Oraison du Soir : Evening Prayer Translated by Holly Tannen assisted by Lydia Rand with a second translation for comparison
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I live sitting down, like an angel in the hands of a barber, Grasping a heavily fluted mug, My belly and my neck are bent, a cheap pipe in my teeth Beneath air swollen with impalpable clouds. A thousand dreams within me burning painfully and sweet, Like steaming heaps of birdshit in some old pigeon coop; And sometimes my sad heart is like the sapwood Bloodied by the young and somber gold of falling fruit. Then when I've carefully gulped down my dreams, And drunk my thirty, maybe forty mugs, I rouse myself to ease my bitter need: Sweet as the Saviour of cedar and of hyssops I piss towards the dark heavens, very high and very far With the assent of the large heliotropes.
hyssops: herb used in biblical times for ceremonial sprinkling Rimbaud with mug - sketch by Verlaine
Oraison du Soir For fun, here's a translation by another translator. I wonder where he got the ferns.
Evening Prayer
I spend my life sitting, like an angel in a barber's chair
(Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works. Translated from the French by Paul Schmidt. Harper Colophon, 1976) | |
translations The Drunken Boat
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Mistress of Folklore Box 1136 Mendocino, California 95460 Fax 707-937-3055 |
Holly Tannen teaches folklore and anthropology, and has lectured on
contemporary magic at U.C. Berkeley and at Yale University. Her recordings
include "Invocation", "Between the Worlds", and "Rime of the Ancient
Matriarch"
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All text, translations, and songs copyright © 2002 by Holly Tannen
updated 3 January 2002 : 00:32 Caspar (Pacific) time