Illuminations, Poem by Arthur Rimbaud

Poem by Arthur Rimbaud Collection Les IlluminationsThemes PoliticsPeriod 19th century

As soon as the idea of the Flood had subsided,
A hare stopped in the clover and swaying bellflowers and said its prayer to the rainbow through the spider’s web.
Oh! the precious stones that were hiding, − the flowers that were already looking.
In the big dirty street, the stalls were set up, and boats were pulled toward the sea, stacked up there as in engravings.
Blood flowed, at Bluebeard’s, − in slaughterhouses, − in circuses, where God’s seal blanched the windows. Blood and milk flowed.
The beavers built. The “mazagrans” steamed in the taverns.
In the big house of still-streaming windowpanes, children in mourning looked at the marvelous images.
A door slammed, and on the village square, the child turned his arms, understood by weathervanes and roosters on steeples everywhere, under the glittering shower.
Madame*** set up a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.
The caravans departed. And the Splendid-Hotel was built in the chaos of ice and night of the pole.
Since then, the Moon heard the jackals yelping through the deserts of thyme, − and the eclogues in clogs grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the violet, budding forest, Eucharis told me that it was spring.
− Deaf, pond, − Foam, roll over the bridge, and over the woods; − black sheets and organs, − lightning and thunder − rise and roll; − Waters and sorrows, rise and raise the Floods.
For since they have dissipated, − oh the precious stones burying themselves, and the flowers opened! − it is a tedium! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her embers in the clay pot, will never want to tell us what she knows, and what we do not know.

Arthur Rimbaud

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