Hanged Men’s Ball

On the black gibbet, onearmed and civil,

Dance, dance the paladins,

The lean paladins of the devil,

The skeletons of Saladins.

 

My lord Beelzebub pulls up by the noose

His blackened little puppets grinning skyward so well

And, slapping them backhanded with a wornout shoe,

Makes them dance, dance to the sounds of an old Noël!

 

And the shaken puppets their spindly arms entwine:

Like dark organpipes, their bellies unto day

That were clutched aforetime by damsels superfine,

Knock about a long while in love a hideous way.

 

Oh hard heels, that never seem to fray a sandal!

Nearly all have doffed their shirts of skin for show;

The rest is not so awkward and may be seen sans scandal.

Upon their skulls, the snow applies a white chapeau:

 

The raven is a plume upon these fractured pates,

A little bit of flesh quivers on thin chins:

You would call them, turning round in darkling affrays,

Gallant knights, stiff, bashing with cardboard weapons.

 

Hurrah! the north wind whistles at the big skeletons’ ball!

The gibbet makes moan like an organ of iron!

Wolves start giving answer in violet forests all:

At the horizon, the sky is red as hell’s own fire...

 

Hello, shake me now these captains of the bones

Who unstring, wilily, with fingers big and sharded

A rosary of love on their pale backbones:

This is no kind of monkery, you departed!

 

Oh! see how in the middle of the dance of death

Leaps to the ruddy sky a skeleton tall and mad

Carried away with élan, like a horse erect:

And, feeling the rope tighten round his neck a tad,

 

Clenches his wee fingers on his femur which soon cracks

With cries that are very like giggles loud and long,

And, like a wandering minstrel returning to his shack,

Leaps back into the ball to the ossements’ clicking song.

 

On the black gibbet, onearmed and civil,

Dance, dance the paladins,

The lean paladins of the devil,

The skeletons of Saladins.

 

Arthur Rimbaud