The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud As I descended impassible Rivers, I felt no longer steered by bargemen; they were captured by howling Redskins, nailed as targets, naked, to painted stakes. What did I care for cargo or crews, bearers of English cotton or Flemish grain— having left behind the bargemen and racket, the Rivers let me descend where I wished. In the furious splashing of the waves, I — that other winter, deafer than the minds of children — ran! And the unanchored Peninsulas never knew a more triumphant brouhaha. The tempest blessed my sea awakening. Lighter than cork, I danced the waves scrolling out the eternal roll of the dead— ten nights, without longing for the lantern's silly eye. Sweeter than the flesh of tart apples to children, the green water penetrated my pine hull and purged me of vomit and the stain of blue wines— my rudder and grappling hooks drifting away. Since then, I have bathed in the Poem of the Sea, a milky way, infused with stars, devouring the azure greens where, flotsam-pale and ravished, drowned and pensive men float by. Where, suddenly staining the blues, delirious and slow rhythms under the glowing red of day, stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyrics, ferment the red bitters of love! I know heavens pierced by lightning, the waterspouts and undertows and currents: I know night, Dawn rising like a nation of doves, and I've seen, sometimes, what men only dreamed they saw! I've seen the sun, low, a blot of mystic dread, illuminating with far-reaching violet coagulations, like actors in antique tragedies, the waves rolling away in a shiver of shutters. I've dreamed a green night to dazzling snows, kisses slowly rising to the eyelids of the sea, unknown saps flowing, and the yellow and blue rising of phosphorescent songs. For months, I've followed the swells assaulting the reefs like hysterical herds, without ever thinking that the luminous feet of some Mary could muzzle the panting Deep. I've touched, you know, incredible Floridas where, inside flowers, the eyes of panthers mingle with the skins of men! And rainbows bridle glaucous flocks beneath the rim of the sea! I've seen fermenting— enormous marshes, nets where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes! Such a ruin of water in the midst of calm, and the distant horizon worming into whirlpools! Glaciers, silver suns, pearly tides, ember skies! Hideous wrecks at the bottom of muddy gulfs where giant serpents, devoured by lice, drop with black perfume out of twisted trees! I wanted to show children these dorados of the blue wave, these golden, singing fish. A froth of flowers has cradled my vagrancies, and ineffable winds have winged me on. Sometimes like a martyr, tired of poles and zones, the sea has rolled me softly in her sigh and held out to me the yellow cups of shadow flowers, and I've remained there, like a woman, kneeling . . . Almost an island, balancing the quarrels, the dung, the cries of blond-eyed birds on the gunnels of my boat, I sailed on, and through my frail lines, drowned men, falling backwards, sank to sleep. Now, I, a boat lost in the hair of the coves, tossed by hurricane into the birdless air, me, whom all the Monitors and Hansa sailing ships could not salvage, my carcass drunk with sea; free, rising like smoke, riding violet mists, I who pierced the sky turning red like a wall, who bore the exquisite jam of all good poets, lichens of sun and snots of azure, who, spotted with electric crescents, ran on, a foolish plank escorted by black hippocamps, when the Julys brought down with a single blow the ultramarine sky with its burning funnels; I who tremble, feeling the moan fifty leagues away of the Behemoth rutting and the dull Maelstrom, eternal weaver of the unmovable blue— I grieve for Europe with its ancient breastworks! I've seen thunderstruck archipelagos! and islands that open delirious skies for wanderers: Are these bottomless nights your nest of exile, O millions of gold birds, O Force to come? True, I've cried too much! Dawns are harrowing. All moons are cruel and all suns, bitter: acrid love puffs me up with drunken slowness. Let my keel burst! Give me to the sea! If I desire any of the waters of Europe, it's the pond black and cold, in the odor of evening, where a child full of sorrow gets down on his knees to launch a paperboat as frail as a May butterfly. Bathed in your languors, o waves, I can no longer wash away the wake of ships bearing cotton, nor penetrate the arrogance of pennants and flags, nor swim past the dreadful eyes of slave ships.
