Arthur Rimbaud - To the Poet on the Subject of Flowers lyrics

I Thus continually towards the dark azure Where the sea of topazes shimmers Will function in your evening The Lilies, those pessaries of ectasy! In our own age sago When Plants work for their living The Lily will dring blue loathings From you religious Proses! - Monsieur de Kerdrel's fleur-de-lys The Sonnet of eighteen-thirty The Lily they bestow on the Bard Together with the pink and the amaranth! Lilies! lilies! None to be seen! Yet in your Verse, like the sleeves Of the soft-footed Women of Sin Always these white flowers shiver! Always, Dear Man, when you bathe Your shirt with yellow oxters Swells in the morning breezes Above the muddy forget-menots! Love get through your customs Only Lilacs, - o eye-wash! And the Wild Violets Sugary spittle of the dark Nymphs!... II O Poets, if you had Roses, blown Roses Red upon laurel stems And swollen with a thousand octaves! If Banville would make them snow down Blood-tinged, whirling Blacking the wild eye of the stranger With his ill-disposed interpretations! In your forests and in your meadows O very peaceful photographers! The Flora is more or less diverse Like the stoppers on decanters! Always those French vegetables Cross-gained, phthisical, absurd Navigated by the peaceful bellies Of ba**et-hounds in twilight; Always, after frightful drawings Of blue Lotuses or Sunflowers Pink prints, holy pictures For young girls making their communion! The Asoka Ode agrees with the Loretto window stanza form; And heavy vivid bu*terflies Are dunging on the Daisy Old greenery, and old galloons! O vegetable fancy biscuits! Fancy-flowers of old Drawing-rooms! - For co*kchafers, not rattlesnakes The pulling vegetable baby dolls Which Grandville would have put round the margins And which s**ed in their colours From ill-natured stars with eyeshades! Yes, the drooling from your shepherd's pipes Make some priceless glucoses! - Pile of fried eggs in hold hats Lilies, Asokas, Lilacs and Roses!... III O white Hunter, running sockingless Across the panic Pastures Can you not, ought you not To know your botany a little? I'm afraid you'd make succeed To russet Crickets, Cantharides And Rio golds to blues of Rhine, - In short, to Norways, Floridas: But, My dear Chap, Art does not consist now - it's the truth, - in allowing To the astonishing Eucalyptus Boa-constrictors a hexameter long; There now!... As if Mahogany Served only, even in our Guianas As helter-skelters for monkeys Among the heavy vertigo of the lianas! - In short, is a Flower, Rosemary Or Lily, dead or alive, worth The excrement of one sea-bird? Is it worth a solitary candle-drip? - And I mean what I say! You, even sitting over there, in a Bamboo hut, - with the shutters Closed, and brown Persian rugs for hangings, - You would scrawl blossoms Worthy of extravagant Oise!... - Poet ! these are reasonnings No less absurd than arrogant!... IV Speak, not of pampas in the spring Black with terrible revolts But of tobacco and cotton trees! Speak of exotic harvests! Say, white face which Phoebus has tanned How many dollars Pedro Velasquez of Habana ; Cover with excrement the sea of Sorrento Where the Swans go in thousands; Let your lines campaign For the clearing of the mangrove swamps Riddled with pools and water-snakes! Your quatrain plunges into the bloody thickets And come back to offer to Humanity Various subjects: white sugar Bronchial lozenges, and rubbers! Let us know though You wheter the yellownesses Of snow Peaks, near the Tropics Are insects which lay many eggs Or microscopic lichens! Find, o Hunter, we desire it One or two scented madder plants Which Nature in trousers May cause to bloom! - fr our Armies! Find, on the outskirts of the Sleeping Wood Flowers, whick look like snouts Out of which drip golden pomades On to the dark hair of buffaloes! Find, in wild meadows, where on the Blue Gra** Shivers the silver of downy gowths Calyxex full of fiery Eggs Cooking among the essential oils! Find downy Thistles Whose wool ten a**es with glaring eyes Labour to spin! Find Flowers which are chairs! Yes, find in the heart of coal-black seams Flowers that are almost stones, - marvellous ones! - Which, close to their hard pale ovaries Bear gemlike tonsils! Serve us, o Stuffer, this you can do On a splendid vermilion plate Stews of syrupy Lilies To corrode our German-silver spoons! V Someone will speak about great Love The thief of black Indulgences: But neither Renan, nor Murr the cat Have seen the immense Blue Thyrsuses! You, quicken in our sluggishness By means of scents, hysteria; Exalt us towards purities Whiter than the Marys... Tradesman! colonial! Medium! Your Rhyme will well up, pink or white Like a blaze of sodium Like a bleeding rubber-tree! But from your dark Poems, - Juggler! Dioptric white and green and red Let strange flowers burst out And electric bu*terflies! See! it's the Century of hell! And the telegraph poles Are going to adorn, - the iron-voiced lyre Your magnificent shoulder blades! Above all, give us a rhymed account Of the potato blight! - And, in order to compose Poems full of mystery Intended to be read from Tréguier To Paramaribo, go and buy A few volumes by Monsieur Figuier - Illustrated! - at Hachette's !