Remembrance--by French poet Authur Rimbaud

              I

Water, clear as the salt of children's tears,

Suddenly in sunlight,, women's bodies,  all white;

Streams of silk, pure lilies, bright banners,

Beneath remparts where an armed Maid appeared.

 

Diversion of angles; No--the current carries gold

And loads its heavy, black, cool arms with grass,

Ainking beneath its canopy of sky..... and the arch

And shadows of the hill, like curtains, unfold.

 

               II

Watch! This wet square of stream moves in soft swirls,

In endless glassy gold pavilioning its bed;

Like willow trees where birds hop unhindered

Are the green gauzy dresses of the little girls.

 

Flowers brighter than coin, warm yellow eyes

That trouble waters-O Wife, your conjugal love! -

The rosy Sun at noon burns sullenly above

This dark mirror, reflected through hazy skies.

 

                 III

Madame in the open field stands too straight

In a swirl of snowy threads, her parasol

Unsheathed; she snaps flower tops to watch them fall....

Her children read their red-backed book, and wait,

 

Wait, in the flowering grass.  Alas ! He

Like a thousand bright angels scattering in flight

Scales the mountaintops and fades from sight!

Behind him runs the black, unbending SHE!

 

                   IV

Regret for the thick young arms of virgin grass!

Gold of April moonlight in the sacred bed! Joy

Of abandoned boat docks on the riverbank, prey

To the August nights that bred this rottenness!

 

Now let her weep beneath these walls! The breath

Of towering poplars is the only breeze.

And then this water, sourceless, somber, gray,

And a man who drags the bottom in a motionless barge,

 

                     V

Toy for this dull eye of water, I cannot reach

-O motionless boat! Too short, my arms!-

These flowers: the yellow one that bother me

There, nor the blue, friend to water the color of ash!

 

From wing-shaken willows a powder drifts;

The roses in the reeds have long since dried.

My boat, still motionless; and its chain pulled

Deep in this edgeless eye of water---into what mud?

 

                           Poem by French Poet Authur Eimbaud(1854-1891)

 

                                      Everyman