ILLUMINATIONS by ARTHUR RIMBAUD, Trans. by JOHN ASHBERY

JEFF HARRISON Engages

Illuminations, by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by John Ashbery
(W.W. Norton, 2011)

[each line below is an excerpt from Ashbery's translation of Illuminations]




visiting memories
your dance
and your voice
house
a new loving body

shepherd's hut of my idiocy

purple gums and
lips green
indigo
fangs
the adolescent that I was

Hélène
names that are ferociously Greek
offer themselves to your experiments

Merce Cunningham
is someone else

unlikely desertions
hunt down
stags
some dangerous resources
of Rimbaud
hitherto unknown to history

paused
jackals
black
prayer
heard

Hélène
Hortense
my daughters! my queens!
four astonished eyes

now
I am the lord of silence
How could they not die of it?

in the orchard
seraphic centauresses gambol
leapfrogging

Nebuchadnezzar
most wicked madman
as spurned as chaos
-- I'll find you.

shameful love
in virgin shade
on a gargoyle
you thrashed about
your voice
"My friends, I want her to be queen!"
your impossible voice, your voice!

enormous blue eyes
blacken in the sun
-- And the dream cools.

cherry trees
I see new specters
everywhere

visiting memories
her eyes and her dance
house
a luxurious funeral barge

Hearse of my sleep

at every step
a clock of pink fire
spurts
indigo

window
Hélène
agate
lamp

Elegance, knowledge, violence!
Enough known.
Baou!


****

Jeff Harrison reviewed books for the past ten issues of Galatea Resurrects. He has publications from Writers Forum, MAG Press, Persistencia Press, White Sky Books, and Furniture Press. He has e-books from Blazevox, xPress(ed), and Argotist Ebooks. His poetry has appeared in An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II (Meritage Press and xPress(ed)), The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (Meritage Press and xPress(ed)), Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, Xerography, Moria, NOON: journal of the short poem, Dusie, MiPOesias, EOAGH, EXPLORINGfictions, and elsewhere. You can read his poetry at http://www.shampoopoetry.com/shampoothirtynine/harrison.htm and
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=111
You are welcome to visit Antic View: http://anticview.blogspot.com/