Édith

The Birds

Victor-Marie Hugo (1802-1885)
Translated by Edris Iravi

The Birds

I was dreaming in a great deserted cemetery;
I listened to the concert of my soul and the dead,
among the flowers of the grass and the crosses of the tomb.
God wills that what is born should come from what falls.
And shadow filled me.

Around me, numerous,
cheerful, without heed of my sombre brow,
in this field, fatal bed of the final siesta,
house-sparrows were playing truant.
It was eternity teased by the moment.
They went to and fro, singing, flying, hopping,
scratching death with their pointed claws,
smoothing their beaks on the lugubrious noses of statues,
pecking at tombs, those mysterious grains.
I took these winged rioters seriously;
I cried: — Peace to the dead! you are harpies.
— We are sparrows, said these impious ones to me.
— Silence! be off! I resumed, none too clement.
They fled; I was the stronger. Only,
one of them stayed behind, and, for all music,
cocked its tail, and said: — Who is this old classic?

As they all went off, furious, grumbling,
shouting, and looking askance at the giant,
a black holly that was musing near a tomb, a sage,
suddenly stopped me by the sleeve as I passed,

and said to me: — These birds are in their function.
Leave them. We have need of that ray of light.
God sends them. They make the cemetery live.
Man, they are the delight of all nature.
They take its murmur from the brook, its brightness
from the star, its smile from the enchanted morning;
wherever a sage laughs, they take his joy from him,
and bring it to us; the shadow, seeing them, blazes;
they fill their beaks with the shouts of schoolboys;
through man and grass, and water, and thickets,
they go pillaging joy through the immense universe.
They have that reason which seems madness to you.
They pity us who languish far from them;
and, when they are quite full of games and songs,
of eclogues, of kisses, of all the gossip
that nests in April make beneath green shades,
they rush over, joyful, charming, light, noisy,
to fling all that into our frightful holes,
and come, from palaces, woods, from the cottage,
to empty all that light into our darkness!
When May brings them back to us, O dreamer, we say:
Here they are! all stirs, stones, hillocks, lawns;
the least shrub speaks, and the grass is in ecstasy;
the weeping willow sings as it finishes its phrase;
they make the yews confess, grown talkative;
they chatter of life with the hearses;
from too-pompous shrouds they unhook the clasp;
they mock the marble; they know their spelling;
and, I who am here the old sulky thistle
before whom falsehood parades its ugliness
and does not stand on ceremony, treating me as a host,
I find it right, my friend, that in reading aloud
the epitaph where the dead man is always good and handsome,
they should make the tomb burst out laughing.

Happy the man…

Happy the man, occupied with eternal destiny,
Who, like a traveller who sets out at early dawn,
Wakes, his mind filled with reverie,
And at the break of day sets himself to read and pray!
As he reads, the daylight comes slowly
And grows in his soul as it does in the firmament.
He sees distinctly, by that pale light,
Things in his room and others within himself;
All sleeps in the house; he is alone, he thinks,
And yet, with finger on their lips,
Behind him, while ecstasy intoxicates him,
The smiling angels lean over his book.

The Firmament is Full of the Vast Clarity

The firmament is full of the vast clarity;
All is joy, innocence, hope, happiness, goodness.
The fair lake shines at the bottom of the valley that walls it in;
The field will be fertile, the vine will be ripe;
Everything teems with sap and life and sound,
With green branches, shivering azure, glistening water,
And little birds that pick quarrels with each other.
What ails the butterfly? What ails the grasshopper?
The grasshopper has the grass, and the butterfly the air;
And both have April, laughing in the clear sky.
A joyful refrain rises from all nature;
A song that gently mounts and becomes a prayer.
The chick runs, the child plays and dances, the lamb
Leaps, and, letting fall its water drop by drop,
The old cavern, tender-hearted, weeps like a face;
The wind reads to some invisible listener a passage
From the unheard-of poem of creation;
The bird speaks to the fragrance; the flower speaks to the sunbeam;
The pines upon the ponds raise their green parasol;
The nests are warm. The azure finds the earth fair;
Wave and sphere; at once all floating climates;
Here autumn, here summer, there spring.
O hillsides! O furrows! breaths, sighs, exhalations!
From forests, rivers, plains, the cry ‘Deliver us!’
Rises gravely towards God, father of the day;
And all the white gleams are strophes of love;
The swan says: light! and the lily says: clemency!
Heaven opens to this song like an immense ear.

Evening comes; and the globe in its turn is dazzled,
Becomes an enormous eye and gazes at the night;
It savours, bewildered, the sacred immensity,
The contemplation of the splendid empyrean,
The clouds of crepe and silver, the zenith,
Which, formidable, shines and flames and blesses,
The constellations, those starred hydras,
The effluences of the dark and the deep, mingled
With your outpourings, diamond stars,
And all the shadow with all the radiance!
The infinite entire rises in ecstasy.
And, during that time, Satan, the envious one, dreams.

My Verses Would Flee

My verses would flee, soft and frail,
Towards your garden, so fair,
If my verses had wings,
Wings like the bird.

They would fly, like sparks,
Towards your hearth that laughs,
If my verses had wings,
Wings like the spirit.

Near you, pure and faithful,
They would hasten night and day,
If my verses had wings,
Wings like love.

Yesterday Evening

Yesterday, the evening wind, whose breath caresses,
Brought us the scent of flowers that open late.
Night was falling; the bird slept in the dense shadow.
Spring perfumed the air — less than your youth;
The stars shone — less than your gaze.

I spoke softly. It is the solemn hour
When the soul loves to sing its sweetest hymn.
Seeing the night so pure, and seeing you so fair,
I said to the golden stars: ‘Pour heaven upon her!’
And I said to your eyes: ‘Pour love upon us!’

Jul 21, 2026

Les Contemplations, Victor Hugo
Vertigo

Dear friends,

I hope this message finds you well, and that these days are carrying you as gently as possible.

I am very honoured that the blog Édith is now graced with poems by Paruyr Sevak, the great modern poet of Armenia — and graced as well by the presence of dear Emil Saidkhanian, who made this possible.

Emil sent me these translations some time ago. Here is how it came about: I asked him if he would recommend some poems from Armenian literature for the blog. With great affection, he chose his favourite poet, Sevak, and translated the poems himself. All the credit and beauty belong to him. I have only made a few very small changes to some words; otherwise, I am publishing the poems as he sent them.

I thank Emil from the bottom of my heart for these luminous translations.

And to you, dear readers, I am endlessly grateful that you are here. We would be delighted to hear your thoughts, or reflections on these poems in the comments section. Please forgive me if I reply late. I will read every comment carefully, even if I cannot answer straight away. And Emil, from where he is, will no doubt do the same in his own time.

Be happy and poetic,

Édith

Paruyr Sevak (1924-1971)
Translated by Emil Saidkhanian

Vertigo

You are my end—by a kind of misunderstanding,
And my only one—by fate.

The tender vocatives of love are always childish,
Yet I have lived long enough already
That at my age
A peach tree would have lived and died ten times over.
And you—how are you?
For I have not seen you for so many years,
As many as I have lived.
And in my eyes there is an unfillable emptiness,
Because you are not there
You
My end, by misunderstanding,
And my only one, by fate.

From my lips
A whole world now hangs—
A tiny sphere,
A swarm of words
Whose humming turns the world inside me dizzy.
If ever those words should fly from my mouth,
Let them fly with love,
With nothing but love,
And with a scriptural kind of flight
Carrying desert warmth,
The drift of sands and the breath of hallucinated thought.
Is it possible that from your distance
Within the damp breath of your forests
You do not endlessly hear my unspoken words?
And if you do hear them unspoken,
Do you not feel the same vertigo,
The kind I imagine is felt
By sacredly pregnant adolescent women,
From whom—just one,
Only one,
I could ever dare to say in thought:
“You—
My end, by misunderstanding,
And my only one, by fate.”

We have used so little kindness.
Is that why, little by little,
I am becoming kind
So kind
That I even pity loneliness itself?
It too has suffered and grown weary. It is a sin.
Let each of us open our shutters,
So it may fly from its shuttered cage,
And perhaps we might meet—if only there… there,
Where day and night converge.
Do they ever truly meet?
How would I know? Perhaps you know
You—
My end, by misunderstanding,
And my only one, by fate.

And snow is falling—
A snow unnaturally warm.
The North sends greetings to the South.
And in the snow there is a scent of spring,
Something distant,
A mere memory
By whose faint mercy psychiatric souls
Do not die, it is true,
But neither do they live
Just as my love does not die,
Nor does it live
My love
My end, by misunderstanding,
Yet my only one, by fate.

Come—let us rise above ourselves,
Allow acts of self-denial,
Mutually hurt one another,
Mutually wound one another,
So that longing itself may reconcile with itself,
And suffering forgive itself.
So that I too might believe
That you were not—
Not my only one by fate,
Nor my end by misunderstanding.

Mad

And hearing me,
They may say:
“Has he gone mad—
what is this?”
And I will answer:
“Yes, I have gone mad
why shouldn’t I?”

Do they not love and hate in madness?
Does not wood crackle when it goes mad?
Without madness, no battle is ever won.
Without madness, no new human is born.
Until it goes mad, water will not boil,
The pomegranate seed will not split its skin.
Do trees burst into bloom?
They are mad—undoubtedly.
Does the Earth keep turning?
It is mad—without question.

Until seeds go properly mad,
They will not become harvest.
Until paws go properly mad,
They will not become hands.
And words—until they go properly mad,
They will not become song.
Ah—if only I could be mad forever…

If one must die

If I am to die
Then let me die
By fire, by lightning,
All at once,
In a single second,
Suddenly
So honestly,
So faithful to my conscience,
That—according to the old legend
I could pass calmly
Through the eye of a needle.

If I am to die
Let me be killed,
Let me be destroyed,
Having lived and acted in such a way
That I am reborn again
In the faces of newborn children
And they are named after me.
If I am to be nailed down
Like a lighthouse,
Drained of blood
Like a hero,
And torn apart
Like a flag.

If I am to die—
But for now,
I still have to live.

There are people, and then there are people

Some people carry the world on their shoulders,
Others climb onto the world’s back.

You—who have been mistaken, but never lied,
Who have often lost, yet always found again.
You—who stumbled and fell,
Fell, but never knelt,
Instead climbed from peak to peak,
Rising endlessly, rising higher,
Taking wings from your formidable age.
You rose to see the whole world,
To see your singular age,
To feel it in all its forms,
To laugh at gains, to mourn losses.
You rose as its herald,
So its distant future would feel near,
So you might glimpse the shores of truth,
And see how lies disguise deception,
So you would not fear, would not hesitate,
But scar the face of injustice.

That is why, for so many years,
You—true child of your time—
Have walked tirelessly forward,
Walking heavy and immense,
As though you were carrying the world on your back.

Some people carry the world on their shoulders,
Others climb onto the world’s back.
He who climbs onto the world’s back
Never sleeps on wet ground.
He knows whom he walks with—and where,
Whose dead he mourns without tears,
At whose words he laughs falsely,
With whom he calmly plays backgammon,
And when needed, even lets himself lose.
He looks down on those who stand below,
Never at those who have fallen.
He flatters shamelessly
The daughter, the son,
Even the lover and the secretary
Of whoever stands above him.
Wherever there is a greasy, fat morsel,
There he stands—careful, afraid.
He slanders easily when the moment suits him,
And just as easily cries over his own guilt.

Above all things, more than anything,
More than mother or child,
He claims he loves the world.

A lie. He loves his interest there.

Above all things, more than anything,
He claims he loves his era in history.

A lie. He loves the era’s spoils.

Above all things, more than anything,
He claims he loves our life, our future.

A lie. He loves only his belly.

Above all things, more than anything,
He claims he loves his ideological father.

A lie. He loves neither father nor mother,
Neither son nor grandson is dear to him.

Above all things, more than anything,
What he loves in life is his chair.
He loves the chair
And clings to it.
At any cost he climbs upward,
Tries to fly without wings,
Crawling endlessly forward,
Moving like this, year after year,
Rising like this—
Onto the world’s back.

Some people carry the world on their shoulders,
Others climb onto the world’s back.

You

You—
three letters,
you—
just an ordinary pronoun,
and with only those three small letters
I claim this entire world as my own.

You—
three letters,
and I, like spring soil,
grow accustomed to your life-giving warmth.

You—
three letters,
and suddenly
I taste happiness in my mouth,
I resist separation,
and fail to carry out
the command of suffering.
You—
three letters,
and I—priceless—
rise beyond myself,
joining the ranks
of scattered heroes
and yet-to-be-born geniuses.

You—
three letters,
and when you suddenly
leave me and go away,
I crack like an abandoned house,
my plaster falls, I become ownerless,
and grief, like a moth,
nests inside my pillar,
inside the beam,
and grows heavy there.

You—
three letters,
you—
just an ordinary pronoun.

They don’t love again, they love the same

Who said that people love again?
They don’t love again
they love the same.

When even warm flour
brings back the same body by instinct,
when the smell of coffee reminds you of them,
and instead of colourful sleep
white insomnia spreads itself out;
when the stars, with their rounded combs,
brush your hair, and once more
inside hair accustomed to touch
you feel the same calming fingers.

When the movement, the face of a stranger,
by some distant resemblance,
locks your legs in plaster,
and breaks your thoughts so sharply
the way flashing lights
seem to shatter railway tracks.

When rain makes the soil turn sour
and forces even your nostrils to feel
that you are alone—like a Y,
while somewhere, or right beside you,
there is another X, without whom
you are no equation,
and no solution—

Each time, always,
the same sealed, doorless feeling surrounds you,
and you understand that in the end
a person does not love again,
but loves the same.

Because there is a dark dependence
of nerve and blood, of soul and fire.
Because we do not place
the plus or minus sign
in the problem waiting to be solved.
Because even though we search for fate,
fate—
fate—
fate chooses us.

And so, even the most loving soul
does not love again
it loves the same.

Don’t ask

Just as a blind man always remembers his cane,
you too—remember this:
when questions are not asked in vain,
false answers are never given.
And don’t be saddened by what I say—
instead, consider this:
who would throw their own child into a well
to measure the darkness of its depth?

Don’t ask—and I will tell you
far more than you are asking for.

And it is I who speak
a one-day believer,
and you—listen, my newborn goddess.
A ritual of worship must be performed today;
who needs confession anymore?

You—a strange, unfamiliar world.
I—a seasoned geographer,
who knows—badly, terribly badly
the talkative terrain of you.
And again inside me speaks
the feverish spirit of exploration.
I want to memorize you,
to draw your map in my mind.
Who needs questioning now?

And isn’t it better, after all,
for a person’s foot to slip
than their tongue?

So come—let us not speak,
but walk forward in thought
along this unfamiliar road,
until we reach a resting place—
some fairy-tale place
where there is no master and no ruler but us,
where we must be mute like water,
and blind like fire,
where—against the old law we know—
bodies do not expand with warmth
but contract,
and all questions dissolve like salt,
becoming taste in our mouths,
in our loosened nerves,
on our bewildered faces.

Then, perhaps, instinctively, I will ask you:
“Do you love me?”

I will ask you
not waiting for your answer,
but helping you recover
your former face as a goddess,
your former face as that world
which had no map yet drawn.

And in reply to my question
perhaps you will say to me yourself:
“They say you only help people undress.
But you help them get dressed.
You are different.
I love you.”

First Love

No need, my love.

You swear in vain.

Even without an oath, I believe
that today lasts a century for you,
that thorned longing tears at you,
that you often cannot sleep through the night,
that you repeat my name again and again,
that on your girlish, untouched pillow
you see, leaning close, an old eagle—
even if it’s a vulture, it still looks like an eagle
that nothing in this world tempts you,
that without my love your life is lost,
that…

I know, my dear.
You repeat it in vain.

But I also know
what you do not know.

First love—like bread—
no matter what you do,
always ends up crumbs.

To Live

To live, to live—to live in such a way
that the sacred soil never feels
your weight as excess.
To live, to live—to live in such a way
that you yourself never feel
your own smallness.

And if one day you call yourself useless,
if you despise yourself
and persist,
argue with yourself,
refuse to give in to yourself,
let it—the powerful community
speak to you patiently,
reason with you in opposition.

To live, to live—to live in such a way
that you laugh with another’s joy,
that through another’s celebration
you too rejoice, you too resound.

To be, to remain with everyone,
to submit to their will,
to blend your “I” into the great “we,”
to burn silently with their pain.

To give yourself to them like light
and never deceive—like hope.
To open like dawn
for them,
to blaze like sunset
for them.
If you weep—then for them.
If you stand open—then for them.
And to be bread for them
spiritual bread.

To arm your life with them,
to exist in life through them
inspired.
Through them to be weak or strong,
through them to be a multitude or a mite,
wretched like the homeless,
rich like an open plain.

To live, to live—to live so that
you darken with them at dusk
and flash with them in lightning.
To expand together all at once,
to become a little sphere together.
To open together, to close together
like a letter or a postcard.

To live, to live—to live together,
to mix your life with their life,
your suffering with suffering,
your effort with effort,
your sowing with sowing,
to submit to their will
and make their will submit to you
to become both lightning
and lightning rod.

Toy maker

I could have been everywhere
and everywhere I could have shouted
“I don’t want to” or “I want.”
But I have not been everywhere at all,
and I am not.
And wherever I am,
I say to myself, in my thoughts:
“Don’t say.”

I say to myself: “Don’t say,”
and I leave what I haven’t said to everyone else,
so they can later examine it—touch it.
And when they finally understand
what it is they have examined and touched,
I will no longer be able to say it,
and I will say instead:
“You know,
I’ve decided to become a toy maker
and believe me, I truly will.”

…From the cold autumn wind, trees sway,
the way a branching thought
moves inside a human head.
And from the clouded daytime sky
fall downward
the cold molds of stars,
more briefly called “leaves.”
I will cast toys from those cold molds.

And if someone asks me, “What does it cost?”
I will silently tell myself, “Don’t say,”
and in answer to the questioner
I will say, “Hello.”

I don’t know what they will think of me.
But at that same moment I won’t be able
not to think
that there was a girl…
If I say I’ve forgotten her name,
believe me only as much
as each of you firmly believes
the different news of the world.

And every time I want
to tell the world her name,
I again say to myself: “Don’t say.”

And that girl, you know, used to say:
“When I listen to Beethoven,
it feels as if I’m walking on the sea.”

I also have the right mold of that girl
a warm mold.
And I will cast toys from that mold,
from that warm mold.

And if someone asks me, “What does it cost?”
I will silently say to myself, “Say.”
“Nothing,” I’ll answer.
“It costs only…
one past life.”

In this way, I can make anything.
They say of people like this
that they have golden hands.

And every time I look at my hands,
my hands always ask me, “Huh?”
which is not a question at all,
but an answer to my silent question.
And every time,
I look at my hands the way
an inexperienced archaeologist looks
at a freshly unearthed object,
and I say, “Yes”—
which is not an answer, but a reversed question.

My hands shake their heads,
my head gestures with my hand,
and I understand that I cannot
(and no one in the world can)
make just one thing
the thing they call truth.

Only that cannot be made,
though endlessly, for centuries,
they have tried to make it
in the name of God,
by the orders of rulers,
with rope
which decides its own tightness
around human necks,
with weapons
which teach punctuation
on human chests.

They make it this way,
for centuries.
They tirelessly make what cannot be made
which therefore also cannot be destroyed.
They make it.
And why should I be any less?

And… it is decided.
From now on,
I too will make truth
and a lot of it.

And I will sell it,
sell it everywhere
where they want it, or don’t.
At crossroads,
in front of shop doors,
on sidewalks,
on the pedestals of statues,
inside books,
from podiums.

And when people ask me, “What does it cost?”
it will no longer be I who answers,
but that toy girl.
And she
will say nothing other
than her price:
“Nothing,” she will say.
“It costs only…
one past life.”

…And I will surely, as you know,
grow very rich from my trade.
So rich
that I’ll buy a concert ticket and…
go listen to Beethoven,
and it will feel to me too
as if I’m walking on the sea.

And whether it’s spring or autumn outside
does it matter? And what is mine anyway?
Does it matter if trees sway in the wind,
the way branching thoughts sway
inside a human head,
or whether from a clouded
or cloudless daytime sky
fall or do not fall
the cold molds of colorful stars—
more briefly called “leaves”?

And on my way home,
if someone suddenly says to me, “Hello,”
I will reply, “What does it cost?”
And if some girls laugh at my answer
girls whose names I truly don’t know
I will answer:
“I don’t have your mold.”

They will crowd around me.
People always love to make speak
those they consider mad.
They will want to know who I am,
what I am.

My hands will again tell me, “Don’t say.”
I myself will say to myself, “Don’t say.”
But the toy maker
from my own mouth,
through my own mouth,
will already shout and repeat
in the sing-song tone of an antique dealer:
“I’m selling truth—
factory-made.”

May 6, 2026

Paruyr Sevak
The Cherry Orchard

Greetings to all readers, after a long break. I hope this finds you well! My greeting extends especially to those friends whose writing I used to follow closely. I am eager to read your work and hear your thoughts, but access to the WordPress site remains blocked here, and it’s harder than ever to connect. Thank you all for your patience; whenever I do get through, I make sure to catch up.

In this post, I want to share a complete translation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard into Persian. I had read Simin Daneshvar’s translation a few years ago but when I recently went back to the original text, it seemed to me that some subtle points had not been fully conveyed in what I had once read. My translation attempts to address those gaps. You can read and download the PDF at the link below.

The Cherry Orchard Download

Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats

The English preface declares that this novel ‘has become widely viewed as the greatest and most ambitious French novel of modern times’.
I have turned a few passages into my own tongue and sent them to a friend. I am not certain how to proceed. This is not a work one can take up at will. I read, in the English introduction, that Helen Lane was the first translator. But before publication, she burned her manuscript.

Pierre Guyotat Download

One of my very dear friends introduced me to this song by Syrian artist Siba, in collaboration with MONKYMAN, fresh out. It’s a very beautiful piece. I fell for it immediately and wanted to share it here. It belongs, I think, with the Algerian book I’ve been working on.

But I have another reason as well: I want her to know that this place belongs to her too. So this one’s for you. Thank you for the music.

I want to thank all of you who have left comments. I read every single one and I appreciate them more than you know. I apologise for not answering yet. – 29 June. r.c.

Below that line, I turn to a different subject. For some time, I have been occupied with several key physics texts, and I would like to offer some technical notes on them.

Synthetic complex Weyl superconductors, chiral Josephson effect and synthetic half-vortices
Authors: Zahra Faraei and Seyed Akbar Jafari
arXiv:2108.08182

The paper misreads a figure in Meng and Balents: the field is perpendicular to the plane, not parallel. The authors build a theory on this mistake, claiming to hybridise two Weyl superconducting phases that are symmetry-incompatible. Their derivation reduces exactly to the standard SQUID current, $I \propto I_c \ \sin\varphi \ \cos\Phi_{ext}$ , with the external flux relabelled as a “chiral angle” — a trivial control parameter, not a novel concept. I identified the error after several months, by which time three proposals (including mine) had already been written; the topic of each proposal was subsequently changed.

Induced superconductivity in Fermi arcs
Authors: Zahra Faraei and Seyed Akbar Jafari
arXiv:1901.11209

The paper uses a standard: solving the differential wave equation to find Fermi arcs. That approach is straightforward and not in dispute. The issue is with the interpretation of the results. DrFaraeiconcluded that in the presence of superconductivity the Fermi arc disappears and is replaced by a Fermi ellipse, as claimed in the paper. However, my calculations using a different method consistently recovered Fermi arcs rather than an ellipse. For weeks she rejected my plots on that basis. I maintain that adding superconductivity does not generically produce an ellipse.

Josephson Current in Superconductor-Carbon nanotube layered structures (PhD thesis, 2013, Al-Zahra University)
Author: Zahra Faraei

In the first chapter of this thesis, a formalism for calculating the Josephson current is introduced. With a few typos, a formula for the current is derived. The central problem is that this formalism is presented as the most general method available, and the thesis relies on it exclusively thereafter. However, the dependence on the superconducting phase enters the formalism in a trivial way, and as a result the current for s-wave superconductivity always comes out purely sinusoidal. This is a serious mistake because a carbon nanotube (CNT) between superconductors does not act as a low-transparency weak link. Instead, it behaves as a nanoscale conductor that can operate in two distinct regimes depending on contact transparency and CNT length: either as a quantum dot (with discrete energy levels and Coulomb blockade) or as a ballistic 1D weak link (with discrete transverse subbands but a quasi-continuum of longitudinal states). In both regimes, the current-phase relation (CPR) is generally non-sinusoidal outside of very specific limits. This non-sinusoidal CPR is a crucial feature of Josephson junctions involving carbon nanotubes, and extensive literature exists analysing higher harmonics, the emergence of π-junction behaviour, and the effects of Luttinger liquid physics in nanotubes. The thesis completely erases this dimension; nowhere in the thesis are there any plots of current as a function of phase. We applied this formalism in two related projects. Following a subsequent review, we replaced it.

Finally, I offer these notes not as a technical record. The reader is encouraged to consult the original papers and draw their own conclusions.

Apr 9, 2026

Anton Chekhov
Poems

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
Translated by Edris Iravi

Dreamt for Winter

Winter, we shall go in a little pink carriage
With blue cushions.
We shall be well. A nest of mad kisses lies
In every soft corner.

You will close your eye, so as not to see, through the glass,
The shadows of evenings grimacing,
These snarling monstrosities, populace
Of dark demons and dark wolves.

Then you will feel your cheek scratched…
A little kiss, like a mad spider,
Will run along your neck…

And you will say to me: “Find it!”, inclining your head,
– And we shall take our time to find this beast
– Which travels a great deal…

Roman

I

You are not serious, when you are seventeen.
– One fine evening, to hell with the beers and the lemonade,
Noisy cafés with gleaming chandeliers!
– You go beneath the green lindens of the promenade.

The lindens smell sweet on the fine evenings of June!
The air is sometimes so soft, you close your eyelids;
The wind laden with sounds – the city is not far –
Has scents of vine and scents of beer…

II

– There you perceive a tiny scrap
Of dark azure, framed by a little branch,
Stabbed by a wretched star, blending
With soft shivers, little and all white…

June night! Seventeen! – You let yourself get intoxicated.
The sap is like champagne and rises to your head…
You wander; you feel upon your lips a kiss
That throbs there, like a little creature…

III

The mad heart roams like Robinson through novels,
– When, in the pale light of a dim streetlamp,
Passes a young lady with charming little airs,
Under the shadow of her father’s frightening fake collar…

And, as she finds you immensely naïve,
All while trotting her little boots,
She turns, alert and with a lively movement…
– Upon your lips then die the cavatinas…

IV

You are in love. Praised until August.
You are in love. – Your sonnets make her laugh.
All your friends go away, you are in bad taste.
– Then your adored one, one evening, deigned to write to you…!

– That evening… – you return to the gleaming cafés,
You ask for beers or lemonade…
– You are not serious, when you are seventeen
And you have green lindens on the promenade.

Faun’s Head

In the foliage, a green case flecked with gold,
In the uncertain, flowered foliage
Of splendid flowers where the kiss sleeps,
Lively and bursting the exquisite embroidery,

A startled faun shows his two eyes
And bites the red flowers with his white teeth.
Bronzed and blood-stained like an old wine,
His lip bursts into laughter beneath the branches.

And when he has fled – like a squirrel –
His laughter still trembles on every leaf,
And one sees, frightened by a bullfinch,
The Golden Kiss of the Wood, gathering itself.

What We Say to the Poet About Flowers

I

Thus, always, toward the black azure
Where the sea of topazes trembles,
The Lilies will function in your twilight,
Those clysters of ecstasies!

In our age of sago puddings,
When Plants are industrious,
The Lily will drink the blue disgust
In your religious Proses!

– The lily of Monsieur de Kerdrel,
The Sonnet of eighteen-thirty,
The Lily given to the Minstrel
With the carnation and the amaranth!

Lilies! Lilies! One sees none!
And in your Verse, like the sleeves
Of Sinners with gentle steps,
Those white flowers always tremble!

Always, Dear, when you take a bath,
Your shirt at the blond armpits
Swells in the morning breeze
Above the filthy forget-me-nots!

Love lets through your tollgates
Only Lilacs – O swings! –
And the Wood Violets,
Sweet spit of black Nymphs!…

II

O Poets, even if you had
Roses, roses blown open,
Red upon laurel stems,
Swelled with a thousand octaves!

When Banville would make them snow,
Blood-red, whirling,
Bruising the mad eye of the foreigner
At readings ill-disposed!

From your forests and your meadows,
O very peaceful photographers!
Flora is about as varied
As bottle-stoppers!

Always the French plants,
Snarling, consumptive, ridiculous,
Where the belly of dachshunds
Sails in peace at twilight;

Always, after dreadful drawings
Of blue Lotuses or Sunflowers,
Pink prints, holy subjects
For young communicants!

The Ashoka Ode frames
The stanza like a courtesan’s window;
And heavy brilliant butterflies
Drop their filth on the Daisy.

Old greenery, old braids!
O vegetable trifles!
Fantastic flowers of the old Salons!
– For cockchafers, not for rattlesnakes,

These weeping vegetable toddlers
That Grandville would have placed at borders,
And that wicked visor-stars
Nursed with colours!

Yes, your pipe-stains
Make precious sugars!
– Piles of fried eggs in old hats,
Lilies, Ashokas, Lilacs, and Roses!…

III

O white Hunter, running barefoot
Through the panic pasture,
Can you not, must you not
Know a little botany?

You would succeed, I fear,
In making red Crickets follow Cantharides,
The gold of the Rios follow the blue of the Rhines –
In short, Floridas after Norways:

But, Dear, Art no longer now –
It is the truth – permits
The astonishing Eucalyptus
The constrictors of a hexameter;

There!… As if Mahoganies
Even in our Guianas
Served only for the waterfalls of monkeys,
For the heavy delirium of lianas!

– In sum, is a Flower – Rosemary
Or Lily, living or dead – worth
An excrement of sea-bird?
Worth a single candle-tear?

– And I have said what I wished!
You, even seated there, in a
Bamboo hut – shutters closed,
Curtains of brown Persian cloth –

You would smear floras
Worthy of extravagant Geese!…
– Poet! these are reasons
No less ridiculous than arrogant!…

IV

Say, not the spring pampas
Black with dreadful revolts,
But the tobaccos, the cotton plants!
Name the exotic harvests!

Say, white brow tanned by Phoebus,
How many dollars
Pedro Velasquez of Havana draws;
Plunder the sea of Sorrento

Where the Swans go by the thousand;
Let your stanzas be advertisements
For mangrove clear-cuttings
Probed by Hydras and waves!

Let your quatrain dive into bloody woods
And return proposing to Men
Various matters of white sugars,
Lozenges and gums!

Let us know through You whether the blondness
Of snowy Peaks toward the Tropics
Are egg-laying insects
Or microscopic lichens!

Find, O Hunter – we demand it –
Some fragrant madder roots
That Nature in trousers
May make blossom – for our Armies!

Find, at the edge of the sleeping Wood,
Flowers like muzzles
From which golden pomades drool
On the dark hair of Buffaloes!

Find, in mad meadows where over the Blue
The silver of down trembles,
Calyxes full of Eggs of fire
Cooking among the essences!

Find cottony Thistles
Where ten donkeys with ember eyes
Labour to spin the knots!
Find Flowers that are chairs!

Yes, find at the heart of black seams
Flowers almost stones – famous! –
That toward their hard blond ovaries
Bear gem-like almonds!

Serve us, O Jester – you can –
On a splendid vermeil platter
Stews of syrupy Lilies
Gnawing our Alfénide spoons!

V

Someone will speak of the great Love,
Thief of dark Indulgences;
But neither Renan nor the cat Murr
Have seen the immense Blue Thyrsi!

You, make hysteria play in our torpor
Through perfumes;
Exalt us toward candours
More candid than the Maries…

Merchant! colonist! medium!
Your Rhyme will gush, pink or white,
Like a ray of sodium,
Like rubber pouring forth!

From your black Poems – Juggler! –
White, green, and red dioptrics,
Let strange flowers escape
And electric butterflies!

There! It is the infernal Century!
And the telegraph poles
Will adorn – lyre with iron songs –
Your magnificent shoulder blades!

Above all, rhyme a version
On the potato disease!
– And, for composing
Poems full of mystery

To be read from Tréguier
To Paramaribo, buy back
The Volumes of Monsieur Figuier –
Illustrated! – from Monsieur Hachette!

The Hands of Jeanne-Marie

Jeanne-Marie has strong hands,
Dark hands that summer tanned,
Pale hands like dead hands.
– Are these hands of Juana?

Did they take the brown creams
From the pools of voluptuousness?
Did they dip into moons
In the ponds of serenity?

Did they drink barbaric skies,
Calm on charming knees?
Did they roll cigars
Or traffic in diamonds?

On the burning feet of Madonnas,
Did they wither golden flowers?
It’s the black blood of belladonna
That bursts and sleeps in their palms.

Hunting hands of the dipterans,
Whose buzzing fills your bruises
Auroral, towards the nectars?
Hands that decant poisons?

Oh! What Dream seized them
In the stretches of yawning?
An unheard-of dream from Asia,
From Khenghavers?

– These hands did not sell oranges,
Nor darken upon the feet of gods:
These hands did not wash the diapers
Of heavy little blind children.

These are not the hands of cousins,
Nor workers with big foreheads
That burn, in the woods stinking of factory,
A sun drunk on tar.

These are the backs of spines,
Hands that never cause pain,
More fatal than machines,
Stronger than a whole horse!

Moving like furnaces,
And shaking all its shivers,
Their flesh sings Marseillaises
And never Eleisons!

They would grip your necks, oh wicked women,
They would crush your hands,
Noble women, your infamous hands
Full of whites and carmines.

The brilliance of these loving hands
Turns the skull of the sheep!
In their savoury phalanges
The great sun places a ruby!

A stain of the populace
Browns them like a breast of yesterday;
The back of these hands is the place
That every Proud Rebel kissed!

They have paled, wonderful,
In the great sun of love, heavy,
On the bronze of the machine-guns
Through Paris in insurrection!

Ah! sometimes, oh Sacred Hands,
To your fists, Hands where our
Lips never sober,
A chain with bright rings cries!

And there’s a strange jolt
In our beings when, sometimes,
We want to unmask you, Hands of angels,
By making your fingers bleed!

The Stolen Heart

My sad heart drools at the stern,
My heart covered with caporal;
They fling jets of soup at it —
My sad heart drools at the stern:
Beneath the jeers of the crew
Who burst into general laughter,
My sad heart drools at the stern,
My heart covered with caporal.

Ithyphallic and soldiery
Their jeers have debauched it.
At the helm one sees frescoes
Ithyphallic and soldiery.
O abracadabrant waves
Take my heart, let it be washed.
Ithyphallic and soldiery
Their jeers have debauched it!

When they have drained their quids,
What shall be done, O stolen heart?
There will be Bacchic hiccups
When they have drained their quids;
I shall have stomach convulsions,
I, if my heart is hauled up again:
When they have drained their quids,
What shall be done, O stolen heart?

Rages of Caesars

The Pale Man, along the flowered lawns,
Walks on, in black coat, cigar between his teeth:
The Pale Man broods again on the flowers of the Tuileries
– And sometimes his dull eye has ardent glances…

For the Emperor is drunk on his twenty years of orgy!
He had said to himself: “I shall snuff out liberty
Very delicately, like a candle!”
Liberty lives again! He feels exhausted!

He is taken. – Oh! what name upon his silent lips
Quivers? What implacable regret bites him?
We shall not know. The Emperor’s eye is dead.

He perhaps thinks again of the Companion in spectacles…
– And watches drift from his burning cigar,
As in the evenings at Saint-Cloud, a slender blue cloud.

The Orphans’ New-Year Gifts

I

The room is full of shadow; faintly
Can be heard the sad, soft whispering
Of two children. Their foreheads bend, still heavy with dreams,
Beneath the long white curtain trembling and lifting…

Outside, the birds draw near, shivering;
Their wings grow numb under the grey tone of the sky;
And the New Year, in a misty train,
Trailing the folds of her snowy robe,
Smiles with tears, and sings while shivering…

II

Now, the little children, beneath the floating curtain,
Speak softly, as one does in a dark night.
They listen, thoughtful, like a distant murmur…
They start at the clear golden voice
Of the morning bell, striking again and again
Its metallic refrain and glass globe…

Then, the room grows cold… scattered on the floor,
Around the beds, lie mourning clothes:
The harsh winter breeze lamenting at the doorway
Breathes its gloomy breath into the house!
One feels, in all this, that something is missing…

So there is no mother for these little children,
No mother with a fresh smile, triumphant gaze?
She has forgotten, at evening, alone and bent,
To spark a flame in the plucked-down ashes,
To pile on them the duvet’s wool
Before leaving them, crying out: forgive me.
She did not foresee the morning’s cold,
Nor close the door tightly against the winter breeze?…

A mother’s dream is the warm rug,
The cottony nest where children, hidden,
Like fine birds rocked by branches,
Sleep their gentle sleep full of white visions!…

And here, it is like a nest without feathers, without warmth,
Where the little ones are cold, cannot sleep, are afraid;
A nest that the bitter breeze must have frozen…

III

Your heart understands: – these children have no mother.
No mother in the house! – and the father is far away!…

An old maid then took care of them.
The little ones are all alone in the frozen house;
Orphans of four years, and now in their thoughts
Awakens, gradually, a laughing memory…
It is like a rosary counted in prayer:
– Ah! what a beautiful morning, this morning of gifts!
Each, during the night, had dreamed of their own
In some strange vision where toys were seen,
Candies dressed in gold, sparkling jewels,
Whirling, dancing a sonorous dance,
Then fleeing under the curtains, then appearing again!
One awoke in the morning, rose joyful,
Lips sweetened, rubbing eyes…
One went, hair tangled on the head,
Eyes all radiant, as on great festive days,
And small bare feet barely touching the floor,
Gently touching the parents’ doors…
One entered!… Then the greetings… in nightshirts,
Repeated kisses, and the allowed gaiety!

IV

Ah! It was so charming, these words said so often!
– But how changed, the house of old:
A great fire crackled, clear, in the hearth,
The whole old room was illuminated;
And the reddish reflections from the great fire
On the varnished furniture loved to whirl…

The wardrobe had no keys!… no keys, the great wardrobe!
One often looked at its dark brown door…
No keys!… strange!… one dreamed many times
Of the mysteries sleeping between its wooden sides,
And believed to hear, deep in the open lock,
A distant, vague, joyful murmur…

The parents’ room is empty today:
No red reflection beneath the door shines;
There are no parents, no hearth, no keys taken:
So, no kisses, no sweet surprises!
Oh! how sad New Year’s Day will be for them!

V

Now, the little ones slumber sadly:
You would say, to see them, that they cry in sleep,
So swollen are their eyes, so laboured their breath!
The tiniest children have such sensitive hearts!

But the cradle angel comes to wipe their eyes,
And in that heavy sleep places a joyful dream,
A dream so joyful that their half-closed lips,
Smiling, seem to murmur something…

They dream that, leaning over their little round arm,
Gentle waking gesture, they advance their foreheads,
And their vague gaze rests all around them…
They think themselves asleep in a pink paradise…
At the hearth full of sparks the fire sings gaily…
Through the window one sees a beautiful blue sky afar;
Nature awakens and intoxicates in sunlight…
The half-naked earth, happy to live again,
Shivers with joy at the kisses of the sun…
And in the old house all is warm and vermilion:
The dark clothes no longer litter the floor,
The breeze beneath the threshold has finally ceased…
One would say a fairy passed through it all!…

The children, full of joy, gave two cries… there,
Near the mother’s bed, beneath a beautiful pink ray,
There, on the great carpet, something gleams…
These are silver, black, and white medallions,
Mother-of-pearl and jet with sparkling reflections;
Small black frames, glass crowns,
With three words engraved in gold: “TO OUR MOTHER!”

The Drunken Boat

As I was descending impassive Rivers,
I felt no longer guided by the haulers:
Shrieking Red-Skins had taken them for targets,
Nailing them naked to coloured posts.

I cared nothing for all the crews,
Bearer of Flemish wheat or English cotton.
When the uproar with my haulers was done,
The Rivers let me drift wherever I pleased.

Amid the furious splashing of the tides,
I – that last winter, deafder than children’s brains –
Ran! And the launched Peninsulas
Never endured more triumphant chaos.

The storm blessed my maritime awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
Called eternal rollers of victims,
Ten nights, without regretting the lanterns’ foolish gaze!

Sweeter than to children the flesh of sour apples,
The green water penetrated my fir hull,
And spots of blue wine and vomit
Washed me, scattering rudder and grapnel.

And from then on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, infused with stars, and milky,
Devouring the green azures; where, pale afloat
And enraptured, a thoughtful drowned man sometimes descends;

Where, suddenly tinting blues, deliriums
And slow rhythms beneath the day’s gleams,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres,
Ferment the bitter reds of love!

I know the skies bursting in lightning, and waterspouts,
And undertows and currents; I know the evening,
The dawn exalted like a people of doves,
And I have sometimes seen what men think they see!

I saw the low sun, stained with mystic horrors,
Illuminating long violet freezes,
Like actors in very-ancient dramas,
The waves rolling far their shuttering shivers!

I dreamed the green night with dazzling snows,
A kiss rising to the eyes of the seas with slowness,
The circulation of unheard-of saps,
And the yellow-and-blue awakening of singing phosphors!

I followed, full months, like hysterical
Cows, the swell assaulting the reefs,
Without thinking that the luminous feet of the Maries
Could force the snout of the sluggish Oceans!

I struck, you know, incredible Floridas,
Mixing in flowers the eyes of panthers with men’s skins!
Rainbows stretched like reins
Under the horizon of seas, to sallow herds!

I saw fermenting enormous marshes, traps
Where a whole Leviathan rots in the reeds!
Water collapses amid the calms,
And the distance toward chasms cataracts!

Glaciers, silver suns, pearly waves, fiery skies!
Hideous strandings in the depths of brown gulfs
Where giant snakes devoured by bugs
Fall from twisted trees, with black perfumes!

I would have liked to show children these dorades
Of the blue surge, these golden fish, these singing fish.
– Foam of flowers rocked my wanderings
And ineffable winds winged me at times.

Sometimes, martyr tired of poles and zones,
The sea whose sob made my roll gentle
Lifted to me its shadow-flowers with yellow suckers,
And I remained, like a kneeling woman…

Almost an island, tossing on my sides quarrels
And the droppings of jabbering birds with blond eyes,
And I sailed, when through my fragile bonds
Drowned men descended to sleep, backward!

But I, boat lost beneath the hair of coves,
Thrown by the hurricane into the ether without birds,
I, whose Monitors and Hanseatic sailboats
Could not have fished up the water-drunk carcass;

Free, smoking, mounted in violet mists,
I who pierced the glowing sky like a wall
Bearing, exquisite jam for good poets,
Sun-lichens and azure snot;

I ran, stained with electric crescents,
Mad plank, escorted by black hippocampi,
When Julys made the ultramarine skies collapse
With clubs into fiery funnels;

I who trembled, feeling fifty leagues away
The rut of Behemoths and thick Maelstroms,
Eternal spinner of blue immobility,
I regret Europe with its old parapets!

I saw sidereal archipelagos! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to the voyager:
– Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile yourself,
Million golden birds, O future Vigor? –

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are distressing.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Acrid love swelled me with intoxicating torpor.
O may my keel burst! O may I go to the sea!

If I desire a European water, it is the puddle
Black and cold where toward the perfumed twilight
A crouching child, full of sadness, timidly
Sets afloat a frail boat like a May butterfly.

I can no longer, bathed in your languors, O waves,
Steal the wake from cotton carriers,
Nor traverse the pride of flags and flames,
Nor swim beneath the horrible eyes of the hulks.

First Evening

– She was very undressed
And tall, indiscreet trees
At the windows cast their foliage
Craftily, so close, so close.

Seated on my large chair,
Half-naked, she joined her hands.
On the floor shivered with pleasure
Her tiny feet, so fine, so fine.

I watched, wax-coloured,
A little bushy ray
Flutter in her smile
And on her breast, – fly or rosebush.

I kissed her slender ankles.
She gave a gentle, sudden laugh
That broke into clear trills,
A pretty laugh of crystal.

The little feet beneath the chemise
Fled: “Do you want to finish!”

The first allowed audacity,
The laugh pretended to scold!

Poor little hearts trembling under my lips,
I gently kissed her eyes:

She threw her tender head back: “Oh! it’s even better!…

“Sir, I have two words to tell you…”

I threw the rest onto her breast
In a kiss that made her laugh
A good laugh that consented gladly…

She was very undressed
And tall, indiscreet trees
At the windows cast their foliage
Craftily, so close, so close.

My Bohemian

I was setting off, my fists in my torn pockets;
My overcoat too was becoming ideal;
I walked beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your faithful one;
Oh! what splendid loves I dreamed!

My only pair of trousers had a wide hole.
– Dreaming Tom Thumb, I scattered along my path
Rhymes. My inn was at the Great Bear.
– My stars in the sky made a gentle rustling

And I listened to them, seated by the roadside,
Those fine September evenings when I felt drops
Of dew on my brow, like a wine of vigour;

Where, rhyming amid fantastic shadows,
Like lyres, I pulled the elastic
Of my wounded shoes, one foot close to my heart!

The Mischievous Girl

In the brown dining-room, scented
With a smell of varnish and fruit, at my ease
I helped myself to a dish of I know not what
Belgian fare, and sprawled in my enormous chair.

While eating, I listened to the clock, – happy and still.
The kitchen opened with a gust,
And the servant came in, I don’t know why,
Her kerchief half undone, cunningly arranged.

And, while trailing her little trembling finger
Across her cheek, a peach-soft velvet, pink and white,
Pouting with her childish lip,

She set the dishes near me, to make it easier;
– Then, just like that, – surely to win a kiss, –
Softly: “Just feel, I’ve caught a chill on my cheek…”

Parisian War Song

Spring is evident, for
From the heart of the green Properties,
The flight of Thiers and Picard
Holds its splendours wide open!

O May! what delirious bare-arses!
Sèvres, Meudon, Bagneux, Asnières,
Listen then to the welcome guests
Sowing the things of spring!

They have shako, sabre and tam-tam,
Not the old candle-box,
And skiffs that never, never…
Split the lake with reddened waters!

More than ever we carouse
When upon our dens arrive
The yellow heads tumbling
In particular dawns!

Thiers and Picard are Eros,
Snatchers of heliotropes;
With oil they make Corots:
Here they beetle their tropes…

They are familiar with the Great Trick!…
And lying in the gladioli, Favre
Makes his aqueduct-like whistling,
And his peppery sniffings!

The great city has the pavé warm
Despite your showers of oil,
And decidedly, it is necessary for us
To shake you in your role…

And the Rustics who lounge
In long crouches,
Will hear branches breaking
Among the red rustlings!

The Sideboard

It is a large carved sideboard; the dark oak,
Very old, has taken on the kindly look of old people;
The sideboard stands open, and pours from its shadow,
Like a flow of old wine, enticing scents;

Quite full, it is a jumble of old old things,
Of fragrant yellowed linens, of rags
Of women or children, of withered lace,
Of grandmother’s kerchiefs where griffins are painted;

– There one would find lockets, the locks
Of white or fair hair, portraits, dried flowers
Whose perfume mingles with scents of fruit.

– O sideboard of olden days, you know many stories,
And you would like to tell your tales, and you murmur
When your great black doors open slowly.

Ophelia

I

On the calm, dark water where the stars are sleeping,
White Ophelia floats like a great lily,
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils…

In the distant woods, you hear the hunting horns.

For more than a thousand years, sad Ophelia
Has drifted, a white ghost, along the long black river;
For more than a thousand years, her gentle madness
Whispers her romance to the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts and spreads in a corolla
Her great veils, softly rocked by the waters;
The trembling willows weep upon her shoulder,
The reeds bend over her large, dreaming brow.

The crumpled water-lilies sigh around her;
She sometimes awakens, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which a tiny wing-shiver escapes:

A mysterious song falls from the golden stars.

II

O pale Ophelia! Beautiful as snow!
Yes, you died, a child, swept away by a river!
For the winds falling from the great mountains of Norway
Spoke to you softly of harsh freedom;

A breath, twisting your long hair,
Brought strange sounds to your dreaming mind,
While your heart listened to Nature’s song
In the moans of trees and the night’s sighs;

The voice of the wild seas, an immense groan,
Shattered your child’s breast, too human and too soft;
One April morning, a pale, handsome rider,
A poor madman, sat silently at your knees!

Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, O poor girl!
You melted into him like snow into fire:
Your great visions strangled your speech—
And the terrible Infinite terrified your blue eye!

III

And the Poet says that by the starlight
You come at night to gather the flowers you pick;
And he has seen, on the water, lying in her long veils,
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.

Dec 23, 2025

Arthur Rimbaud
Black Garden

Antonin Artaud (1896-1948)
Translated by Edris Iravi

The Bar

There will still be small, rogue bars
With meats from the Far East
To shelter this New Year.

Small bars with legendary sailors
Whose pipes will consume ancient poisons
Light bars with the smoke that swells them
Small bars vanishing in the clear dawn.

Bars where the sun and its train turn
In the deep, reddened lacquer of the glasses;
Bars with lively tables, with lifeless windows
Where the noses of faculties will not dip.

Black Garden

Now they have blossomed from the lands of death
These flowers that a long labour of dreams has poured forth
Together with the ash and immaterial smoke
Of a bed of nocturnal irises stripped
One by one, like the hours of darkness
In tidal surges of a terrible, ultimate season
Upon the black waters. The slow, luminous diamonds of the hour
Have shone out
A strange illumination of the capsized sun
The lilies have scattered the amassed murk
Of the lovely garden over which the tide breaks
And the frozen metal of your sacred columns
O stems, has trembled. Behold the night that grants
The universal key of its horn gates
To the emanations of delivered souls.

On a Dead Poet

His poet’s soul, alas, had slipped away
Into the musical and Gothic sounds of evening
And wonderfully, among the black rigging
The sun tilted its yellowed hull.

Then I had come, in my melancholy
To see this divine man’s body, and to behold
The Beauty where, as on a sacred resting-place
The Sublime Thought forms—radiant and in bloom.

The organs of the sea made a sound like a crowd
The ropes were groaning with a surf-like murmur
Amid the golden flames of the candles that wept.

And voices rose from the velvet and the gold
Of the great vessel that processions adorned
To the very soft tones breathed by the flutes of death.

Silence

Upon the frozen stones of the rhythmic square
Where august silence spreads its palace wide
Insidiously the moon delights to linger
Within the abolished echoes of a magic orchestra.

Like a womb stirred by love it shivers still
That inexpressible orchestra. It wrests angels
From each strange breath exhaled by the shadows
And light passes through it and fills it whole.

It is not alone: he has his dog, always seated
That old man who recalls to me an ancient silence
While a small organ fills the immense square
With a moon steeped in forbidden rivers.

Square

The square spread out its sand to the hunting grounds
Filled with turning skies and occult musics
A calm lake where little children came to play.
And ants were rowing. Tornadoes, forests
Released from being bound to tropical shores
Blew their flaming ash upon the blanched earth.
Here and there it rained. Clouds rustled
With their flanks laden with atrocious storms
And the glass of the day filled up with silt.
Night took possession of the space from stone to stone.
In the channels of the sky the light fell asleep.
One by one the grains of day turned rose-coloured
And in the palms of angels the moon lay at rest.

Love

And love? We must cleanse ourselves
Of this hereditary filth
Where our stellar vermin
Continue to wallow

The organ, the organ that grinds the wind
The backwash of the furious sea
Are like the hollow melody
Of this disconcerting dream

Of Her, of us, or of that soul
Whom we seated at the banquet
Tell us which one is deceived
O Inspirer of the infamous

She who lies in my bed
And shares the air of my chamber
May cast dice upon the table
The very sky of my mind

Romance

Music pours out of the windows
Dissolve yourselves, marrow of our bones
The entire city topsy-turves
In a delicious spasm

In the black city the noise
Made by what obscure organs
With blows of a hard crank
Spreads, spreads with every jolt

Ah, the city has its bones full
Of this unequalled liquor
That floods it through the ears
And pierces it with its crystals

A silence dwells at the depths
Of the intoxicating melody
From which the whole city, in suspense
Draws at the heart of the deep organ

And the suspense renews itself
Within the space of every lurch
That the crank, with its false heart
Imprints upon the limpid music

What Arabia or what Africa
Holds the refrain we seek
Shatters the ice of our brows
O music, wounding music

Dec 11, 2025

Antonin Artaud
Somber Lilt

A stray glimmer
first stirred—
the lantern I carried
through meandering twilight

Some distant radiance
in her revolving gaze
unlocked
buried silences
behind the walls

Gone are the gentle
wayward fellow-shades
their murmurs
ripple
across the mirror
in the quiver
of forsaken light

Above
the enduring firmament
unravels
and I drift into
the velvet of night.

Dec 10, 2025
The Sonnenberg

Every image of the past not recognised by the present as its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.

_{—Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History}

1.

The tower of birds
The scattered blood
The ulcer of the earth
The incarnation of the dream
The mirror of clarity
The broad brow of thunders
The narrow path of stars
The stairway of the moon
The snow of Tammuz
The pavilion of blizzard—
Time speaks to me only through you
Time, the stone

Open your chest
Bring forth your heart
Tell me how you rose beyond the human
She who pitched her tent upon the darkened ploughshare
In the agate night
And with the dagger of her hands
Polished a mountain of crystal
Atop the flints of torment
Above the scaffold of seeds strewn among thorns—
Crossing the earth in the coracle of minutes
To kindle a flame
In the solitary grain at the stone’s core

The human laid the timbre of her song
Within the throat of the wind
From the moon’s breasts she drank warm milk
To entrust the earth with the imprint of her hands—
A wondrous mysterium

She then drained the jorum of air
Devoured the grain of seconds
And pressed onward through hail and fire
That she might raise a necropolis sublime
And retrieve the voices of the dead
In the ledger of her quotidian rites

Beneath which sky of oblivion
Before what dim portal
Have I endured a futile waiting
What bird of despair has sung upon my hands—
That in some obscure resurrection
My feet, thus restless
Roam the whorls of ennui

2.

I left the serpentine path behind
And with the footsteps of the sun
Set my heels upon the pebble-whispers
Nestled beneath the walnut shade of your hem—
A field of cicada-song

The breeze that clings to your garment
Stirs the loquacious grasses and the petal-laden shrubs
The faint trace of rain upon your brow
Is an unreadable palimpsest—
The night of bridal union etched upon it
A consummation forged in searing flame
Until dawn rises, adorned
Like a swan of light sailing over the continents of humankind
Over the lakes and plains, and yet other lakes and plains

The cleft brow of the world
The dark tarn where eagles cleanse their plumes
The enduring stela
The morose solitary
A colossal head with its fearsome eye
Watching over the world
And measuring time
In its photopsic glimmers

The moth of remembrance
Casts spectral shadows upon the hands of the rose
One by one I unbind your bandages—
A visage carved of gale and sunlight
A wound split open before the seasons’ face

A silence wrought from pure air
An emptied sky
And day blows its yearning reed flute
Through the bells of sheep dozing at your side—
You who stand between the intuition of water
And the mountain eagle’s cry

The lily loosens the ribbon of her headband to the wind—
The embrace of fire and my anguish
A wandering lizard
Has arranged its wares upon the sun-warmed earth
Its pins and ribbons and minuscule spools
Set forth for auction
Across the lichen’s scarlet
The yellow ants stream without cease
Gilding your hollowed diadem

The iridescence of ache
Within the world’s credence

The trail we once embarked on—between soil and the empyreal—
Is now a wound brimming with silence and moss
It is I who, with all these footsteps, cannot reach you—
Or is it you who, unseeing, abides in delay

Never did I ask how you
From the sun-scorched land
Entwined within my reverie
Set foot inside my nocturnal house—
Nor how I
Hurled from the abyss of mirrors onto your shore
With a mouth desiccated by forbidden waters
Found myself undone
And know myself no longer
In brick upon brick
Of your ruined memory

3.

Rain descends upon the lane of my childhood
The huddled houses crouch beneath the unbroken deluge
And I run alone across the cobblestones—
Names and faces rising like walls I cannot cross

What is your name
I cannot summon it
A stranger is your face
In which century had I run beside you
The rain falls in vain

Across the bridge’s spine, people hurry by—
A wave weary of eternal gazes
Bodies swollen with the blisters of the moon
Ashamed of their untimely song
Shouldering a heavy chastisement

Were they leaves, rotted by a cold autumnal hand
Or an ancient wound
That thwarted the passage of my smile
Were they a charred shadow
Woven tightly over my yesterday
Sealed with seven leaden locks
Upon the gates of water

Alone, I drifted through the lane and the dreamlike procession
Until a wave seized me from the ancient reverie
And bore me into the current of a woman’s hair—
A woman poised at the cliff-edge of my sight
Withdrawn to the borders of mirrors
The breath of the distant waters at the dawn of the world

“Now, if you wish, just one look from you
can set my heart on fire.”

My childhood is forever a corridor
Through which a tempest passes
And from the mirrors I am reborn
Had we remained within that lane
I would have known every one of you—
If only we had remained within that lane

The clock clings to a singular breath—
A secret throb within the earth’s dim heart
The darkening rush in the vein of seasons
The daily shrouding of the weeping shade
And a blind man’s hand
Tracing its script upon the grave of summer—
Ever, and now

4.

A battalion of wearied doves
Stirs its wings above the almond groves
From afar the city intones
A shoreline risen from dream and dew and dusk
The evening slumbers beneath the shadow of the wall
In the hesitant interstice between abiding and departure
Smoke spiralling through the roof vent
Lifting the fragrance of kindling into the air
While the swallow suspends its chant
Along the willow-shaded avenue
A stealth of silence glides
Through the ebb and resurgence of summer
Through the clamour of children and dogs

Every window stands ajar
And a circle drifts within the gaze of a woman
Beyond the far horizon
Her eyes fixed through the burning pane
Upon the sun surrendering the roofline

The earth swings, and love unravels
In the sheen of a thousand moons
While the wind passes like a solemn oracle
Over the baldachin of her hair—
The taste of a kiss
The anguish of an unquenched thirst
Laid upon the lulling precipices

My realm is the land of pupils of pain in delirious eyes
Cast aside in the void of the world
Where history regurgitates its sterile yawns
A city whose sun is caustic
And whose sky above is brass

Women and men, faces of rain and whispers
Wrapped in cultivation and stone
Navigating the fractal labyrinths of lost deeds
Bearing beneath their fragile skin
Years marked by impetigo and smallpox
Their steps stretching from nowhere to nowhere

It is time that lifts the mist upon the mountains
That weaves memory into the fog
And petrifies pain within the bones

5.

Amid the relentless howl of the wind
The city evaporates
Within the crucible of my eyes

Death hovers over wheat and clover
Rapt and fevered
A dagger lurked beneath its attire
Time passes in hushed anticipation
Pregnant with the most painful song

The madness of death
The restlessness of the mare in the darkened stall
Stamping its hooves upon the earth—

Only in a single moment
Under the pressure of a dark insistence
Names, flowers, rites, customs, loves, lies, and every sign of life
Are annihilated upon my blind brow

Rotting faces, eyes on the past
The lost union of sunlight and wind

The sun’s throat slit
Nailed to the fevered curl of your smirk
And the day’s blood, pooled in the lids of the dazzled plain
Remains but a vestige of time’s avowals
Seated upon the silence of the desert

Dancing death reduced their fate to ashes
From their staring eyes it shattered a trail of stars
Across the sky of the merciless night
When our human lineage shivered
Upon the brink of the valley that topples history

My human, the human of calloused hands
In the thickets of despair and restlessness
Digging and digging into stone and rock
Entombed within walls of silence, labour, and desire
Prisoner of the citadels of the future
There where human and time mirror one another

Now, along your edge
I peer into myself
And blindly seek the path of the stars
To find where the shedding of humiliation ends
Within the linen layers of madness and superstition
And you, with a smirk upon your mouth
Bent in the certainty of the threshold
Deny the arch of the solar steps

Behold
The crimson splattered upon your threshold
Is your harvest
The architect of tents for silence
Within the eternity of repetition
Which proclaims the passage of years
Among the base yawns of decay

Can you recall
The names of all those drowned within your hem
Can I purify the wheat‑field of my cheeks

I place my hand upon my heart
And feel my flank drenched in blood
A river of crimson prevailing over the bruised landscape

The tower of birds
The scattered blood
The ulcer of the earth
The incarnation of the dream
The mirror of clarity
The broad brow of thunders
The narrow path of stars
The stairway of the moon
The snow of Tammuz
The pavilion of blizzard

Time speaks to me only through you
Time, the stone.

_{© 2017 Jamshid Iravi. Poème original en persan, traduction par Edris Iravi. Tous droits réservés pour l’œuvre originale et sa traduction.}

Dec 4, 2025

Jamshid Iravi
Unity

Victor-Marie Hugo (1802-1885)
Translated by Edris Iravi

Over the horizon, above the darkened hills,
The sun, that flower of infinite splendours,
Was leaning towards the earth at the hour of sunset.
A humble daisy, blooming at the edge of a field,
On a crumbling grey wall among wild oats,
Unfurled its white and candid halo.
And the little flower, above the ancient wall,
Was gazing fixedly into the eternal azure,
At the great star pouring forth its immortal light.
— And I, too, have rays! — said the daisy to the sun.

Following a period of absence from the blog, I remain profoundly thankful to all my cherished readers for their enduring support and kindness.

Nov 13, 2025

Les Contemplations, Victor Hugo
Illuminations
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
Translated by Edris Iravi

Fairy

For Hélène the ornamental saps conspired — in virgin shadows and impossible brightnesses, within the astral silence. The ardour of summer was entrusted to mute birds, and indolence required by a token of priceless mourning, through the inlets of dead loves and sunken perfumes.

— After the moment of the woodcutters’ air, with the murmur of the torrent beneath the ruin of the woods, with the ringing of cattle echoing through the valleys, and the cries of the steppes. —

For the childhood of Hélène shivered the furs and the shadows — and the breasts of the poor, and the legends of the sky.

And her eyes and her dance — still superior to precious gleams, to cold influences, to the pleasure of setting and of the unique hour.

Barbarian

Long after the days and the seasons, and the beings and the lands,

The flag of bleeding meat upon the silk of the seas and the arctic flowers; (they do not exist.)

Recovered from the old fanfares of heroism — which still assail our hearts and heads — far from the ancient assassins —

Oh! the flag of bleeding meat upon the silk of the seas and the arctic flowers; (they do not exist.)

Sweetnesses!

The braziers, raining amid gusts of frost — Sweetnesses! — the fires in the rainfall of the diamond wind, flung forth by the heart of the earth eternally charred for us. — O world! —

(Far from the old refuges and the old flames one hears, one feels,)

The braziers and the foams. The music, revolving of abysses and the clash of ice against the stars.

O sweetnesses, O world, O music! And there — the forms, the sweats, the hair and the eyes, floating. And the white, boiling tears — O sweetnesses! — and the feminine voice reaching to the depths of volcanoes and arctic caves…

The flag…

Historic Evening

On some evening, for instance, when the naïve tourist, withdrawn from our economic horrors, finds himself there — the hand of a master stirs the harpsichord of the meadows; they play cards at the bottom of the pond, that mirror evoking queens and sweethearts; there are saints, veils, and threads of harmony, and legendary chromaticisms over the sunset.

He shivers at the passing of the hunts and the hordes. The comedy drips upon the grassy stage. And the confusion of the poor and the weak upon such stupid plains! Before his enslaved vision — Germany scaffolds itself towards moons; the Tartar deserts grow bright — ancient revolts swarm in the heart of the Celestial Empire¹; through the stairways and thrones of kings — a small, pale, and flat world, Africa and the West, begins to rise. Then comes a ballet of seas and familiar nights, a chemistry without value, and impossible melodies.

The same bourgeois magic at every point where the trunk sets us down! The most basic physicist feels it is no longer possible to submit to this personal atmosphere, this mist of physical remorse, whose very perception is already an affliction.

No! — The time of the furnace, of the lifted seas, of underground conflagrations, of the planet carried away, and the consequent exterminations — certainties so faintly, so slyly suggested in the Bible and by the Norns² — that it will be given to the serious being to watch over. — Yet it will not be a matter of legend!

Vulgar Nocturne

A breath opens operatic breaches in the partitions — scrambles the pivoting of the gnawed roofs — scatters the boundaries of hearths — eclipses the windows. — Along the vine, leaning my foot against a gargoyle — I descended into this carriage, whose era is fairly indicated by the convex mirrors, the bulging panels, and the contoured sofas. Hearse of my sleep, isolated, shepherd’s house of my foolishness, the vehicle swerves across the grass of the erased main road: and in a flaw at the top of the right mirror spun the pale lunar figures — leaves, breasts; — a very dark green and blue invade the image. Horses unharnessed near a patch of gravel.

— Here will one whistle for the storm, and the Sudoms — and the Solyms — and the ferocious beasts and the armies,

— (Postilion and dream-beasts, will they resume beneath the most suffocating groves, to plunge me up to the eyes in the source of silk?)

— And send us, whipped through the lapping waters and spilled drinks, to roll upon the barking of mastiffs…

A breath scatters the boundaries of the hearth.

Dawn

I have kissed the summer dawn.

Nothing yet stirred upon the fronts of the palaces. The water lay dead. The shadowy camps did not leave the forest road. I walked, awakening the warm and lively breaths, and the gemstones looked on, and the wings rose without a sound.

The first encounter was, in the path already filled with fresh and pale gleams, a flower that told me its name.

I laughed at the blond waterfall that tumbled through the firs: at the silvered summit I recognised the goddess.

Then I lifted the veils, one by one. Along the avenue, flinging my arms. Across the plain, where I revealed her to the cock. In the great city she fled among the steeples and domes, and running like a beggar along the marble quays, I pursued her.

At the top of the road, near a grove of laurels, I enclosed her with her gathered veils, and I felt a little of her immense body. The dawn and the child fell to the foot of the wood.

Upon waking it was noon.

Mystical

On the slope of the embankment, the angels turn their woollen robes in the meadows of steel and emerald. From the fields of flames they leap to the top of the hillock. To the left, the soil of the ridge is trampled by all homicides and all battles, and all disastrous noises trace their curve. Behind the right-hand ridge lies the line of the east, of progress.

And while the band at the top of the canvas is formed of the whirling and bounding murmur of seashells of the seas and human nights,

The flowered sweetness of the stars, of the sky, and of all else descends before the embankment, like a basket — against our faces — and makes the abyss beneath it fragrant and blue.

Royalty

One fine morning, among a very gentle people, a man and a magnificent woman cried out in the public square:
“My friends, I want her to be queen!”
“I want to be queen!”

She laughed and trembled. He spoke to the friends of revelation, of a completed trial. They swooned against one another.

Indeed, they were kings for a whole morning, when the crimson hangings were lifted on the houses, and all afternoon, as they advanced toward the palm gardens.

Phrases

When the world is reduced to a single black wood for our four astonished eyes — to a beach for two faithful children — to a musical house for our clear sympathy — I will find you.

Let there be here below only a solitary old man, calm and beautiful, surrounded by “unspeakable luxury” — and I am at your knees.

Let me have realised all your memories — let me be the one who knows how to bind you — I will suffocate you.

□

When we are very strong — who recoils? Very merry, who falls into ridicule? When we are very wicked, what would one do with us?

Adorn yourselves, dance, laugh — I can never send Love through the window.

□

— Comrade of mine, beggar girl, monstrous child! How indifferent you are, to these wretched women and their schemes, and to my embarrassments. Cling to us with your impossible voice, your voice! The only flatterer of this vile despair.

Metropolitan

From the indigo strait to the seas of Ossian³, upon the pink and orange sand washed by the wine-coloured sky, boulevards of crystal rise and intersect, immediately inhabited by young, poor families feeding themselves at the fruit stalls. Nothing rich. — The city!

From the asphalt desert flee straight, in rout, with the bands of mist tiered in dreadful strips against the sky that bends back, recedes, and descends, formed of the blackest, most sinister smoke the grieving Ocean can produce, the helmets, the wheels, the boats, the haunches. — The battle!

Raise your head: this arched wooden bridge; the last kitchen gardens of Samaria⁴; these painted masks beneath the lantern whipped by the cold night; the foolish water-nymph in her noisy dress at the river’s edge; these luminous skulls among the pea plants — and the other phantasmagorias — The countryside.

Roads lined with railings and walls, barely containing their groves, and the atrocious flowers one might call hearts and sisters, Damascus languishing with longing — possessions of fairy-like ultra-Rhenish, Japanese, Guaraní⁵ aristocracies, still capable of receiving the music of the ancients — and there are inns that will never open again — there are princesses, and, if you are not too overwhelmed, the study of the stars. — The sky.

The morning when, with Her, you struggled among these shards of snow, the green lips, the ice, the black flags and blue rays, and the purple scents of the polar sun — your strength.

Ruts

To the right, the summer dawn awakens the leaves, the vapours, and the sounds of this corner of the park, while the embankments to the left hold, in their violet shadow, the thousand swift ruts of the wet road. A parade of fairyland. Indeed: chariots laden with gilded wooden animals, masts, and colourful canvases, at the full gallop of twenty spotted circus horses, and the children, and the men, upon their most astonishing beasts; — twenty vehicles, humped, festooned, and flowered like ancient or fairy-tale carriages, full of children dressed for a suburban pastoral. — Even coffins under their night canopies, bearing plumes of ebony, flying at the trot of the great blue and black mares.
1. An archaic name used to refer to China or the Chinese Empire ↩︎
2. In Norse mythology, three goddesses of fate who weave the destinies of humans. ↩︎
3. A fictional poet and character from 18th-century Scottish literature, created by James Macpherson, inspired by Celtic myths. ↩︎
4. An ancient region in the Middle East ↩︎
5. A group of culturally-related peoples of South America, primarily in Paraguay. ↩︎
Oct 9, 2025

Arthur Rimbaud
At the Music

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
Translated by Edris Iravi

At the Music

On the square cut into meager lawns,
The square where everything is proper, trees and flowers,
All the pompous bourgeois, choked by the heat,
Bring, on Thursday evenings, their jealous foolishness.

– The military band, in the middle of the garden,
Swings its shakos to the Fife Waltz:
Around, in the front rows, struts the dandy;
The notary dangles his charms with numbers.

Rentiers with eyeglasses accentuate every wrong note:
The swollen, grand offices dragging their grand ladies,
Next to whom go, officious lackeys,
Those whose frills look like advertisements;

On the green benches, clubs of retired grocers
Stir the sand with their knobbed canes,
Very seriously discussing treaties,
Then taking snuff in silver, and resuming: “All in all!…”

Puffed on his bench, the roundness of his loins exposed,
A bourgeois with pale buttons, a Flemish belly,
Savours his onnaing, from which strands of tobacco
Overflow—you know, it’s smuggled;—

Along the green lawns, the rascals snicker;
And, made amorous by the trombones’ song,
Very naive, smoking roses, the soldiers
Caress the babies to charm the nannies…

– I am, disheveled like a student,
Under the green chestnut trees, the lively girls:
They know it well; and, laughing, turn
Their eyes towards me, full of indiscreet things.

I do not speak a word: I keep looking
At the flesh of their white necks embroidered with stray locks:
I am, under the bodice and frail attire,
The divine back following the curve of their shoulders.

Soon I’ve discovered the boot, the stocking…
– I reconstruct the bodies, burned by fine fevers.
They find me amusing and whisper to each other…
– And I feel the kisses coming to my lips…

Nina’s Repartees

HE – Your breast against mine,
Eh? We would go,
With air filling the nostrils,
In the cool rays

Of the good blue morning, which bathes you
In the wine of day?…
When all the trembling wood bleeds
Mute with love

From every branch, green drops,
From the clear buds,
One feels in the open things
The flesh quiver:

You would plunge into the clover
Your white robe,
Rosying in the air that blue which circles
Your large black eye,

In love with the countryside,
Scattering everywhere,
Like champagne foam,
Your wild laughter:

Laughing at me, brutal with intoxication,
Whom you would take
Like that, – the beautiful braid,
Oh! – whose taste I would drink

Of your raspberry and strawberry,
O flesh of flower!
Laughing at the brisk wind that kisses you
Like a thief;

At the pink, sweetbriar which teasingly
Amuses you:
Laughing above all, O mad head,
At your lover!…

………………………………………………..

– Your breast against mine,
Mixing our voices,
Slowly, we would gain the ravine,
Then the great woods!…

Then, like a little dead one,
Heart swooning,
You would tell me that I carry you,
Eyes half-closed…

I would carry you, palpitating,
Along the path:
The bird would fly its andante
At the hazel…

I would speak to you in your mouth…
I would go, pressing
Your body, like a child put to bed,
Drunk with the blood

That runs, blue, beneath your white skin
With pinkish tones:
And speaking to you in the frank language – …
There!… – that you know…

Our great woods would smell of sap,
And the sun
Would sand with fine gold their great dream
Green and vermilion

………………………………………………..

Evening?… We would take up the road again
White, running,
Strolling, like a grazing herd,
All around

The good orchards with blue grass,
With twisted apple trees!
How far we would smell
Their strong perfumes!

We would return to the village
Under the half-dark sky;
And it would smell of dairy
In the evening air;

It would smell of the stable, full
Of warm manure,
Full of a slow rhythm of breath,
And of large backs

Whitening under some light;
And, far away,
A cow would foul, proud,
At every step…

– Grandmother’s spectacles
And her long nose
In her missal; the beer jug
Bound with lead,

Foaming between the large pipes
Which, boldly,
Smoke: the dreadful lips
Which, all smoking,

Snatch the ham from the forks
So much, so much and more:
The fire that clears the beds
And the cupboards:

The shiny and fat buttocks
Of the big child
Who, kneeling, thrusts into the cups,
His white snout

Brushed by a muzzle that growls
In a gentle tone,
And licks the round face
Of the dear little one…..

How many things we will see, dear,
In these hovels,
When the flame illuminates, clearly,
The grey panes!…

– Then, small and all nestled,
In the lilacs
Black and fresh: the hidden window,
Which laughs over there….

You will come, you will come, I love you!
It will be beautiful.
You will come, won’t you? And even…

SHE – And my desk?

Sep 23, 2025

Arthur Rimbaud