O my good! O my beautiful!
Atrocious fanfare where I won’t stumble!
enchanted rack whereon I am stretched!
Hurrah for the amazing work and
the marvelous body, for the first time!
It began amid the laughter of children,
it will end with it. This poison will remain
in all our veins even when, as the trumpets
turn back, we’ll be restored to the old discord.
O let us now, we who are so deserving
of these torments! let us fervently gather up
that superhuman promise made to our
created body and soul: that promise,
that madness!
Elegance, knowledge, violence!
They promised us to bury the tree
of good and evil in the shade, to banish
tyrannical honesties, so that we might
bring forth our very pure love.
It began with a certain disgust and ended—
since we weren’t able to grasp this eternity
all at once—in a panicked rout of perfumes.
Laughter of children, discretion of slaves,
austerity of virgins, horror in the faces
and objects of today, may you be
consecrated by the memory of
that wake.
It began in all loutishness, now it’s ending
among angels of flame and ice.
Little eve of drunkenness, holy! were it only
for the mask with which you gratified us.
We affirm you, method! We don’t forget
that yesterday you glorified each one
of our ages.
We have faith in the poison.
We know how to give our
whole lives every day.
Behold the time of the Assassins.
by Arthur Rimbaud
-from Poetic Outlaws
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY JOHN ASHBERY
