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The Just Man stood upright on his solid hips:
A ray gilded his shoulder; sweats
Seized me: “Do you want to see the meteors gleam?
And, standing, hear the buzzing swarms
Of milky stars, and the swarms of asteroids?
“Through night’s mockeries your brow is spied upon,
O just one! You must gain a roof. Say your prayer,
Your mouth softly atoned for in your sheet;
And if some stray soul offends your doorkeeper,
Say: Brother, go further, I am crippled!”
And the just man stood upright, in the bluish
Terror of the lawns after the dead sun:
“So, would you put your knee-pads up for sale,
O Old Man? Sacred pilgrim! bard of Armor!
Weep of the Olives! hand that pity gloves!
“Beard of the family and fist of the city,
Most gentle believer: O heart fallen into chalices,
Majesties and virtues, love and blindness,
Just one! more stupid and more disgusting than the hounds!
I am the one who suffers and who has revolted!
“And it makes me weep over my belly, O stupid one,
And laugh well, the famed hope of your forgiveness!
I am cursed, you know! I am drunk, mad, livid,
Whatever you want! But go to bed, come now,
Just one! I want nothing from your torpid brain.
“It’s you, the Just Man, finally, the Just Man! That’s enough!
It’s true that your tenderness and your serene reason
Sniff in the night like cetaceans,
That you have yourself proscribed and spout threnodies
On frightful shattered canes!” And it’s you the eye of God! the coward! When the cold
Plants of divine feet would pass over my neck,
You are a coward! O your brow swarming with lice!
Socrates and Jesus, Saints and Just Men, disgust!
Respect the supreme Accursed with his bloody nights!”
I had cried that on the earth, and the night
Calm and white occupied the heavens during my fever.
I raised my brow: the phantom had fled,
Carrying off the atrocious irony of my lip…
– Nocturnal winds, come to the Accursed! Speak to him,
While silent beneath the azure pilasters,
Lengthening the comets and the knots
Of universes, enormous movement without disasters,
Order, eternal watcher, rows toward the luminous heavens
And from its fiery dredge lets the stars slip away!
Ah! let him go, his throat cravatted
With shame, forever ruminating my boredom, sweet
As sugar on decayed teeth.
– Like the bitch after the assault of proud curs,
Licking her flank from which a torn intestine hangs.
Let him speak filthy charities and progress…
– I loathe all those Chinese eyes with bellies,
Then who sings: nana, like a heap of children near
Death, gentle idiots with sudden songs:
O Just Men, we will shit in your sandstone bellies!
Arthur Rimbaud
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-the-just-man-arthur-rimbaud/