Saturday, May 28, 2011

Jean Nicholas Arthur Rimbaud.

Genie
He is affection and the present moment because he has thrown open the house to the snow foam of winter and to the noises of summer—he who purified drinking water and food—who is the enchantment fleeing places and the superhuman delight of resting places.—He is affection and future, the strength and love which we, erect in rage and boredom, see pass by in the sky of storms and the flags of ecstasy.
He is love, perfect and reinvented measure, miraculous, unforeseen reason, and eternity: machine loved for its qualities of fate. We have all known the terror of his concession and ours: delight in our health, power of our faculties, selfish affection and passion for him,—he who loves us because his life is infinity…
And we recall him and he sets forth…And if Adoration moves, rings, his Promise, rings: "Down with these superstitions, these other bodies, these couples and ages. This is the time which has gone under!"
He will not go away, he will not come down again from some heaven, he will not redeem the anger of women, the laughter of men, or all that sin: for it is done now, since he is and since he is loved.
His breathing, his heads, his racings; the terrifying swiftness of form and action when they are perfect.
Fertility of the mind and vastness of the world!
His body! the dreamed-of liberation, the collapse of grace joined with new violence!
All that he sees! all the ancient kneelings and the penaltiescanceled as he passes by.
His day! the abolition of all noisy and restless suffering within more intense music.
His step! migrations more tremendous than early invasions.
O He and I! pride more benevolent than lost charity.
O world!—and the limpid song of new woe!
He knew us all and loved us, may we, this winter night, from cape to cape, from the noisy pole to the castle, from the crowd to the beach, from vision to vision, our strength and our feelings tired, hail him and see him and send him away, and under tides and on the summit of snow deserts follow his eyes,—his breathing—his body,—his day.

1 comment:

Noah said...

And also:

I embraced the summer dawn.

Nothing yet stirred on the face of the palaces. The water is dead. The shadows still camped in the woodland road. I walked, waking quick warm breaths, and gems looked on, and wings rose without a sound.

The first venture was, in a path already filled with fresh, pale gleams, a flower who told me her name.

I laughed at the blond wasserfall that tousled through the pines: on the silver summit I recognized the goddess.

Then, one by one, I lifted up her veils. In the lane, waving my arms. Across the plain, where I notified the cock. In the city, she fled among the steeples and the domes, and running like a beggar on the marble quays, I chased her.

Above the road near a laurel wood, I wrapped her up in gathered veils, and I felt a little her immense body. Dawn and the child fell down at the edge of the wood.

Waking, it was noon.