Paris

by Arthur Rimbaud

Paris

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! 

Obscur Et Fronce

Dark, wrinkled as a purple pink,

It breathes, it nestles in that bed of moss,

Still damp from love, which hugs the slope,

The white thighs' slope, to crater's heart.

Threads, gossamer, milky tears

Wept, wept, in scouring wind

That drove them on clots of scarlet scree

Till they tumbled on the edge, were gone.

My dreams touch kisses, kisses to the gate.

Soul envies couplings of the flesh,

Its tear-bottle this, its nest of sobs.

Ecstatic olive! Seductive flute!

Throat sucking almond-sweet sublime!

Moss-circled, female, promised land! 

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 chromatics 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 Norns 

and for which serious persons should be on the alert .