Memory

I

The bright water; even as one’s childhood tears,

The attack upon the sun by the pallors of bodies of dames;

the silk, en masse and lily-pure, of oriflammes

under walls some maidenhead protects from fears;

the frolic of angels—No... the current of gold on the march,

moves its arms, dark and weighty, of cool grass. She

founders and calls out, the Sky her canopy,

for a curtain of shadow from the hill and arch.

II

Eh! damp the windowpane offers its clear broths!

Water lays out with gold pale and deep ready beds;

Little girls’ dresses green withal and faded

make up willows, whence spring birds with no bridles on.

Eyelid warm and yellow, than a coin more pure

the marsh-marigold—the keeping of thy vows, o Spouse! —

at noon sharp, out of its dull mirror, is jealous

of the gray warm sky’s pink and precious Sphere.

III

Madame is standing much too straightly in the meadow

nearby where the threads of labor snow; sunshade

in fingers; stepping on umbels; for her too proudly made;

children at their reading in the flowery verdure

of a red-leather book! Alas, He, like

a thousand white angels disparting on the road

sets off for beyond the mountains! She, cold

very, and darkling, runs! after the man’s hike!

IV

Regret for those thick arms and young of puremost grass!

Gold of April moons in the holy bed! Joy

of abandoned workyards by the river, prey

in August evenings that make grow such rottenness!

Let her weep at present beneath the ramparts! the breath

of poplar-trees on high is for an only breeze.

Then, it’s the water, sourceless, gray, bearing no gleams:

an old man, with a net, works in his boat motionless.

V

Toy of this dreary water-eye, I cannot clasp,

o motionless small boat! oh! arms too short! nor one

nor other flower: nor the yellow that calls me on,

there; nor the blue, friendly in water the color of ash.

Ah! the dust of willows which a wing suspires!

The pinks of all the reeds long since gone to air!

My little boat, always tied; and its chain moored there

At the bottom of that water-eye—in what mire?

Arthur Rimbaud