Described by Victor Hugo as an "infant Shakespeare", Arthur Rimbaud was an extremely talented poet who gave up writing before the age of 21 and died before the age of 40, after having had a turbid affair with Paul Verlaine and traveling on three continents. "After the Flood" is found in his collection Illuminations, and is a prose poem that features very surrealist imagery.
AFTER THE FLOOD
As soon as the idea of the Flood was finished, a hare halted
in the clover and the trembling flower bells, and said its prayer to the rainbow through the spider’s web.
Oh! The precious stones that hid, - the flowers that gazed around them.
In the soiled main street stalls were set, they hauled the boats down to the sea rising in layers as in the old prints.
Blood flowed, at Blue-beard’s house - in the abattoirs in the circuses where God’s promise whitened the windows. Blood and milk flowed.
The beavers built. The coffee cups steamed in the bars.
In the big greenhouse that was still streaming, the children in mourning looked at the marvellous pictures.
A door banged, and, on the village-green, the child waved his arms, understood by the cocks and weathervanes of bell-towers everywhere, under the bursting shower.
Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. The Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.
Caravans departed. And the Hotel Splendide was built in the chaos of ice and polar night.
Since then, the Moon heard jackals howling among the deserts of thyme – and pastoral poems in wooden shoes grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the burgeoning violet forest, Eucharis told me it was spring.
Rise, pond: - Foam, roll over the bridge and under the trees: - black drapes and organs - thunder and lightning rise and roll: - Waters and sadnesses, rise and raise the Floods again.
Because since they abated - oh! the precious stones burying themselves and the opened flowers! - it’s wearisome! And the Queen, the Sorceress who lights her fire in the pot of earth, will never tell us what she knows, and what we are ignorant of.
in the clover and the trembling flower bells, and said its prayer to the rainbow through the spider’s web.
Oh! The precious stones that hid, - the flowers that gazed around them.
In the soiled main street stalls were set, they hauled the boats down to the sea rising in layers as in the old prints.
Blood flowed, at Blue-beard’s house - in the abattoirs in the circuses where God’s promise whitened the windows. Blood and milk flowed.
The beavers built. The coffee cups steamed in the bars.
In the big greenhouse that was still streaming, the children in mourning looked at the marvellous pictures.
A door banged, and, on the village-green, the child waved his arms, understood by the cocks and weathervanes of bell-towers everywhere, under the bursting shower.
Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. The Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.
Caravans departed. And the Hotel Splendide was built in the chaos of ice and polar night.
Since then, the Moon heard jackals howling among the deserts of thyme – and pastoral poems in wooden shoes grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the burgeoning violet forest, Eucharis told me it was spring.
Rise, pond: - Foam, roll over the bridge and under the trees: - black drapes and organs - thunder and lightning rise and roll: - Waters and sadnesses, rise and raise the Floods again.
Because since they abated - oh! the precious stones burying themselves and the opened flowers! - it’s wearisome! And the Queen, the Sorceress who lights her fire in the pot of earth, will never tell us what she knows, and what we are ignorant of.
Translated by Tony Kline
Tomorrow: Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
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