Poems from Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations all translations here taken from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8161/rimbaud.html Note: Rimbaud was an important influence on Jim Morrison and Patti Smith.

Morning of Drunkenness

O my Good! O my Beautiful! Appalling fanfare where I do not falter. Rack of enchantments! Hurrah for the wonderful work and for the marvelous body, for the first time! It began in the midst of children's laughter, with their laughter will it end. This poison will remain in all our veins even when, the fanfare turning, we shall be given back to the old disharmony. O now may we, so worthy of these tortures!, fervently take up the superhuman promise made to our created body and soul: that promise, that madness! Elegance, science, violence! They promised to bury in darkness the tree of good and evil, to deport tyrannic respectability so that we might bring hither our very pure love. It began with a certain disgust—and it ends,—unable to grasp this eternity,— it ends in a riot of perfumes.

Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins, loathing of faces and objects here, holy be all of you in memory of this vigil. It began with every sort of boorishness; behold, it ends with angels of flame and ice!

Little drunken vigil, holy! if only because of the mask you have bestowed on us. We pronounce you, method! We shall not forget that yesterday you glorified each one of our ages. We have faith in the poison. We know how to give our whole life every day.

Now is the time of the Assassins.

Side Show

Very sturdy rogues. Several have exploited your worlds. With no needs, and in no hurry to make use of their brilliant faculties and their knowledge of your conveniences. What ripe men! Eyes vacant like the summer night, red and black, tricolored, steel studded with gold stars; faces distorted, leaden, blanched, ablaze; burlesque hoarsenesses! The cruel strut of flashy finery! Some are young,— how would they look on Cherubin?— endowed with terrifying voices and some dangerous resources. They are sent buggering in the town, tricked out with nauseating luxury.

O the most violent Paradise of the furious grimace! Not to be compared with your Fakirs and other theatrical buffooneries. In improvised costumes like something out of a bad dream, they enact heroic romances of brigands and of demigods, more inspiriting than history or religions have ever been. Chinese, Hottentots, gypsies, simpletons, hyenas, Molochs, old dementias, sinister demons, they combine popular maternal turns with bestial poses and caresses. They would interpret new plays, "romantic" songs. Master jugglers, they transform place and persons and have recourse to magnetic comedy. Eyes flame, blood sings, bones swell, tears and red trickles flow, Their clowning or their terror lasts a minute or entire months.

I alone have the key to this savage side show.

Childhood

I.

That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure, runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek, Slav, Celt.

At the border of the forest— dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare,— the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea.

Ladies who stroll on terraces adjacent to the sea; baby girls and giantesses, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels upright on the rich ground of groves and little thawed gardens,— young mothers and big sisters with eyes full of pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses tyrannical of costume and carriage, little foreign misses and young ladies gently unhappy.

What boredom, the hour of the "dear body" and "dear heart."

II.

It is she, the little girl, dead behind the rosebushes.

—The young mamma, deceased, comes down the stoop.— The cousin's carriage creaks on the sand.— The little brother (he is in India!) there, before the western sky in the meadow of pinks. The old men who have been buried upright in the rampart overgrown with gillyflowers.

Swarms of golden leaves surround the general's house. They are in the south.—You follow the red road to reach the empty inn. The chateau is for sale; the shutters are coming off. The priest must have taken away the key of the church. Around the park the keepers' cottages are uninhabited. The enclosures are so high that nothing can be seen but the rustling tree tops. Besides, there is nothing to be seen within.

The meadows go up to the hamlets without anvils or cocks. The sluice gate is open. O the Calvaries and the windmills of the desert, the islands and the haystacks!

Magic flowers droned. The slopes cradled him. Beasts of a fabulous elegance moved about. The clouds gathered over the high sea, formed of an eternity of hot tears.

III.

In the woods there is a bird; his song stops you and makes you blush.

There is a clock that never strikes.

There is a hollow with a nest of white beasts.

There is a cathedral that goes down and a lake that goes up.

There is a little carriage abandoned in the copse or that goes running down the road beribboned.

There is a troupe of little actors in costume, glimpsed on the road through the border of the woods.

And then, when you are hungry and thirsty, there is someone who drives you away.

IV.

I am the saint at prayer on the terrace like the peaceful beasts that graze down to the sea of Palestine.

I am the scholar of the dark armchair. Branches and rain hurl themselves at the windows of my library.

I am the pedestrian of the highroad by way of the dwarf woods; the roar of the sluices drowns my steps. I can see for a long time the melancholy wash of the setting sun.

I might well be the child abandoned on the jetty on its way to the high seas, the little farm boy following the lane, its forehead touching the sky.

The paths are rough. The hillocks are covered with broom. The air is motionless. How far away are the birds and the springs! It can only be the end of the world ahead.

V.

Let them rent me this whitewashed tomb, at last, with cement lines in relief,—far down under ground.

I lean my elbows on the table, the lamp shines brightly on these newspapers I am fool enough to read again, these stupid books.

An enormous distance above my subterranean parlor, houses take root, fogs gather. The mud is red or black. Monstrous city, night without end!

Less high are the sewers. At the sides, nothing but the thickness of the globe. Chasms of azure, wells of fire perhaps. Perhaps it is on these levels that moons and comets meet, fables and seas.

In hours of bitterness, I imagine balls of sapphire, of metal. I am master of silence. Why should the semblance of an opening pale under one corner of the vault?

Ruts

To the right the summer dawn wakes the leaves and the mists and the noises in this corner of the park, and the left-hand banks hold in their violet shadows the thousant swift ruts of the wet road. Wonderland procession! Yes, truly: floats covered with animals of gilded wood, poles and bright bunting, to the furious gallop of twenty dappled circus horses, and children and men on their most fantastic beasts;-- twenty rotund vehicles, decorated with flags and flowers like the coaches of old or in fairy tales, full of children all dressed up for a suburban pastorale. Even coffins under their somber canopies lifting aloft their jet-black plumes, bowling along to the trot of huge mares, blue and black.

Vagabonds

Pitiful brother! What frightful nights I owed him! "I have not put enough ardor into this enterprise. I have trifled with his infirmity. My fault should we go back to exile, and to slavery." He implied I was unlucky and of a very strange innocence, and would add disquieting reasons.For reply, I would jeer at this Satanic doctor and, in the end, going over to the window, I would create, beyond the countryside crossed by bands of rare music, phantoms of nocternal extravegence to come.After this vaguely hygenic diversion, I would lie down on my pallet and no sooner asleep than, almost every night, the poor brother would rise, his mouth foul, eyes starting from his head,— just as he had dreamed he looked! and would drag me into the room, howling his dream of imbecilic sorrow.

I had, in truth, pledged myself to restore him to his primitive state of child of the Sun,— and, nourished by the wine of caverns and the biscuit of the road, we wandered, I impatient to find the place and the formula.

Vigils

I.

It is a repose in the light, neither fever nor langour, on a bed or on a meadow.

It is the friend neither violent nor weak. The friend.

It is the beloved neither tormenting nor tormented. The beloved.

Air and the world not sought. Life.

—Was it really this?

—And the dream grew cold.

II.

The lighting comes round to the crown post again. From the two extremities of the room—decorations negligible— harmonic elevations join. The wall opposite the watcher is a psychological succession of atmospheric sections of friezes, bands, and geological accidents. Intense quick dream of sentimental groups with people of all possible characters amidst all possible appearances.

III.

The lamps and the rugs of the vigil make the noise of waves in the night, along the hull and around the steerage.

The sea of the vigil, like Emily's breasts.

The hangings, halfway up, undergrowth of emerald tinted lace, where dart the vigil doves.

The plaque of the black hearth, real suns of seashores; ah! magic wells; only sight of dawn, this time.

Phrases

When the world is reduced to a single dark wood for our four eyes' astonishment,— a beach for two faithful children,— a musical house for one pure sympathy,— I shall find you.

Should there be here below but a single old man, handsome and calm in the midst of incredible luxury, I shall be at your feet.

Should I have realized all your memories,— should I be the one who can bind you hand and foot,— I shall strangle you.

* * *

When we are very strong,— who draws back? very gay,— who cares for ridicule? When we are very bad,-- what would they do with us?

Deck yourself, dance, laugh. I could never throw Love out of the window.

* * *

My comrade, beggar girl, monster child! O it's all one to you these unhappy women, these wiles and my discomfiture. Bind yourself to us with your impossible voice, your voice! sole soother of this vile despair.

* * *

An overcast morning in July. A taste of ashes flies through the air;—an odor of sweating wood on the hearth,— dew-ret flowers— devastation along the promenades— the mist of the canals over the fields— why not incense and toys already?

* * *

I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.

* * *

The upland pond smokes continuously. What witch will rise against the white west sky? What violet frondescence fall?

* * *

While public funds evaporate in feasts of fraternity, a bell of rosy fire rings in the clouds.

* * *

Reviving a pleasant taste of INdia ink, a black powder rains on my vigil. I lower the jets of the chandelier, I throw myself on my bed, and turning my face towards the darkness, I see you, my daughters! my queens!

Dawn

I embraced the summer dawn.

Nothing yet stirred on the face of the palaces. The water is dead. The shadows still camped in the woodland road. I walked, waking quick warm breaths; and gems looked on, and wings rose without a sound.The first venture was, in a path already filled with fresh, pale gleams, a flower who told me her name.

I laughed at the blond wasserfall that tousled through the pines: on the silver summit I recognized the goddess.

Then, one by one, I lifted up her veils. In the lane, waving my arms. Across the plain, where I notified the cock. In the city, she fled among the steeples and the domes; and running like a beggar on the marble quays, I chased her.

Above the road near a laurel wood, I wrapped her up in gathered veils, and I felt a little her immense body. Dawn and the child fell down at the edge of the wood.

Waking, it was noon.

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 seignioral 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.

Cities

What cities! This is a people for whom these Alleghenies and these Lebanons of dream were staged! Chalets of crystal and of wood that move along invisible rails and pulleys. Old craters encircled by colossi and copper palms roar melodiously in the fires. Amorous revels ring over the canals pendent behind the chalets. The hunt of chimes clamors in the gorges. Guilds of giant singers congregate in robes and oriflammes as dazzling as the light on mountain peaks. On platforms amidst the precipices Rolands trumpet their valor. On the footbridges over the abyss and on the roofs of inns, the conflagration of the sky decks the masts with flags. The collapse of apotheoses joins the fields and heights where seraphic centauresses wander among the avalanches. Above the level of the highest peaks, a sea, troubled by the eternal birth of Venus, covered with orpheonic fleets and the murmur of precious conchs and pearls, the
sea darkens at times with deadly flashes. On the slopes, harvests of flowers, large as our arms and our goblets, bellow. Processions of Mabs in russet dresses, and opaline, climb the ravines. Up there, with feet in the waterfall and brambles, stags suckle at Diana's breast. Bacchantes of the suburbs sob and the moon burns and bays. Venus enters the caverns of ironsmiths and hermits. Groups of belfries ring out the ideas of people. Out of castles built of bone comes mysterious music. All the legands advance and elks surge through the towns. The paradise of storms collapses. Savages dance ceaselessly in celebration of the night. And, one hour, I went down into the bustle of a boulevard in Bagdad where companies sang the joy of new toil, in a thick breeze, constantly moving about but unable to elude the fabulous phantoms of the heights, where they were to have met again.

What strong arms, what lovely hour will give me back that region whence come my slumbers and my slightest movements?

Cities II

The official acropolis outdoes the most colossal conceptions of modern barbarity: impossible to describe the opaque light produced by the immutable gray sky, the imperial brightness of the buildings, and the eternal snow on the ground. With a singular taste for enormity, all the classical marvels of architecture have been reproduced, and I visit exhibitions of paintings in premeses twenty times as vast as Hampton Court. What painting! A Norwegan Nebuchadnezzar built the stairways of the government buildings; even the subordinates I saw were already prouder than ***, and I trembled at the aspect of the guardians of colossi and the building supervisors. By grouping the buildings around squares, courts and enclosed terraces, they have ousted the cabbies. The parks present primitive nature cultivated with superb art, there are parts of the upper town that are inexplicable: the arm of the sea, without boats, rolls its sleet-blue waters between quays covered with giant candelabra. A short bridge leads to a postern directly under the
dome of the Sainte-Chapelle. This dome is an artistic structure of steel about fifteen thousand feet in diameter.

From certain points on the copper footbridges, on the platforms, on the stairways that wind around the markets and the pilalrs, I thought I might form an idea of the depth of the city! This is the prodigy I was unable to discover: what are the levels of the other districts below and above the acropolis? For the stranger of our day exploration is impossible. The business district is a circus in a uniform style with arcaded galleries. No shops are to be seen, but the snow of the roadway is trampled; a few nabobs, as rare as pedestrians on Sunday morning in London, are making their way toward a diamond diligence. A few red velvet divans: polar deinks are served of which the price varies from eight hundred to eight thousand rupees. At the thought of looking for thearers on this circus, I say to myself that the shops must contain dramas quite dismal enough. I suppose there is a police force; but the law must be so strange that I give up trying to imagine what adventures can be like here.

The suburb, as elegant as a beautiful Paris street, is favored with air like light. The democratic element counts a few hundred souls. There, too, the houses do not follow each other; the suburb loses itself queerly in the country, the "County," that fills the eternal west with forests and prodigious plantations where gentlemen savages hunt their news by the light they have invented.

Lives

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 round my thoughts. An exile here, I once had a stage on which to play all the masterpieces of literature. I would show you unheard-of riches. I note the story of the treasures you discovered. I see the outcome. My wisdom is as scorned as chaos. What is my nothingness to the stupor that awaits you?

II.

I am the inventor more deserving far than all those who have preceeded me; a musician, moreover, who has discovered something like the key of love. At present, a country gentleman of a bleak land with a sober sky, I try to rouse myself with the memory of my beggar childhood, my apprenticeship or my arrival in wooden shoes, of polemics, of five or six widowings, and of certain convivalities when my level head kept me from rising to the diapason of my comrades. I do not regret my old portion of divine gaiety: the sober air of this bleak countryside feeds vigorously my dreadful skepticism. But since this skepticism cannot, henceforth be put to use, and since, moreover, I am dedicated to a new torment,— I expect to become a very vicious madman.

III.

In a loft, where I was shut in when I was twelve, I got to know the world, I illustrated the human comedy. I learned history in a wine
cellar. In a northern city, at some nocturnal revel, I met all the women of the old masters. In an old arcade in Paris, I was taught the classical sciences. In a magnificent dwelling encircled by the entire Orient, I accomplished my prodigious work and spent my illustrious retreat. I churned up my blood. My duty has been remitted. I must not even think of that anymore. I am really from beyond the tomb, and no commissions.

Mystic

On the slope of the knoll angels whirl their woolen robes in pastures of emerald and steel.

Meadows of flame leap up to the summit of the little hill. At the left, the mold of the ridge is trampled by all the homicides and all the
battles, and all the disastrous noises describe their curve. Behind the right-hand ridge, the line of orients and of progress.And while the band above the picture is composed of the revolving and rushing hum of seashells and of human nights,

The flowering sweetness of the stars and of the night and all the rest descends, opposite the knoll, like a basket,-- against our face, and makes the abyss perfumed and blue below.

Common Nocturne

A breath opens operatic breaches in the walls,-- blurs the pivoting of crumbling roofs,— disperses the boundaries of earths,—eclipses the windows.

Along the vine, having rested my foot on a waterspout, I climbed down into this coach, its period indicated clearly enouogh by the convex panes of glass, the bulging panels, the contorted sofas. Isolated hearse of my sleep, shepherd's house of my insanity, the vehicle veers on the grass of the obliterated highway: and in the defect at the top of the right-hand windowpane revolve pale lunar figures, leaves, and breasts.—A very deep green and blue invade the picture. Unhitching near a spot of gravel.

—Here will they whistle for the storm, and the Sodoms and Solymas, and the wild beasts and the armies,

(Postilion and animals of dream, will they begin again in the stifling forests to plunge me up to my eyes in the silken spring?)

And, whipped through the splashing of waters and spilled drinks, send us rolling on the barking of bulldogs...

—A breath disperses the boundaries of the hearth.

Barbarian

Long after the days and the seasons, and people and countries.

The banner of raw meat against the silk of seas and arctic flowers; (they do not exist).

Recovered from the old fanfares of heroism,— which still attack the heart and head,— far from the old assasins.

—Oh! the banner of raw meat against the silk of seas and arctic flowers; (they do not exist).—

Bliss!

Live embers raining in gusts of frost.— Bliss!— fires in the rain of the wind of diamonds flung out by the earth's heart eternally carbonized for us.— O world!

(Far from the old retreats and the old flames, still heard, still felt.)

Fire and foam. Magic, veerings of chasms and clash of icicles against the stars.

O bliss, O world, O music! And forms, sweat, eyes and long hair floating there. And white tears boiling,— O bliss!— and the feminine voice reaching to the bottom of volcanos and grottos of the arctic seas.

The banner...

Historic Evening

On an evening, for example, when the naive tourist has retired from our economic horrors, a master's hand awakens the meadow's harpsichord; they are playing cards at the bottom of the pond, mirror conjuring up favorites and queens; there are saints, veils, threads of harmony, and legendary chromatisms in the setting sun.

He shudders as the hunts and hordes go by. Comedy drips on the grass stages. And the distress of the poor and of the weak on those stupid planes!

Before his slave's vision, Germany goes scaffolding toward moons; Tartar deserts light up; ancient revolts ferment in the center of the Celestial Empire; over stairways and armchairs of rock, a little world, wan and flat, Africa and Occidents, will be erected. Then a ballet of familiar seas and nights, worthless chemistry and impossible melodies.

The same bourgeois magic wherever the mail-train sets you down. Even the most elementary physicist feels that it is no longer possible to submit to this personal atmosphere, fog of physical remorse, which to acknowledge is already an affliction.

No! The moment of the seething cauldron, of seas removed, of subterranean conflagrations, of the planet swept away, and the consequent exterminations, certitudes indicated with so little malice by the Bible and by the Nornes and for which serious persons should be on the alert. Yet there will be nothing legendary about it.

Motion

The swaying motion on the banks of the river falls
The vortex at the sternpost,
The swiftness of the rail,
The vast passage of the current
Conduct through unimaginable lights
And chemical change
The travelers surrounded by waterspouts of the strath
And of the strom.

They are the conquerors of the world
Seeking their personal chemical fortune;
Sports and comforts voyage with them;
They carry the education
Of races, classes and of animals, on this ship
Repose and dizziness
To torrential light
To terrible nights of study.

For from the talk among the apparatus, the blood, the flowers, the fire, the gems,
From the excited calculations on this fugitive ship,
— One sees, rolling like a dyke beyond the hydraulic-powered road,
Monstrous, endlessly illuminated,-- their stock of studies;
They driven into harmonic ecstacy,
And the heroism of discovery.

In the morning startling atmospheric accidents,
A youthful couple holds itself aloof on the ark,
— Is it primitive shyness that people pardon?—
And sings and stands guard.

War

When a child, certain skies sharpened my vision: all their characters were reflected in my face. The Phenomena were roused.— At present, the eternal inflection of moments and the infinity of mathematics drives me through this world where I meet with every civil honor, respected by strange children and prodigious affections.— I dream of a WAr of right and of might, of unlooked-for logic.

It is as simple as a musical phrase.

Genie

He is affection and the present since he has made the house open to foamy winter and to the murmur of summer—he who has purified food and drink— he who is the charm of fleeing places and the superhuman delight of stations.— He is affection and the future, love and strenght whom we, standing in our rages and our boredoms, see passing in the stormy sky and banners of ecstacy.

He is love, perfect measure reinvented, marvelous and unlooked-for reason, and eternity: loved instrument of fatal qualities. We all have known the terror of his concession and of ours: O relish of health, the soaring of our faculties, selfish affection and passion for him,— for him who loves us for his infinite life...

And we remember him and he has gone on a journey... And if Adoration goes, rings, his promise rings: "Away these superstitions, these ancient bodies, these couples, and these ages. It is the epoch that has foundered!"He will not go away, he will not come down again from any heaven, he will not accomplish the redemption of the angers of women and the gaieties of men or of all this sin: for it is done, he being, and being loved.

O his breaths, his heads, his flights: terrible celerity of the perfection of forms and of action.

O fecundity of the mind and immensity of the universe!

His body! the dreamed-of release, the shattering of grace crossed by new violence! His vision, his vision! all the old kneelings and the pains raised at his passing.

His day! the abolition of all resounding and restless sufferings in intenser music.

His step! migrations more vast than the ancient invasions.

O he and we! Pride more compassionate than the lost charities.

O world and the pure song of new evils!

He has known us all and all of us has loved: Take heed this winter night, from cape to cape, from the tumultuous pole to the castle, from the crowd to the shore, from glance to glance, force and feelings weary, to hail him, to see him and to send him away, and under the tides and high in the deserts of snow, to follow his visions,— his breaths,— his body,— his day.

Second Delirium: The Alchemy Of The Word

My turn now. The story of one of my insanities.

For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes-- and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.

What I liked were: absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, bright-colored prints, old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little children's books, old operas, silly old songs, the naïve rhythms of country rimes.

I dreamed of Crusades, voyages of discovery that nobody had heard of, republics without histories, religious wars stamped out, revolutions in morals, movements of races and continents; I used to believe in every kind of magic.

I invented colors for the vowels! A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green. I made rules for the form and movement of every consonant, and I boasted of inventing, with rhythms from within me, a kind of poetry that all the senses, sooner or later, would recognize. And I alone would be its translator.

I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

Far from flocks, from birds and country girls,
What did I drink within that leafy screen
Surrounded by tender hazlenut trees
In the warm green mist of afternoon?

What could I drink from this young Oise
— Toungeless trees, flowerless grass, dark skies—
Drink from these yellow gourds, far from the hut
I loved? Some golden draught that made me sweat.

I would have made a doubtful sign for an inn.
Later, toward evening, the sky filled with clouds...
Water from the woods runs out on virgin sands,
And heavenly winds cast ice thick on the ponds;

Then I saw gold, and wept, but could not drink.

* * *

At four in the morning, in summertime,
Love's drowsiness still lasts...
The bushes blow away the odor
Of the night's feast.

Beyond the bright Hesperides,
Within the western workshop of the Sun,
Carpenters scramble— in shirtsleeves—
Work is begun.

And in desolate, moss-grown isles
They raise their precious panels
Where the city
Will paint a hollow sky.

For these charming dabblers in the arts
Who labor for a King in Babylon,
Venus! Leave for a moment
Lovers' haloed hearts...

O Queen of Shepherds!
Carry the purest eau-de-vie
To these workmen while they rest
And take their bath at noonday, in the sea.

The worn-out ideas of old-fashioned poetry played an important part in my alchemy of the word.

I got used to elementary hallucination: I could very precisely see a mosque instead of a factory, a drum corps of angels, horse carts on the highways of the sky, a drawing room at the bottom of a lake; monsters and mysteries. A vaudeville's title filled me with awe.

And so I explained my magical sophistries by turning words into visions!

At last, I began to consider my mind's disorder a sacred thing. I lay about idle, consumed by an oppressive fever: I envied the bliss of animals— caterpillars, who portray the innocence of a second childhood; moles, the slumber of virginity!

My mind turned sour. I said farewell to the world in poems something like ballads:

A SONG FROM THE HIGHEST TOWER

Let it come, let it come,
The season we can love!

I have waited so long
That at length I forget,
And leave unto heaven
My fear and regret;

A sick thirst
Darkens my veins.

Let it come, let it come,
the season we can love!

So the green field
To oblivion falls,
Overgrown, flowering,
With incense and weeds.

And the cruel noise
Of dirty flies.

Let it come, let it come,
the season we can love!

I loved the desert, burnt orchards, tired old shops, warm drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleys, and with my eyes closed I offered myself to the sun, the god of fire.

"General: If on your ruined ramparts one cannon still remains, shell us with clods of dried-up earth. Shatter the mirrors of expensive shops! And the drawing rooms! Make the city swallow its dust! Turn gargoyles to rust. Stuff boudoirs with rubies' fiery powder...."

Oh, the little fly! Drunk at the urinal of a country inn, in love with rotting weeds; a ray of light dissolves him!

I only find within my bones
A taste for eating earth and stones.
When I feed, I feed on air,
Rocks and coals and iron ore.

My hunger, turn. Hunger, feed:
A field of bran.
Gather as you can the bright
Poison weed.

Eat the rocks a beggar breaks,
The stones of ancient churches' walls,
Pebbles, children of the flood,
Loaves left lying in the mud.

* * *

Beneath the bush a wolf will howl,
Spitting bright feathers
From his feast of fowl:
Like him, I devour myself.

Waiting to be gathered
Fruits and grasses spend their hours;
The spider spinning in the hedge
Eats only flowers.

Let me sleep! Let me boil
On the altars of Solomon;
Let me soak the rusty soil
And flow into Kendron.

Finally, O reason, O happiness, I cleared from the sky the blue which is darkness, and I lived as a golden spark of this light, Nature. In my delight, I made my face look as comic and as wild as I could:

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

O my eternal soul,
Hold fast to desire
In spite of the night
And the day on fire.

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

No hope, forever;
No orietur.
Science and patience,
The torment is sure.

The fire within you,
Soft silken embers,
Is our whole duty—
But no one remembers.

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

I became a fabulous opera. I saw that everyone in the world was doomed to happiness. Action isn't life; it's merely a way of ruining a kind of strength, a means of destroying nerves. Morality is water on the brain.

It seemed to me that everyone should have had several other lives as well. This gentleman doesn't know what he's doing; he's an angel. That family is a litter of puppy dogs. With some men, I often talked out loud with a moment from one of their other lives— that's how I happened to love a pig.

Not a single one of the brilliant arguments of madness-- the madness that gets locked up— did I forget; I could go through them all again, I've got the system down by heart.

It affected my health. Terror loomed ahead. I would fall again and again into a heavy sleep, which lasted several days at a time, and when I woke up, my sorrowful dreams continued. I was ripe for fatal harvest, and my weakness led me down dangerous roads to the edge of the world, to the Cimmerian shore, the haven of whirlwinds and darkness.

I had to travel, to dissipate the enchantments that crowded my brain. On the sea, which I loved as if it were to wash away my impurity, I watched the compassionate cross arise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Felicity was my doom, my gnawing remorse, my worm. My life would forever be too large to devote to strength and to beauty.

Felicity! The deadly sweetness of its sting would wake me at cockcrow-- ad matutinum, at the Christus venit— in the somberest of cities.

O seasons, O chateaus!
Where is the flawless soul?

I learned the magic of
Felicity. It enchants us all.

To Felicity, sing life and praise
Whenever Gaul's cock crows.

Now all desire has gone—
It has made my life its own.

That spell has caught heart and soul
And scattered every trial.

O seasons, O chateaus!

And, oh, the day it disappears
Will be the day I die.

O seasons, O chateaus!

All that is over. Today, I know how to celebrate beauty.

about Arthur Rimbaud

from http://homepage.mac.com/rimbaud/home.html

Jean-Nicholas-Arthur Rimbaud was born on October 20, 1854 at Charleville in provincial France. His family was abandoned by their father and forced into poverty. Intrigued by the conditions, the young Rimbaud would sneak out and play with the neighborhood children. His mother, horrified that her children might become coarsened, found the means to move her brood from the worst to the best part of town.

Madame Rimbaud showed little affection to her children, instead focusing her ambitions on her two sons. Forbidden to play with other boys, Rimbaud immersed himself in his studies. Stimulated by a yearning for more in life, he became a gifted student.

At age ten, Rimbaud wrote:

...You have to pass an exam, and the jobs that you get are either to shine shoes, or to herd cows, or to tend pigs. Thank God, I don't want any of that! Damn it! And besides that they smack you for a reward; they call you an animal and it's not true, a little kid, etc..

Oh! Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn!

In 1870, restless and despondent over the loss of his favorite teacher (who'd left to fight in the Franco-Prussian War), Rimbaud ran away from home. He ran away more than once before finally making it to Paris. Broke, Rimbaud lived on the city streets. Immersed in his rebellion, he denounced women and the church. He lived willingly in squalid conditions, studying "immoral" poets (such as Baudelaire) and reading voraciously everything from occult to philosophy.

His own poetic philosophy began to take shape at this time. To Rimbaud, the poet was a seer. His job was to jar and jangle the senses. A precursor to surrealism, Rimbaud is also considered to have been one of the creators of the free verse style.

In 1871, Rimbaud met Paul Verlaine—who was ten years his senior—and moved into his household. If their friendship was controversial, their sexual relationship was downright scandalous. Though Verlaine vacillated all his life between dark-doings and repentance, Rimbaud was considered at that time to be Verlaine's undoing. Rimbaud's drug taking and generally unclean living eventually alienated everyone except Verlaine. In 1872, Verlaine left his wife. He and Rimbaud moved to London.

By 1873, Rimbaud was disenchanted by his relationship with Verlaine. During a drunken argument in Brussels, Verlaine shot at Rimbaud, hitting him once in the wrist. Rimbaud was tired of their downward spiral and called in the police. Verlaine was sent to prison for 18 months. Rimbaud, feeling both guilty and exhilarated, wrote feverishly, completing 'A Season in Hell.'

...As for me, I am intact, and I don't care.

(from "Bad Blood," A Season in Hell)

Before his twentieth birthday, Arthur Rimbaud quit writing. He wandered Europe before eventually becoming a trader and gunrunner in Africa. Ill, he returned to Marseilles in June of 1891. His right leg was amputated, probably due to the complications of syphilis, and he was nursed for a time by his tender sister Isabelle. He died on November 10, 1891.

Rimbaud's literary style has influenced almost all modern forms of literature, including the Beats. He has been cited as an inspiration by songwriters like Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan. Patti Smith has often referred to him in her poetry and songs.

rimbaud. no more the daring young horseman of high
abyssinian plateau. such ardor is petrified forever.

(from "rimbaud dead" by Patti Smith)

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