Forwarded from Poetry
Excerpts from "The Drunken Boat" by Arthur Rimbaud
As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews,
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted...
Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers!
Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfs
Where giant serpents devoured by bedbugs
Fall down from gnarled trees with black scent!
I should have liked to show children those sunfish
Of the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish.
—Foam of flowers rocked my drifting
And ineffable winds winged me at times...
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.
No longer can I, bathed in your languor, o waves,
Follow in the wake of the cotton boats,
Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames,
Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.
Full poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55036/the-drunken-boat
As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews,
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted...
Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers!
Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfs
Where giant serpents devoured by bedbugs
Fall down from gnarled trees with black scent!
I should have liked to show children those sunfish
Of the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish.
—Foam of flowers rocked my drifting
And ineffable winds winged me at times...
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.
No longer can I, bathed in your languor, o waves,
Follow in the wake of the cotton boats,
Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames,
Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.
Full poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55036/the-drunken-boat
The Poetry Foundation
The Drunken Boat
Sweeter than the flesh of hard apples is to children The green water penetrated my hull of fir And washed me of spots of blue wine And vomit, scattering rudder and grappling-hook And from then on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent…
I tried to write a poem from a perspective radically different than my own, tell me what you think!
Chasm
By HIEU MINH NGUYEN
Monthly, my family calls from Vietnam
to inform us about the dead.
Their voices amplified through the speakerphone
while my mother sits upright in her bed
& performs a variety of mundane tasks:
sewing, word finds, removing nail polish.
Of course I want to assume things:
dead body, dead butter-yellow lawn—
If I try hard enough, I can gather
each story, like marbles, into my mouth
spit them into the drain & watch
as hair climbs out.
Every month, a new body washes up
in conversation:
a great aunt, a dog, a cousin or two, but now
it’s my father’s first wife.
Four-days-dead in her bathroom
my uncle says
— she lived alone, abandoned
years earlier, by her husband.
Buried in a backyard
somewhere in that roadside village
the woman he left in Vietnam
to come to America
he promised he’d return
for her & their two sons
but instead married my mother.
— well, she was found dead.
Four-days-dead, in a bathroom
my father once built for her.
Buried in my uncle’s backyard.
Had to kill the dog too.
It kept trying to dig her out.
Either anyone can be forgotten
or only the forgotten can bring
forth a good haunting, spanning
the chasm of the living, above which
a bridge made of ghosts, full of ghosts
waiting to be summoned through
the receiver
one by one by one by dead one.
I can see them all
gathering
in the pixelated air. A patch of light
ruptured by dust. I know my mother
will make a great ghost one day.
They love her, the ghosts. They watch her
all the time. She knows this, but she just sits there
unbothered, biting the seam of a white dress
until it splits.
By HIEU MINH NGUYEN
Monthly, my family calls from Vietnam
to inform us about the dead.
Their voices amplified through the speakerphone
while my mother sits upright in her bed
& performs a variety of mundane tasks:
sewing, word finds, removing nail polish.
Of course I want to assume things:
dead body, dead butter-yellow lawn—
If I try hard enough, I can gather
each story, like marbles, into my mouth
spit them into the drain & watch
as hair climbs out.
Every month, a new body washes up
in conversation:
a great aunt, a dog, a cousin or two, but now
it’s my father’s first wife.
Four-days-dead in her bathroom
my uncle says
— she lived alone, abandoned
years earlier, by her husband.
Buried in a backyard
somewhere in that roadside village
the woman he left in Vietnam
to come to America
he promised he’d return
for her & their two sons
but instead married my mother.
— well, she was found dead.
Four-days-dead, in a bathroom
my father once built for her.
Buried in my uncle’s backyard.
Had to kill the dog too.
It kept trying to dig her out.
Either anyone can be forgotten
or only the forgotten can bring
forth a good haunting, spanning
the chasm of the living, above which
a bridge made of ghosts, full of ghosts
waiting to be summoned through
the receiver
one by one by one by dead one.
I can see them all
gathering
in the pixelated air. A patch of light
ruptured by dust. I know my mother
will make a great ghost one day.
They love her, the ghosts. They watch her
all the time. She knows this, but she just sits there
unbothered, biting the seam of a white dress
until it splits.
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