Arthur Rimbaud

The Sideboard

It is a high, carved sideboard made of oak.
The dark old wood, like old folks, seems kind;
Its drawers are open, and its odours soak
The darkness with the scent of strong old wine.


Its drawers are full, a final resting place
For scented, yellowed linens, scraps of clothes
Foe wives or children, worn and faded bows,
Grandmothers' collars made of figured lace;


There you will find old medals, locks of grey
Or yellow hair, and portraits, and a dried bouquet
Whose perfume mingles with the smell of fruit.


-O sideboard of old, you know a great deal more
And could tell us your tales, yet you stand mute
As we slowly open your old dark door.

The Seekers Of Lice

When the child's forehead, full of red torments,
Implores the white swarm of indistinct dreams,
There come near his bed two tall charming sisters
With slim fingers that have silvery nails.
They seat the child in front of a wide open
Window where the blue air bathes a mass of flowers,
And in his heavy hair where the dew falls,
Move their delicate, fearful and enticing fingers.
He listens to the singing of their apprehensive breath
Which smells of long rosy plant honey,
And which at times a hiss interrupts, saliva
Caught on the lip or desire for kisses.
He hears their black eyelashes beating
in the perfumed Silence;
and their gentle electric fingers
Make in his half-drunken indolence the death of the little lice
Crackle under their royal nails.
Then the wine of Sloth rises in him,
The sigh of an harmonica which could bring on delerium;
The child feels, according to the slowness of the caresses,
Surging in him and dying continuously a desire to cry.

The Parisian Orgy

O cowards! There she is!
Pile out into the stations!
The sun with its fiery lungs blew clear
the boulevards that, one evening,
the Barbarians filled.


Here is the holy City, seated in the West! Come!
We'll stave off the return of the fires;
here are the quays, here are the boulevards,
here are the houses against the pale,
radiant blue-starred, one evening,
by the red flashes of bombs!


Hide the dead places with forests of planks!
Affrighted, the dying daylight freshens your looks.
Look at the red-headed troop of the wrigglers of hips:
be mad, you'll be comical, being haggard!


Pack of bitches on heat, eating poultices:
the cry from the houses of gold calls you!
Plunder! Eat! See the night of joy and deep twitchings
coming down on the street.


O desolate drinkers, Drink! When the light comes,
intense and crazed, to ransack round you the rustling luxuries,
you're not going to dribbe into your glasses
without motion or sound, with your eyes lost in white distances?


Knock it back: to the Queen whose buttocks cascade in folds!
Listen to the working of stupid tearing hiccups!
Listen to them leaping n the fiery night:
the panting idiots, the aged, the nonentities, the lackeys!


O hearts of filth, appalling mouths;
work harder, mouths of foul stenches!
Wine for these ignoble torpors, at these tables…
Your bellies are melting with shame, O Conquerors!


Open your nostrils to these superb nauseas!
Steep the tendons of your necks in strong poisons!
Laying his crossed hands on the napes of your childish necks,
the Poet says to you: 'O cowards! Be mad!
Because you are ransacking the guts of Woman,
you fear another convulsion from her, crying out,
and stifling your infamous perching on her breast with a horrible pressure.


Syphilitics, madmen, kings, puppets, ventriloquists!
What can you matter to Paris the whore?
Your souls or your bodies, your poisons or your rags?
She'll shake you off, you pox-rotten snarlers!
And when you are down, whimpering on your bellies,
your sides wrung, clamouring for your money back, distracted,



the red harlot with her breasts swelling
with battles will clench her hard fists,
far removed from your stupor!'
When your feet, Paris, danced so hard in anger!
When you had so many knife wounds; when you lay helpless,
still retaining in your clear eyes a little of the goodness
of the tawny spring; O city in pain;
O city almost dead, with your face and your two breasts
pointing towards the Future
which opens to your pallor its thousand million gates;
city whom the dark Past could bless:
Body galvanized back to life to suffer tremendous pains,
you are drinking in dreadful life once more!
You feel he ghastly pale worms flooding back in your veins,
the icy fingers prowling on your unclouded love!
And it does you no harm.
The worms, the pale worms, will obstruct your breath of Progress no more
than the Stryx could extinguish the eyes of the Caryatides,
from whose blue sills fell tears of sidereal gold.
Although it is frightful to see you again
covered in this fashion; although no city was ever made
into a more foul-smelling ulcer
on the face of green Nature, the Poet says to you:
'Your beauty is Marvelous!' The tempest sealed you in supreme poetry;
the huge stirring of strength comes to your aid;
your work comes to the boil, death groans, O chosen City!
Hoard in your heart the stridors of the ominous trumpet.
The Poet will take the sobs of the Infamous
the hate of the Galley-slaves, the clamour of the Damned;
and the beams of his love will scourge Womankind.
His verses will leap out: There's for you! There! Villains! -Society,
and everything, is restored: - the orgies are weeping
with dry sobs in the old brothels:
and on the reddened walls the gaslights in frenzy flare
balefully upwards to the wan blue skies!

The Rooks

Lord, when the meadowland is cold,
and when in the downcast hamlets the long Angeluses are silent..
down on Nature barren of flowers let
them sweep from the wide skies, the dear delightful rooks.


Strange army with your stern cries,
the cold winds are assaulting your nests!
You - along yellowed rivers, over the roads with their old Calvarys,
over ditches, over holes - disperse! And rally!


In your thousands, over the fields of France
where the day before yesterday's dead are sleeping,
wheel in the wintertime, won't you,
so that each traveler may remember!


Be, then, the one who calls men to duty,
O funeral black bird of ours!
But, ye saints of the sky,
at the oak tree top, the masthead lost in the enchanted twilight,
leave alone the warblers of May, for the sake of those whom,
in the depths of the wood,
in the undergrowth from which there is no escaping,
defeat without a future has enslaved.

The Famous Victory Of Saarbrucken

At centre, the Emperor, blue-yellow, in apotheosis,
Gallops off, ramrod straight, on his fine gee-gee,
Very happy – since everything he sees is rosy,
Fierce as Zeus, and as gentle as a Daddy is:


The brave Infantrymen taking a nap, in vain,
Under the gilded drums and scarlet cannon,
Rise politely. One puts his tunic back on,
And, turns to the Chief, stunned by the big name!


On the right, another, leaning on his rifle butt,
Feeling the hair rise at the back of his neck,
Shouts: ‘Vive L’Empereur!!” – his neighbour’s mute…


A shako rises, like a black sun…– In the midst
The last, a simpleton in red and blue, lying on his gut
Gets up, and, – showing his arse – asks: “On what?”

The Orphans' New Year's Gift

The room is full of shadow; you can hear, indistinctly, the sad soft whispering of two
children.
Their foreheads lean forward, still heavy with dreams, beneath the long white
bed-curtain
which shudders and rises... Outside the birds crowd together, chilled;
their wings are benumbed under the grey tints of the skies; and the New Year,
with her train of mist, trailing the folds of her snowy garment,
smiles through her tears, and shivering, sings...
II
But the little children, beneath the swaying curtain, talk in low voices as one does on a
dark night.
Thoughtfully they listen as to a far-off murmur... They tremble often at the clear
golden voice of the
morning chime repeatedly striking its metallic refrain beneath its glass dome...
And then, the room is icy... you can see, strewn here and there on the floor round the
beds,
mourning clothes: the bitter blast of winter which moans at the threshold blows its
melancholy
breath into the house! You can feel, in all this, that there is something missing...
Is there then no mother for these little children? No mother full of fresh smiles and
looks of triumph?
Did she forget, last night, stooping down by herself, to kindle a flame saved from these
ashes,
and to heap up the blankets and eiderdown on them before leaving them,
calling out to them: forgive me! Did she not forsee the chill of the morning?
Did she forget to close the door against the blast of winter? A mother's dream is the
warm coverlet,
the downy nest, where children, huddled like pretty birds rocked by the branches,
sleep their sweet sleep full of white dreams. -- And here? -- it is like a nest without
feathers or warmth,
where the little ones are cold, do not sleep, are afraid; a nest that the bitter blast must
have frozen...
III
Your heart has understood: -- these children are motherless. No mother in the place
any more!...
and their father is far away!... -- An old servant woman, then, has taken them under
her care.
The little ones are alone in the icy house; four-year-old orphans, see how in their
thoughts,
little by little, a smiling memory awakes... It's like a rosary which you tell, praying: --
Ah, what a beautiful morning, that New Year's morning!
Everyone had dreamt of his dear ones that night,
in some strange dream where you could see toys, sweets covered with gold, sparkling
jewels,
all whirling an echoing dance, and then disappearing beneath the curtain, and then
reappearing!
You awoke in the morning and got up full of joy with your mouth watering, rubbing
your eyes...
You went with tangled hair and shining eyes, as on holiday mornings,
little bare feet brushing the floor, to tap softly on your parents' door... You went in!...
And then came the greetings... in your nightshirt, kisses upon kisses, and fun all
allowed!



IV
Ah how charming it was, those words so often spoken! -- But how the old home has
changed!
There used to be a big fire crackling bright in the grate, so that the old bedroom was
all lit up by it;
and the red reflection from the great hearth would play over the gleaming furniture...


There was no key in the cupboard!... the big brown cupboard with no key!...
You kept looking at the dark brown door... No key!... That was strange!...
you kept wondering about the mysteries sleeping within its wooden sides; and you
seemed to hear,
from the bottom of the huge keyhole, a far-off sound, an indistinct and joyful
murmur...
Their parents' bedroom is quite empty now: there is no red reflection shining under the
door;
there are no parents, no fire, no hidden keys; and so there are no kisses either,
or pleasant surprises! Oh how sad their New Year's Day will be! -- And sadly,
while a bitter tear falls silently from their big blue eyes,
they murmur: 'Oh when will our mother come back?'...
V
Now the little ones are dozing sadly: you would say, to see them,
that they are crying in their sleep, their eyes are so swollen, their breathing so painful!
Small children have such sensitive hearts! -- But the guardian angel of the cradle
comes and
wipes their eyes and puts a happy dream into their heavy slumber, such a joyous
dream that
their half-open lips seem, smiling, to murmur something. They are dreaming that,
leaning
on their small round arms, in the sweet gesture of awakening, they lift their heads and
gaze
mildly about them... They seem to have fallen asleep in some rose-coloured paradise...
The fire crackles merrily in the bright hearth... Through the window you can see a
lovely
blue sky over there; nature is awakening and becoming drunk again with sunlight...
the earth, half-bare, happy to be alive again, trembles with joy beneath the sun's
kisses.
In the old home all is warm and flushed: no longer are there mourning garments
strewn on the floor,
and the draught has at least ceased to moan under the door... You would say that a
fairy
had passed this way!... The children, full of happiness, give two cries...
Here, near their mother's bed in a beautiful rose-coloured ray of light,
here on the big carpet, something shines... It is two silvery plaques, black and white,
glittering with mother-of-pearl and jet; little black frames and wreaths of glass,
with three words engraved in gold: 'TO OUR MOTHER'...

The Bridges

Skies the gray of crystal.
A strange design of bridges,
some straight, some arched,
others descending at oblique angles to the first;
and these figures recurring
in other lighted circuits of the canal,
but all so long and light that the banks,
laden with domes, sink and shrink.


A few of these bridges
are still covered with hovels,
others support polls,
signals, frail parapets.


Minor chords cross
each other and disappear;
ropes rise from the shore.


One can make out a red coat,
possibly other costumes
and musical instruments.
Are these popular tunes,
snatches of seigniorial concerts,
remnants of public hymns?


The water is gray and blue,
wide as an arm of the sea.
A white ray falling from high
in the sky destroys this comedy.

The Customs Men

Those who say Gord Struth; those who say Swelp Me pensioned
soldiers and sailors, the wreckage of Empire are
nothing, nothing at all, compared with the warriors of Excise
who slash the blue frontiers with their great axe-blows.
Pipes in their teeth, blades in their hands, deep, unruffled,
when darkness noses at the woods like a cow's muzzle, off they go,
leading their dogs, to hold their nocturnal and terrible revels!
They report the bacchantes to the laws of today.
They clap hands on the shoulders of Fausts and of Devils:
'Now then, none of that, you old dodgers! Put those bundles down!'
And, when his serene highness accosts the young,
the Customs Man holds fast to all contraband charms!
The Inferno for Offenders whom his hand has frisked!

Tartufe's Punishment

Raking, raking, his amorous thoughts
underneath his chaste robe of black,
happy, his hand gloved,
one day as he went along, fearsomely sweet,
yellow, dribbling piety from his toothless mouth,
One day as he went along,
'Let us Pray', - a Wicked One seized him
roughly by his saintly ear and
snapped frightful words at him,
tearing off the chaste robe of black
wrapped about his moist skin.


Punishment! - His clothes were unbuttoned;
and, the long chaplet of pardoned
sins being told in his heart,
St Tartufe was so pale!..
So he confessed and prayed, with a death rattle!
The man contented himself with carrying off
his clerical bands… - Faugh!
Tartufe was naked from his top to his toe!

The Accursed Cherub

Bluish roofs and white doors
As on nocturnal Sundays,
At the town's end,
the road without Sound is white,
and it is night.


The street has strange houses
With shutters of angels.
But look how he runs towards a Boundary-stone,
evil and shivering, A dark cherub who staggers,
Having eaten too many jububes.
He does a cack : then disappears :
But his cursed cack appears,
Under the holy empty moon,
A slight cesspool of dirty blood !
Louis Ratisbonne.


Original French


L'angelot maudit


Toits bleuâtres et portes blanches
Comme en de nocturnes dimanches,


Au bout de la ville sans bruit
La Rue est blanche, et c'est la nuit.


La Rue a des maisons étranges
Avec des persiennes d'Anges.


Mais, vers une borne, voici
Accourir, mauvais et transi,


Un noir Angelot qui titube,
Ayant trop mangé de jujube.


Il fait caca : puis disparaît :
Mais son caca maudit paraît,


Sous la lune sainte qui vaque,
De sang sale un léger cloaque