Novel

I

You are not serious, when you’re seventeen.

—One fine evening, foo on mugs and lemonade,

Boisterous cafés and their dazzling sheen!

—You go amongst the lindens green in the promenade.

The linden trees smell good in the good evenings of June!

The air’s sometimes so sweet, you shut your eyelids near;

The wind laden with sounds—not far is the town—

Has perfumes of grapevine and perfumes of beer.

II

—There you apperceive a very little rag

Of dark blue, framed as it were by a branch all slight,

Pricked out with a bad star, that’s in the bag

Within a pair of shivers, little and very white...

June night! Seventeen! —You suffer from the hips,

Sap is very champagne and goes right to your head...

You divagate, you feel a kiss upon your lips

That trembles there, as if it were a beast not dead...

III

The quite mad heart Robinsons through novels disarming,

—When, in the brightness of a pale lamp-post,

Passes a miss with little airs that are so charming,

In the dire shadow of her father’s collar mine host...

And, as she finds you immensely naïve withal,

While she makes her little booties trot along,

She turns around, and with a movement vital...

—Upon your lips dies something like Italian song...

IV

You are in love. Rented till the month of August.

You are in love. —Your sonnets make her all but gloat.

All your friends have fled, you are in bad taste.

—Then the adored one, one evening, deigns to write you a note.

—That evening... —you went back into the cafés dazzling,

You ordered mugs of beer or even lemonade...

—You are not serious, when you’re seventeen

And you have the lindens green in the promenade.

Arthur Rimbaud