smoking
topped with violet fog
i who pierced the reddening sky
like a wall
bearing delicious jam
for good poets
lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure
spotted with small electric moons
a wild plank escorted by black seahorses
when julys beat down with blows of cudgels
the ultramarine skies with burning funnels;
i who trembled, hearing at fifty leagues off
the moaning of the behemoths in heat
and the thick maelstroms
i eternal spinner of the blue immobility
miss europe with its ancient parapets
i have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islands
whose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer
is it in these bottomless nights
that you sleep and exile yourself,
million golden birds
o future vigor
but in truth i have wept too much!
dawns are heartbreaking
every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter
acrid love has swollen me
with intoxicating torpor--o let my keel burst!
o let me go into the sea!
if i want a water of europe,
it is the black cold puddle
where in the sweet-smelling twilight
a squatting child full of sadness releases
a boat as fragile as a may butterfly
je ne puis plus baigne
de vos langueurs
o lames
enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons,
in traverser l'orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes,
in nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons
arthur @ 17
