THE PLUNDERED HEART
My poor heart's dribbling at the stern,
my heart covered in nicotine:
they squirt soup onto it in turn,
my poor heart's dribbling at the stern:
beneath the quipping unconcern
of sailors raucously obscene,
my poor heart's dribbling at the stern,
my heart covered in nicotine.
Ithyphallic, loutish, crude,
they and their jokes have tainted it.
In the wheelhouse there are lewd
graffiti - ithyphallic, crude.
O let my heart be cleaned, renewed
By wondrous waves immersing it!
Ithyphallic, yobbish, crude,
they and their jokes have tainted it.
When they have chewed their quids to pulp,
O plundered heart, what shall I do ?
Drunken hiccups, sniggers, yelps.
When they have chewed their quids to pulp -
my guts (if I can only gulp
my heart back) will be churning, too.
When they have chewed their quids to pulp,
O plundered heart, what shall I do ?
O plundered heart, what shall I do ?
Drunken hiccups, sniggers, yelps.
When they have chewed their quids to pulp -
my guts (if I can only gulp
my heart back) will be churning, too.
When they have chewed their quids to pulp,
O plundered heart, what shall I do ?
1 comment:
Auban--I have learned much in checking the original French of this poem and others by Rimbaud that you have translated elsewhere on this site. Excellent job. Also, the Rilke. The tortured misery of Rimbaud, his ecstatic flights, his years of silence, and his awful death--I saw a group of French teenagers crossing a parking lot in Palm Springs yesterday to go into Target to get cash in an ATM machine, three girls, three boys, clear eyed, drug free youth, in flip-flops and tank tops, sharp and intelligent looking bursting with the glorious beauty of youth, confident but not swaggering, tres loin du pauvre Rimbaud d'autre temps!
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