To Arthur Rimbaud

(on a sketch of him by his sister)

You dead, dead, dead! But dead for that as you would,

As a white negro, as a savage splendidly

Civilized, civilizing negligently...

Ah, dead! But in me with fires thousandfold

Of sacred admiration and memories cold

Better than living aspects how so very

Grandiose! a thousand fires truly

Of chaste and honest love admitted bold.

Poet whose death came as you wished it may,

Beyond these Paris-Londons less than plain,

You in these lines of this naïve sketch I admire,

A precious gift to posterity’s last day

By a hand whose naïve art we have acquired,

Rimbaud! pax tecum sit, Dominus sit cum te!

Paul Verlaine