(no subject)
Bad Blood
From my Gaulish ancestors, I inherited their blue-white eyes,
their narrow skulls and awkwardness in fighting.
And my clothing is just as barbaric as theirs. But at least
I don't go buttering my hair.
The Gauls were the worst beast-skinners and field-burners of their time.
From them I possess: a love for idols and blasphemy--oh!
all the vices: anger, lust--but above all, sloth and deceit.
I am horrified by all trades. All bosses and workers are wretched peasants.
A plume in the hand isn't worth more than a plow in the hand--
What a century of hands!-- And my hands will never be mine.
Or else I'd be domestic. The honesty of beggary cuts me to the core.
Criminals are just as disgusting as eunuchs, but I am intact and not bothered by that.
Who made my tongue so treacherous that it guided and guarded my laziness until now?
Without using my body to get by, more idle than a toad, I have lived everywhere--
There's no family in Europe I don't know. Like mine, they cling with their lives to the
Declaration of Human Rights--I have known every one of their sons!
If only I had some predecessors in the history of France!
But no, nothing.
It's quite evident to me that I have always been of an inferior race.
I cannot understand revolt.
My race has never rebelled except to pillage:
like wolves with beasts they didn't kill.
I remember the history of France, eldest daughter of the Church.
As a simple villager I'd wander across the holy land;
my mind knows roads of the Swabian plains, visions of Byzantium,
ramparts of Jerusalem: the Cult of Mary and the compassion of the
crucified awake in me amidst a thousand magical blasphemies.
Like a leper I sat upon pottery shards and nettles under walls eroded by the sun.
Later, as a warrior, I slept outside in the Aryan night.
Ah! There's more: In red glades I've danced in black masses
with old women and children.
But I can't remember farther back than Christianity and this land.
I will never stop seeing myself in that past.
Though always, alone: no family--and what language did I even speak?
I never asked Christ for advice, nor those lords who represent him.
What I was last century: I only find myself today.
No more vague wars or vagabonds.
People are the inferior race and they have enveloped the world,
along with reason, nationalism and science.
Oh! Science! Everything has been defined.
For the body: the last sacrament!
For the soul: medicine, philosophy: homemade remedies, popular songs.
And the royal games which princes forbade, yet played!
Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry!...
Science, the new nobility!
Progress!
The word keeps spinning! Why wouldn't it?
It's the vision of numbers. We're moving towards the Spirit.
It's imminent. What I say is prophecy. I know.
And I don't know--how to explain myself without pagan words.
I wish I would just shut up.
-Arthur Rimbaud
I don't know why I like this so much...but I just do.