Long Rimbaud Poems

Postcard 1
by Miklós Radnóti
written August 30, 1944
translated by Michael R. Burch
 
Out of Bulgaria, the great wild roar of the artillery thunders,
resounds on the mountain ridges, rebounds, then ebbs into silence
while here men, beasts, wagons...

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"Ground Level Entry"

“She fits the bill”,
they say it 
insouciantly

visions of being 
carried in the beak 
of a bilious pelican 

where it builds
its rudimentary nest, 
it uses sticks and debris

no stones, yet,
from irreverence
thrown at it

no higher...

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Mechanism 1
Part #1

The things outside of my window dry out my eyes. The egg that I saturated has mold on it. The moon decays when I speak. The stars are all just God’s germs. Lately...

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Unquotable quotes: Poets, Poetasters and Platos – XXXVI

     For James McAuley – in remembrance of a memorable week in Cardiff 1965 

The greatest poet ever is NOT Homer, Lao Tse, Ovid,...

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“Lost Pantheons” 

Alexandrine tragedies
Racine diamond-edged
come and go 
French letters 
blown like leaves
straight up 
into the rarefied air
scattered like lovers
against a body 
of purple vain poetry 
written invisible
on the skin of 
Miss Chance 
Cocteau
spoken with 
joie...

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A Self-Tutoring Translation of RIMBAUD's Final Version " Vowels " in Contemporary Terms

(" Vowels " (final version, without the definite article, with the poet's corrections)  in RIMBAUD Œuvres complètes. Ed. by Pierre Brunel. Paris...

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What lesser mortals? 

What lesser mortals
than Rimbaud
claim themselves 
a poet within 
another self, 
for there is more 
than just one self

depending on the
time and day 
and nothing 

is as it seems
at first, 
we are born...

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Prison Souvenirs, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : Souvenirs de prison, March 1874*

(Verlaine was sentenced to serve a term of two years in prison for having shot his erstwhile lover in the arm/hand, the legendary...

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A Self-Tutoring Translation of RIMBAUD's " The Vowels " in Contemporary Terms

(" The Vowels " in the Paul Verlaine (first version) copy in RIMBAUD Œuvres complètes. Ed. by Pierre Brunel. Paris : Livres de Poche/La...

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Prayer, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : Prière

(One of Paul Verlaine’s later poems, after having gone through early success as a poet, love, family life, and yet another kind of relationship with Rimbaud, crime, prison,...

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How beautiful and discreet, this port, at night,
When you listen to fado, come that voice, Misia
It becomes deep and mysterious, sonorous,
Its numerous lights are warm as wool.

How enchanting this port, at night, o night
Between the...

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(for The Beloved and in honor of Arthur Rimbaud)

… the magnolias are far away – still, I sing, begging
them for bridges to
brood with stanzas of butterflies
in the suffocation around and
heat mocking the sea where once...

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the moon commences its' illusion
it rides the crest fully
survivor of Roche's Limit
survivor of human prediction
filling the night with shadow
my early morning walks
the light in the distance
calls thru canopied jungle path
the setting moon
stepping on the soft...

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I was asked, "What is important to you?" by a friend-
she was just making conversation...
I was silent, deep in thought of diversity-
The true meaning of important.

Other than the worldly treasures of love,
money to survive, intelligence...

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On I say. On we must go
The time is right, I feel it  head to toe
I've never seen the sea, I do not know it's waves
I want to walk to Africa, it is the...

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Incredible, the eyes of panthers, 
Cats with human skin, stare out at you 
From flowers, and rainbows stretch 
Like reins attached to some green beast 
Charles Rimbaud "The Drunken Boat'


 The Darkest Beast

From Eden ,...

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I was wondering how many renowned gay poets I know— 
Like Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and Arthur Rimbaud? 
Edna St. Vincent Millay and Alice Walker, I am told, 
Both Sylvia Plath and Gertrude Stein were...

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(In 1870, the teenage poet Arthur Rimbaud ran away
from his family home in northern France and wandered
around the Belgian border as a vagabond.  Here is a
sonnet he wrote, translated into English.)

For eight long days...

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The roads leading away
circle the distances
and seem to go nowhere. 
They seed the horizon 
with promises, disorganising
the senses and reason
until there is only a hole, 
a dark cave into
the interior.

Effigies stare out of the dark...

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Foxes cachinnate
Into the infant day
Her  dreams are circumfused
Into milk way
She  catches  a glimpse of a sunbeam tardigrade
 
He grieves for his youth misspent in a xenodochium
In adulthood, he became a connoisseur in...

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Travel taught me one precious thing,
There is always better Elsewhere,
You love your village, visit the Tyrol,
You love Cathy, Sue has more beautiful blue eyes,

My travels taught me to change buses often,
You’ve seen Paris, go see...

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Intellectually bountiful multiformed genius was he,
With infinite valleys of depth where great insights can lie.
Profound in his vision of absolute truth he set free,
Young Rimbaud created such beauty the dead rise to cry.
No poet or...

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(Written for Carol's WHO WHAT WHERE contest)

So what motivates me to write things down?
Well, the things in this world that are all around
Feelings, stories, music, and love
You could write about any of the above!

When the...

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Blake was chosen keeper,
For careful hands had he  
Yeats the classic sweeper
And Keats at number three 
  
Whitman wore the five shirt 
With Masefield to his right  
Thus they had a back...

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He views the world in the most subtle of ways
Eyes like a fly, searching everything around, seeing
All in millisecond detail
He sees not the flower or the thorn, but the 
Emerald light of photosynthesis from which...

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