the Bateau Ivre

         .

The Drunken Boat

As I went down the Rivers unfeeling

I felt myself free of the guidance of tugs :

Screaming red-skins had taken and used them as targets

Nailing them naked to stakes of all colours .

I was careless of all my crews

carrying Flemish wheat , cotton from England

Who - with my hauliers - have finished their clamour

The Rivers have let me go down where I want -

Into the furious lapping of oceans

Last winter and deafer than brains of small children

I was running !  and the unmoored Peninsulas

Have never endured such victorious void .

The tempest had blessed all my maritime wakings

More light than a cork , I have danced on the waves

Which one calls the rollers eternal of victims,

Ten nights , no regrets for the harbour-light's eye .

And sweeter than flesh of sour apples to children

The green water pierces my hull made of pine

And splashings of blue wine and vomitings

washed me down , sending the rudder and anchor adrift

 

And from then , I am bathing myself in the Poem

Of the Sea , it is milky and infused with stars

Devouring green azures ; where pale is the flotsam

And dreaming , a drowned man is sinking right down

Where suddenly , dyeing the blueness , delirium

Slow rhythms swell under the glint of the day

Stronger than alcohol , more vast than our music

Fermenting the bitterest blushes of love

I know the skies that are splitting with lightning

The waterspouts , breakers and tides of the sea :

I know the evening ; and dawn rising up like a flutter of doves

And sometimes i've seen what men fancy they've seen

I've seen the low sun , splashed in mystical horrors

Lighting the long purple tangle of limbs

Like the actors in dramas both Antique and Ancient

Are the waves rolling backward like rolling of blinds

 

I have dreamed the green night of the dazzling snows

The kiss rising slow to the eyes of the sea ,

The sap circulating , unthought of , undreamed of

the yellow blue waking of phosphorus singing !

I have followed , whole months , like hysterical herds
The swells as they batter and batter the reefs
Never dreaming the luminous feet of the Marys

Could force back the muzzle of the Ocean snorting

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas

Mingling flowers with the eyes of panthers in skin
that is human ! Rainbows strung like bridles

Underneath the horizon of seas to the herds of blue-green

I have seen great swamps seething , fish-traps

Where an entire Leviathon rots in the reeds !

Collapsings of water in the middle of calmnesses
as the distances cataract to the abyss !

Glaciers , suns of silver , waves of pearl and skies of red-hot embers !

Hideous wrecks at the bottom of gulfs

Of brown , where giant serpents are devoured by vermin

Falling from twisted trees with perfumes of dark

I would have liked to show to children these sea-bream
of the blue waves , these golden , these singing fishes .

- Foaming of flowers have been rocking my driftings
And at times lifted me up on inexpressible wings

Sometimes , a martyr weary of poles and zones
The sea of whose sobbing has sweetened my rollings

Lifted towards me it’s shadowy flowers with their suckers of yellow
And I hung there , just like a woman at prayer

Almost an island , throwing onto my beaches the quarrels
And the droppings of pale-eyed and clamouring birds
And I drifted , when across my frayed linkages
of the drowned men reversing back down into sleep !

Now I , a boat lost under the hair of the coves,

Hurled by the hurricane into an ether without birds,

I whom the coastguard and sailboats of the Hanses

would not have reeled up the water soaked carcass ;  

Free , smoking , risen from violet fogs ,

I , who made a hole in the reddening sky like a wall
That carries an exquisite jam to good poets,

Of lichens of sunlight and snots of azure

Who ran , splashed with electrical lunulas
A mad plank , escorted by dark hippocamps ,
When Julys were beating with blows from a cudgel ,

The ultramarine skies into funnels on fire ;

I who trembled , to feel at fifty leagues distance

 the groaning of Behemoths rutting and of heavy upheavals ,

Eternal spinner of blue inertias ,

I long for Europe with its parapets of old !

I have seen archipelagos of stars , islands

Whose delirious sky are open to sailors :

- in these bottomless nights do you sleep, are you exiled ,

Gold birds in millions , O future Life Force ?

But , true , I have wept too much ! The Dawns are distressing
Every moon atrocious , every sun bitter:
Pungent love has distended me with heaviest torpors
O let my keel split !  Let me sink in the sea !

If there is one water in Europe that I yearn for , its the

dark and cold pool where the dusk fills with fragrance

A child full of sorrows squats , launches

A boat , as frail as a butterfly in May

I can no more , washed of your languors , o blades ,

Come out of the wake of the carriers of cottons ,

Or go through the pride of the flags and the pennants

Nor swim under the horrible eyes of the hulks 

"O that my keel would break! O that I would go to the sea!" Le Bateau ivre Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles, Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs : Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs. J'étais insoucieux de tous les équipages, Porteur de blés flamands ou de cotons anglais. Quand avec mes haleurs ont fini ces tapages Les Fleuves m'ont laissé descendre où je voulais. Dans les clapotements furieux des marées Moi l'autre hiver plus sourd que les cerveaux d'enfants, Je courus ! Et les Péninsules démarrées N'ont pas subi tohu-bohus plus triomphants. La tempête a béni mes éveils maritimes. Plus léger qu'un bouchon j'ai dansé sur les flots Qu'on appelle rouleurs éternels de victimes, Dix nuits, sans regretter l'oeil niais des falots ! Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures, L'eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin   Et dès lors, je me suis baigné dans le Poème De la Mer, infusé d'astres, et lactescent, Dévorant les azurs verts ; où, flottaison blême Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend ; Où, teignant tout à coup les bleuités, délires Et rythmes lents sous les rutilements du jour, Plus fortes que l'alcool, plus vastes que nos lyres, Fermentent les rousseurs amères de l'amour ! Je sais les cieux crevant en éclairs, et les trombes Et les ressacs et les courants : Je sais le soir, L'aube exaltée ainsi qu'un peuple de colombes, Et j'ai vu quelque fois ce que l'homme a cru voir ! J'ai vu le soleil bas, taché d'horreurs mystiques, Illuminant de longs figements violets, Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques Les flots roulant au loin leurs frissons de volets !   J'ai rêvé la nuit verte aux neiges éblouies, Baiser montant aux yeux des mers avec lenteurs, La circulation des sèves inouïes, Et l'éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs ! J'ai suivi, des mois pleins, pareille aux vacheries Hystériques, la houle à l'assaut des récifs, Sans songer que les pieds lumineux des Maries Pussent forcer le mufle aux Océans poussifs ! J'ai heurté, savez-vous, d'incroyables Florides Mêlant aux fleurs des yeux de panthères à peaux D'hommes ! Des arcs-en-ciel tendus comme des brides Sous l'horizon des mers, à de glauques troupeaux ! J'ai vu fermenter les marais énormes, nasses Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan ! Des écroulement d'eau au milieu des bonaces, Et les lointains vers les gouffres cataractant ! Glaciers, soleils d'argent, flots nacreux, cieux de braises ! Échouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns Où les serpents géants dévorés de punaises Choient, des arbres tordus, avec de noirs parfums ! J'aurais voulu montrer aux enfants ces dorades Du flot bleu, ces poissons d'or, ces poissons chantants. - Des écumes de fleurs ont bercé mes dérades Et d'ineffables vents m'ont ailé par instants. Parfois, martyr lassé des pôles et des zones, La mer dont le sanglot faisait mon roulis doux Montait vers moi ses fleurs d'ombre aux ventouses jaunes Et je restais, ainsi qu'une femme à genoux... Presque île, balottant sur mes bords les querelles Et les fientes d'oiseaux clabaudeurs aux yeux blonds Et je voguais, lorsqu'à travers mes liens frêles Des noyés descendaient dormir, à reculons ! Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses, Jeté par l'ouragan dans l'éther sans oiseau, Moi dont les Monitors et les voiliers des Hanses N'auraient pas repêché la carcasse ivre d'eau ; Libre, fumant, monté de brumes violettes, Moi qui trouais le ciel rougeoyant comme un mur Qui porte, confiture exquise aux bons poètes, Des lichens de soleil et des morves d'azur,   Qui courais, taché de lunules électriques, Planche folle, escorté des hippocampes noirs, Quand les juillets faisaient crouler à coups de triques Les cieux ultramarins aux ardents entonnoirs ; Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre à cinquante lieues Le rut des Béhémots et les Maelstroms épais, Fileur éternel des immobilités bleues, Je regrette l'Europe aux anciens parapets ! J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux ! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur : - Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur ? - Mais, vrai, j'ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer : L'âcre amour m'a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes. Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j'aille à la mer ! Si je désire une eau d'Europe, c'est la flache Noire et froide où vers le crépuscule embaumé Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses, lâche Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai. Je ne puis plus, baigné de vos langueurs, ô lames, Enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons, Ni traverser des drapeaux et des flammes, Ni nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons.  Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962)

The Drunken Boat             As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers: Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets Nailing them naked to coloured stakes. I cared nothing for all my crews, Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons. When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased. Into the ferocious tide-rips Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas Never endured more triumphant clamourings The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings. Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves Which men call eternal rollers of victims, For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights! Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children, The green water penetrated my pinewood hull And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit, Carrying away both rudder and anchor.   And from that time on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk, Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam, A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down; Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight, Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music Ferment the bitter rednesses of love! I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts And the breakers and currents; I know the evening, And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves, And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw! I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors. Lighting up long violet coagulations, Like the performers in very-antique dramas Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!   I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas, The circulation of undreamed-of saps, And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus! I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows, Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans! I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds! I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds! Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm And distances cataracting down into abysses! Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals! Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin Fall from the twisted trees with black odours! I should have liked to show to children those dolphins Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes. - Foam of flowers rocked my driftings And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings. Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones, The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me And I hung there like a kneeling woman... Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds, And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage Drowned men sank backwards into sleep! But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves, Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether, I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water, neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up; Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs, I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious, Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot,   Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity, A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort, When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels; I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms Eternal spinner of blue immobilities I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets! I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands Whose delirious skies are open to sailor: - Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights, Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? - But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter: Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours. O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom! If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the Black cold pool where into the scented twilight A child squatting full of sadness, launches A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May. I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves, Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons, Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants, Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks. - translated by Oliver Bernard: Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962)

. The Drunken Boat As I went down the Rivers unfeeling I felt myself free of the guidance of tugs : Screaming red-skins had taken and used them as targets Nailing them naked to stakes of all colours . I was careless of all my crews carrying Flemish wheat , cotton from England Who - with my hauliers - have finished their clamour The Rivers have let me go down where I want . Into the furious lapping of oceans Last winter and deafer than brains of small children I was running !  and the unmoored Peninsulas Have never endured such victorious void . The tempest had blessed all my maritime wakings More light than a cork , I have danced on the waves Which one calls the rollers eternal of victims, Ten nights , no regrets for the harbour-light's eye . And sweeter than flesh of sour apples to children The green water pierces my hull made of pine And splashings of blue wine and vomitings washed me down , sending the rudder and anchor adrift   And from then , I am bathing myself in the Poem Of the Sea , it is milky and infused with stars Devouring green azures ; where pale is the flotsam And dreaming , a drowned man is sinking right down Where suddenly , dyeing the blueness , delirium Slow rhythms swell under the glint of the day Stronger than alcohol , more vast than our music Fermenting the bitterest blushes of love I know the skies that are splitting with lightning The waterspouts , breakers and tides of the sea : I know the evening ; and dawn rising up like a flutter of doves And sometimes i've seen what men fancy they've seen I've seen the low sun , splashed in mystical horrors Lighting the long purple tangle of limbs Like the actors in dramas both Antique and Ancient Are the waves rolling backward like rolling of blinds   I have dreamed the green night of the dazzling snows The kiss rising slow to the eyes of the sea , The sap circulating , unthought of , undreamed of the yellow blue waking of phosphorus singing ! I have followed , whole months , like hysterical herds The swells as they batter and batter the reefs Never dreaming the luminous feet of the Marys Could force back the muzzle of the Ocean snorting I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas Mingling flowers with the eyes of panthers in skin that is human ! Rainbows strung like bridles Underneath the horizon of seas to the herds of blue-green I have seen great swamps seething , fish-traps Where an entire Leviathon rots in the reeds ! Collapsings of water in the middle of calmnesses as the distances cataract to the abyss ! Glaciers , suns of silver , waves of pearl and skies of red-hot embers ! Hideous wrecks at the bottom of gulfs Of brown , where giant serpents are devoured by vermin Falling from twisted trees with perfumes of dark I would have liked to show to children these sea-bream of the blue waves , these golden , these singing fishes . - Foaming of flowers have been rocking my driftings And at times lifted me up on inexpressible wings Sometimes , a martyr weary of poles and zones The sea of whose sobbing has sweetened my rollings Lifted towards me it’s shadowy flowers with their  suckers of yellow And I hung there , just like a woman at prayer Almost an island , throwing onto my beaches the quarrels And the droppings of pale-eyed and clamouring birds And I drifted , when across my frayed linkages of the drowned men reversing back down into sleep ! Now I , a boat lost under the hair of the coves, Hurled by the hurricane into an ether without birds, I whom the coastguard and sailboats of the Hanses would not have reeled up the water soaked carcass ;   Free , smoking , risen from violet fogs , I , who made a hole in the reddening sky like a wall That carries an exquisite jam to good poets, Of lichens of sunlight and snots of azure Who ran , splashed with electrical lunulas A mad plank , escorted by dark hippocamps , When Julys were beating with blows from a cudgel , The ultramarine skies into funnels on fire ; I who trembled , to feel at fifty leagues distance  the groaning of Behemoths rutting and of heavy upheavals , Eternal spinner of blue inertias , I long for Europe with its parapets of old ! I have seen archipelagos of stars , islands Whose delirious sky are open to sailors : - in these bottomless nights do you sleep, are you exiled , Gold birds in millions , O future Life Force ? But , true , I have wept too much ! The Dawns are distressing Every moon atrocious , every sun bitter: Pungent love has distended me with heaviest torpors O let my keel split !  Let me sink in the sea ! If there is one water in Europe that I yearn for , its the dark and cold pool where the dusk fills with fragrance A child full of sorrows squats , launches A boat frail as a butterfly in May I can no more , washed of your languors , o blades , Come out of the wake of the carriers of cottons , Or go through the pride of the flags and the pennants Nor swim under the horrible eyes of the hulks ,