The Crows, Poem by Arthur Rimbaud

Poem by Arthur Rimbaud Collection PoetryThemes WarPeriod 19th century

Lord, when the meadow is cold,
When in the fallen hamlets,
The long angelus have fallen silent…
Over deflowered nature
Let the dear delicious crows
Swoop down from the great skies.

Strange army with harsh cries,
The cold winds attack your nests!
You, along the yellowed rivers,
On the roads with old calvaries,
On the ditches and on the holes,
Scatter, rally!

By thousands, over the fields of France,
Where the dead of the day before yesterday sleep,
Wheel about, is it not so, in winter,
So that every passerby may think again!
Be then the crier of duty,
O our funereal black bird!

But, saints of heaven, atop the oak,
Mast lost in the charmed evening,
Leave the warblers of May
For those whom at the bottom of the wood enchains,
In the grass from which one cannot flee,
The defeat without a future.

Arthur Rimbaud

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