The Sisters of Charity

Poem by Arthur Rimbaud Collection PoetryThemes ReligionPeriod 19th century

The young man whose eye is bright, whose skin is dark,
The beautiful body of twenty years that should go naked,
And whom, with brow encircled in copper, beneath the moon
A Genius unknown would have adored, in Persia,

Impetuous with virginal and dark sweetnesses,
Proud of his first stubborn resolves,
Like young seas, tears of summer nights,
That turn over on beds of diamonds;

The young man, before the ugliness of this world,
Shudders in his heart greatly irritated,
And full of the eternal and profound wound,
Begins to desire his sister of charity.

But, O Woman, heap of entrails, gentle pity,
You are never the Sister of charity, never,
Neither dark gaze, nor belly where a russet shadow sleeps,
Nor light fingers, nor splendidly formed breasts.

Blind, unawakened one with immense pupils,
All our embrace is but a question:
It is you who hang from us, bearer of breasts,
We rock you, charming and grave Passion. Your hatreds, your fixed torpors, your failings,
And the brutalities suffered in other times,
You give us all back, O Night yet without malice,
Like an excess of blood poured out every month.

– When woman, carried for a moment, and fright,
Love, call of life and song of action,
Come the green Muse and ardent Justice
To tear him apart with their august obsession.

Ah! ceaselessly thirsty for splendors and calms,
Forsaken by the two implacable Sisters, moaning
With tenderness after science with nurturing arms,
He carries to flowering nature his bleeding brow.

But the black alchemy and the holy studies
Repel the wounded one, dark scholar of pride;
He feels atrocious solitudes walking upon him.
Then, and always beautiful, without disgust for the coffin,

May he believe in vast ends, Dreams or Immense
Walks, through the nights of Truth,
And call you in his soul and his sick limbs,
O mysterious Death, O sister of charity.

Arthur Rimbaud

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