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Full late, when he feels his stomach turn with disgust,
Brother Milotus, one eye at the garret window,
From which the sun, clear as a scoured cauldron,
Darts a migraine at him and makes his gaze dim,
Shifts his priest’s belly in the sheets.
He squirms under his gray blanket
And draws his knees down to his trembling belly,
Terrified like an old man who would eat his catch,
For he must, fist on the handle of a white pot,
Hike up his shirt broadly over his loins!
But he has squatted, shivering, his toes
Curled and trembling in the clear sun that slaps
Yellow of brioches on the paper windowpanes,
And the good man’s nose, where the glaze lights up,
Sniffs at the rays, like a carnal coral polyp…
The good man simmers at the fire, arms twisted, lip
On his belly: he feels his thighs slide in the fire
And his breeches scorch and his pipe go out;
Something like a bird stirs a little
At his belly serene as a heap of tripe!
Around, a jumble of brutish furniture sleeps
In rags of filth and on dirty bellies,
Stools, strange toads, are huddled
In dark corners: sideboards have the mugs of cantors
Half-opened by a sleep full of horrible appetites.
The sickening heat gorges the narrow room,
The good man’s brain is stuffed with rags,
He listens to the hairs growing in his moist skin
And sometimes in hiccups gravely buffoonish
Escapes, shaking his limping stool…
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
And at evening, in the moonbeams that make
Around the contours of his ass smears of light,
A shadow with details squats on a ground
Of pink snow like a hollyhock…
Whimsical, a nose pursues Venus in the deep sky.
Arthur Rimbaud
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-squatting-arthur-rimbaud/