the riverbank, prey
To the August nights that bred this rottenness !

Now let her weep beneath these walls!
The breath of towering poplars is the only breeze.
And then this water, sourceless, somber, gray,
And a man who drags the bottom in a motionless barge.

V

Toy for this dull eye of water, I cannot reach
-0 motionless boat! Too short, my arms!
These flowers: the yellow one that bothers me
There, nor the blue, friend to water the color of ash!

From wing-shaken willows a powder drifts;
The roses in the reeds have long since dried.
My boat, still motionless; and its chain pulled
Deep in this edgeless eye of water..into what mud?

Tale

A Prince was annoyed that he had forever devoted himself
Only to the perfection of vulgar generosities.
He foresaw astonishing revolutions in love,
And suspected that his wives were capable of more
Than an agreeable complacency,
Compounded of luxury and air.
He desired to see the Truth, the time of essential desire
And satisfaction.
Whether this would be an aberration of piety or no,
He desired it. And he possessed extensive human power,

All women who had known him were slaughtered.
What destruction in the garden of beauty!
Beneath the ax, they blessed him.
He ordered no new ones brought ...
but women reappeared.
He killed all his followers, after the hunt,
Or his drinking bouts ...
But everyone followed him.
He amused himself by slaughtering rare animals.
He put the torch to his palaces.
He came down upon the people, and tore them to pieces ...
The crowd, the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts
Were still there.

Is ecstasy possible in destruction ?
Can one grow young in cruelty?
The people made no sound. No one opposed his views.

He was riding one evening proudly alone, and a Genie appeared.
His beauty was ineffable ... even inexpressible.
In his face and his bearing shone the promise
Of a complex and many-layered love!

Of happiness unbelievable, almost too much to bear,
The Prince and the Genie were lost in each other - disappearing, probably,
Into essential health.
How could they not have died of this?
Together then, they died.

But the Prince expired in his place, at an ordinary age…
The Prince was the Genie.
The Genie was the Prince
.
Our desire lacks the music of the mind.

Vowels

Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O- vowels,
Some day I will open your silent pregnancies:
A, black belt, hairy with bursting flies,
Bumbling and buzzing over stinking cruelties,

pits of night; E, Candor of sand and pavilions,
High glacial spears, white kings, trembling Queen Anne's lace;
I, bloody spittle, laughter dribbling from a face
In wild denial or in anger, vermilions;

U… divine movement of viridian seas,
Peace of pastures animal-strewn, peace of calm lines
Drawn on foreheads worn with heavy alchemies;

O… supreme Trumpet, harsh with strange stridencies,
Silences traced in angels and astral designs:
0 ... OMEGA ... the violet light of His Eyes!