[Lyric] To the Poet on the Subject of Flowers (Arthur Rimbaud)

I

Thus continually towards the dark azure
Where the sea of topazes shimmers
Will function in your evening
The Lilies, those pessaries of ectasy!

In our own age sago
When Plants work for their living
The Lily will dring blue loathings
From you religious Proses!

- Monsieur de Kerdrel's fleur-de-lys
The Sonnet of eighteen-thirty
The Lily they bestow on the Bard
Together with the pink and the amaranth!

Lilies! lilies! None to be seen!
Yet in your Verse, like the sleeves
Of the soft-footed Women of Sin
Always these white flowers shiver!
Always, Dear Man, when you bathe
Your shirt with yellow oxters
Swells in the morning breezes
Above the muddy forget-menots!

Love get through your customs
Only Lilacs, - o eye-wash!
And the Wild Violets
Sugary spittle of the dark Nymphs!...

II

O Poets, if you had
Roses, blown Roses
Red upon laurel stems
And swollen with a thousand octaves!

If Banville would make them snow down
Blood-tinged, whirling
Blacking the wild eye of the stranger
With his ill-disposed interpretations!

In your forests and in your meadows
O very peaceful photographers!
The Flora is more or less diverse
Like the stoppers on decanters!
Always those French vegetables
Cross-gained, phthisical, absurd
Navigated by the peaceful bellies
Of basset-hounds in twilight;

Always, after frightful drawings
Of blue Lotuses or Sunflowers
Pink prints, holy pictures
For young girls making their communion!

The Asoka Ode agrees with the
Loretto window stanza form;
And heavy vivid butterflies
Are dunging on the Daisy

Old greenery, and old galloons!
O vegetable fancy biscuits!
Fancy-flowers of old Drawing-rooms!
- For cockchafers, not rattlesnakes

The pulling vegetable baby dolls
Which Grandville would have put round the margins
And which sucked in their colours
From ill-natured stars with eyeshades!

Yes, the drooling from your shepherd's pipes
Make some priceless glucoses!
- Pile of fried eggs in hold hats
Lilies, Asokas, Lilacs and Roses!...
III

O white Hunter, running sockingless
Across the panic Pastures
Can you not, ought you not
To know your botany a little?

I'm afraid you'd make succeed
To russet Crickets, Cantharides
And Rio golds to blues of Rhine, -
In short, to Norways, Floridas:

But, My dear Chap, Art does not consist now
- it's the truth, - in allowing
To the astonishing Eucalyptus
Boa-constrictors a hexameter long;

There now!... As if Mahogany
Served only, even in our Guianas
As helter-skelters for monkeys
Among the heavy vertigo of the lianas!

- In short, is a Flower, Rosemary
Or Lily, dead or alive, worth
The excrement of one sea-bird?
Is it worth a solitary candle-drip?

- And I mean what I say!
You, even sitting over there, in a
Bamboo hut, - with the shutters
Closed, and brown Persian rugs for hangings, -

You would scrawl blossoms
Worthy of extravagant Oise!...
- Poet ! these are reasonnings
No less absurd than arrogant!...

IV

Speak, not of pampas in the spring
Black with terrible revolts
But of tobacco and cotton trees!
Speak of exotic harvests!

Say, white face which Phoebus has tanned
How many dollars
Pedro Velasquez of Habana ;
Cover with excrement the sea of Sorrento

Where the Swans go in thousands;
Let your lines campaign
For the clearing of the mangrove swamps
Riddled with pools and water-snakes!

Your quatrain plunges into the bloody thickets
And come back to offer to Humanity
Various subjects: white sugar
Bronchial lozenges, and rubbers!

Let us know though You wheter the yellownesses
Of snow Peaks, near the Tropics
Are insects which lay many eggs
Or microscopic lichens!

Find, o Hunter, we desire it
One or two scented madder plants
Which Nature in trousers
May cause to bloom! - fr our Armies!

Find, on the outskirts of the Sleeping Wood
Flowers, whick look like snouts
Out of which drip golden pomades
On to the dark hair of buffaloes!

Find, in wild meadows, where on the Blue Grass
Shivers the silver of downy gowths
Calyxex full of fiery Eggs
Cooking among the essential oils!

Find downy Thistles
Whose wool ten asses with glaring eyes
Labour to spin!
Find Flowers which are chairs!

Yes, find in the heart of coal-black seams
Flowers that are almost stones, - marvellous ones! -
Which, close to their hard pale ovaries
Bear gemlike tonsils!

Serve us, o Stuffer, this you can do
On a splendid vermilion plate
Stews of syrupy Lilies
To corrode our German-silver spoons!

V

Someone will speak about great Love
The thief of black Indulgences:
But neither Renan, nor Murr the cat
Have seen the immense Blue Thyrsuses!

You, quicken in our sluggishness
By means of scents, hysteria;
Exalt us towards purities
Whiter than the Marys...

Tradesman! colonial! Medium!
Your Rhyme will well up, pink or white
Like a blaze of sodium
Like a bleeding rubber-tree!

But from your dark Poems, - Juggler!
Dioptric white and green and red
Let strange flowers burst out
And electric butterflies!

See! it's the Century of hell!
And the telegraph poles
Are going to adorn, - the iron-voiced lyre
Your magnificent shoulder blades!

Above all, give us a rhymed account
Of the potato blight!
- And, in order to compose
Poems full of mystery

Intended to be read from Tréguier
To Paramaribo, go and buy
A few volumes by Monsieur Figuier
- Illustrated! - at Hachette's !