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At fifteen Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)

began his short writing career with a few dozen traditional poems, which he produced over a period of three years. (The poems presented here come from this period.) Around the same time, as a vagabond in Paris, he began cultivating the image of "maudit" ("cursed") poet. At eighteen he stopped writing verse and turned to the prose-poems of "Les Illuminations" and "Une Saison en Enfer".

By the time he was twenty, a little over four years into his literary career, Rimbaud had completely renounced literature as an idiotic enterprise. The rest of his life was spent entirely outside the literary world, to all accounts utterly uninterested in the poetic revolution he knew to be taking place, in his name, in Paris. After five years' wandering, Rimbaud spent a decade scraping together a living in Abyssinia as a trafficker in various goods, among them guns and probably slaves. In 1891 Rimbaud left Africa with a severe inflammation of his right leg. Having made it as far as Marseilles, he entered a hospital and suffered the leg's amputation. A few months later, in December 1891, Arthur Rimbaud died at the age of 37. (For more on the life of Arthur Rimbaud, see Enid Starkie's distinguished biography, Arthur Rimbaud).

Joshua Mehigan lives in Brooklyn, NY and, until recently, worked as the editor of Poets & Writers Online. His own poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and other journals. In 1998 Alysia Peich handprinted Confusing Weather, a letterpress chapbook of his poems.

Alarmed

Arthur Rimbaud

(translated by Joshua Mehigan)

Black amid the fog and snow,

Around the giant air duct's glow,

A ring of rear-ends,

Five kneeling kids---poor things!---stare down

At heavy loaves of golden-brown

The Baker tends.

Each sees the strong white arms that roll

The gray dough and the radiant hole

They stuff it in.

Each hears the good bread baking there.

The Baker grunts a bygone air

Through his fat grin.

None moves---they huddle in the draught

That rises from the red airshaft

Warm as a breast.

When bread comes out, as round and neat

As cakes for someone's midnight treat,

Crusts primly pressed,

When under sooty beams a few

Fragrant crusts, and the crickets too,

Begin to sing,

When, wrapped in rags, their souls' great bliss

Swells with a breath of life from this

Warm opening,

And each thinks life is very nice,

Poor Jesuses encased in ice,

Then all are there,

Their pink snouts glued against the grille,

Groaning between the bars to fill

The empty air,

So dumb they pray before the glow

That guides them back here, where they know

Heaven begins,

And, bending deeply, split their pants

So that their trembling shirttails dance

In winter winds.

Les Effarés

Noirs dans la neige et dans la brume,

Au grand soupirail qui s'allume,

Leurs culs en rond,

À genoux, cinq petits---misère!---

Regardent le Boulanger faire

Le lourd pain blond.

Ils voient le fort bras blanc qui tourne

La pâte grise et qui l'enfourne

Dans un trou clair.

Ils écoutent le bon pain cuire.

Le Boulanger au gras sourire

Grogne un vieil air.

Ils sont blottis, pas un ne bouge,

Au souffle du soupirail rouge

Chaud comme un sein.

Quand pour quelque médianoche,

Façonné comme une brioche

On sort le pain,

Quand, sous les poutres enfumées,

Chantent les croûtes parfumées,

Et les grillons,

Que ce trou chaud souffle la vie,

Ils ont leur âme si ravie

Sous leurs haillons,

Ils se ressentent si bien vivre,

Les pauvres Jésus pleins de givre,

Qu'ils sont là tous,

Collant leurs petits museaux roses

Au treillage, grognant des choses

Entre les trous,

Tout bêtes, faisant leurs prières

Et repliés vers ces lumières

Du ciel rouvert,

Si fort, qu'ils crèvent leur culotte

Et que leur chemise tremblote

Au vent d'hiver.

Arthur Rimbaud, September 1870

Also by Rimbaud:

Sensation

The Poor at Church

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