Poems by Arthur Rimbaud

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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Evil (Le Mal)

While the red-stained mouths

of machine guns ring

Across the infinite expanse of day;

While red or green,

before their posturing King,

The massed battalions break and melt away;

And while a monstrous frenzy runs a course

That makes of a thousand men a smoking pile

Arthur Rimbaud

Romance

When you are seventeen you aren't really serious.

- One fine evening, you've had enough of beer and lemonade,

And the rowdy cafes with their dazzling lights!

- You go walking beneath the green lime trees of the promenade.

The lime trees smell good on fine evenings in June!

The air is so soft sometimes, you close your eyelids;

The wind, full of sounds, - the town's not far away -

Carries odours of vines, and odours of beer...

Arthur Rimbaud

Dance Of The Hanged Men

On the black gallows, one-armed friend,

The paladins are dancing, dancing

The lean, the devil's paladins

The skeletons of Saladins.

Sir Beelzebub pulls by the scruff

His little black puppets who grin at the sky,

And with a backhander in the head like a kick,

Makes them dance, dance, to an old Carol-tune!

Arthur Rimbaud

From 'The Cupboard' (Le buffet)

A large carved cupboard of white oak

emanates that relaxed gentle air

Old people have; open, it's kindly

shadows give off fragrances like fine

wine, it overflows with a jumble

of quaint frayed things: sweet

yellowed linen, torn women's clothes,

faded laces, grandmother's shawls

Arthur Rimbaud

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

Arthur Rimbaud

Time Without End

We have found it again.

What? Time without end.

'Tis the ocean gone

For a walk with the sun.

Soul, you sentinel,

Murmur and confess,

Day is fiery hell,

Night is nothingness.

Arthur Rimbaud

The Sun Has Wept Rose

The sun has wept rose in the shell of your ears,

The world has rolled white from your back,

Your thighs:

The sea has stained rust at the crimson of your breasts,

And Man had bled black at your sovereign side.

Arthur Rimbaud

Asleep In The Valley

A small green valley where a slow stream flows

And leaves long strands of silver on the bright

Grass; from the mountaintop stream the Sun's

Rays; they fill the hollow full of light.

A soldier, very young, lies open-mouthed,

A pillow made of fern beneath his head,

Asleep; stretched in the heavy undergrowth,

Pale in his warm, green, sun-soaked bed.

Arthur Rimbaud

Nina's Reply (Les Reparties De Nina)

HE - Your breast on my breast,

Eh ? We could go,

With our nostrils full of air,

Into the cool light

Of the blue good morning that bathes you

In the wine of daylight ?…

When the whole shivering wood bleeds,

Dumb with love

Arthur Rimbaud

My Little Lovelies

A tearful tincture washes

Cabbage-green skies;

Beneath the dribbling bushes

Your raincoats lie;

Pale white in private moonlight,

Like round-eyed sores,

Flap your scabby kneecaps apart,

My ugly whores!

Arthur Rimbaud

The Drunken Boat

As 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 coloured posts.

I cared no more for other boats or cargoes:

Flemish wheat or English cottons, all were gone

When my bargemen could no longer haul me

I forgot about everything and drifted on.

Arthur Rimbaud

Sun And Flesh (Credo In Unam)

Birth of Venus

The Sun, the hearth of affection and life,

Pours burning love on the delighted earth,

And when you lie down in the valley, you can smell

How the earth is nubile and very full-blooded;

How its huge breast, heaved up by a soul,

Is, like God, made of love, and, like woman, of flesh,

Arthur Rimbaud