Evil

Whileas the ruddy spittings of a bullet-volley

Whistle all day underneath the sky’s blue choir;

And scarlet-clad or green, next the King full jolly,

Battalions in their numbers crumple under fire;

Whileas a fit of madness most appalling grinds

And makes a hundred thousand men a smoking heap;

—Poor corpses! in summer, in the grass, in joy of thine,

Nature, o thou who made them in thy holy keep!...

There is a God, who laugheth at the damask cloths

Of altars, at the incense, the chalices of gold;

Who in the lullaby of praises sleeps of old,

And reawakens, when their mothers, gathered close

In anguish, weeping their black bonnets underneath,

Give him a pretty penny tied in their handkerchief!

Arthur Rimbaud