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Herded between oak pews, in church corners
Foully warmed by their breath, all their eyes
Toward the choir dripping with gold and the choir-school
With twenty mouths bawling pious canticles;
Like a smell of bread sniffing the odor of wax,
Happy, humiliated like beaten dogs,
The Poor to the good God, the master and the lord,
Stretch their ridiculous and stubborn orisons.
For the women, it’s quite good to make the pews smooth,
After the six black days when God makes them suffer!
They cradle, twisted in strange pelisses,
Kinds of children who cry as if to die.
Their filthy breasts out, these soup-eaters,
A prayer in their eyes and never praying,
Watch spitefully parading a group
Of little girls with their misshapen hats.
Outside, the cold, hunger, the man on a binge:
That’s good. Another hour; then, nameless ills!
– Meanwhile, around, whimpers, nasals, whispers
A collection of old women with wattles:
These crazed ones are there and these epileptics
From whom one turned away yesterday at crossroads;
And, sniffling into ancient missals,
These blind men whom a dog leads into the courtyards.
And all, drooling the mendicant and stupid faith,
Recite the infinite complaint to Jesus,
Who dreams on high, yellowed by the livid stained glass,
Far from the thin wicked and the nasty pot-bellied,
Far from the smells of meat and moldy fabrics,
Prostrate and dark farce with repulsive gestures;
– And the prayer flowers with chosen expressions,
And the mysticisms take on urgent tones,
When, from the naves where the sun perishes, silk folds
Banal, green smiles, the Ladies of the distinguished
Districts, – oh Jesus! – the liver patients
Make their long yellow fingers kiss the holy water fonts.
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-poor-in-church-arthur-rimbaud/