Evening prayer | A poem by Arthur Rimbaud, 1870s

Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, 1873

I spend my life sitting, like an angel in a barber’s chair,
Holding a beer mug with deep-cut designs,
My neck and gut both bent, while in the air
A weightless veil of pipe smoke hangs.

Like steaming dung within an old dovecote
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.

And then, when I have swallowed down my Dreams
In thirty, forty mugs of beer, I turn
To satisfy a need I can’t ignore,

And like the Lord of Hyssop and of Myrrh
I piss into the skies, a soaring stream
That consecrates a patch of flowering fern.”

Arthur Rimbaud, Evening prayer

Undated Poems, 1870-1872

Also:

Garlands | Excerpts from Illuminations / Arthur Rimbaud, 1886
My Bohemian Life (Fantasy) | Arthur Rimbaud, 1870
Sensation | Arthur Rimbaud, 1870

Tags: 1870s, Arthur Rimbaud

3 thoughts on “Evening prayer | A poem by Arthur Rimbaud, 1870s”

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July–

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear–

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die.
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream–
Lingering in the golden gleam–
Life, what is it but a dream?

Acrostic [:ἀκροστιχίς] poem at the end of Through the Looking-Glass. Reading downward, taking the first letter of each line, spells out Alice Pleasance Liddell. The poem has no title in Through the Looking-Glass, but is usually referred to by its first line, "A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky".