Rimbaud After the Flood

As soon as the Idea of the Flood was becalmed,

A hare halted in front of the esparcettes and the cowbells, moving, and said his prayer to the rainbow stretched across the spider's web.

Oh! The precious stones that hid themselves, the flowers that were watching already.

On the dirty board-walk, stalls erected themselves, and people were dragging barks out towards the sea rising out like engravings.

Blood flowed, at Blue Beard's, in the slaughter-houses, circuses where the stamp of God blemished the windows. The blood flowed, and the milk.

The beavers built. Capucinos foamed at Starbucks.

In the large house of glass still rustling, grieving children were watching the marvelous scenes.

A door slammed -- and, on the town-square, the infant twirled his arms, comprehended of cocks and of tower-cocks all, under the thundering downpour.

Madame X built a piano into the Alps. Mass and first communions published themselves on the hundred altars, cathedral's.

The caravans departed. And the Splendid Hotel founded on the chaos of ice and the night of the pole.

After that, the Moon heard the jackals singing in the deserts of thyme, -- and the eclogues in clogs groaning in the green. Later, in the violet pine-grove, bourgeoning, Eucharist told me it was spring.

The deaf, a lake, -- Mist, roll over the bridge and pass above the wood; -- black sheets and organs, lightning and thunder, -- Climb and roll; -- melancholy Elixir, climb again, and mass the Floods.

Because after they've dissipated themselves, -- oh, the precious stones that are hiding, the opening flowers! -- It's an ennui! and the Queen, the Sorceress who illuminates her brazier in the pot of the earth, will never want to tell us what she knows, which we ignore.