I went off, my fists in my
torn pockets;
My
coat too was becoming ideal;
I walked under the
sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;
Oh! oh! what brilliant loves I
dreamed of!
My only pair of trousers had a big hole.
Tom Thumb in a daze, I sowed rhymes
As I went along. My
inn was at the
Big Dipper.
- My stars in the
sky made a soft rustling sound.
And I
listened to them, seated on the side of the
road,
In those good September evenings when I felt drops
Of dew on my brow, like
a strong wine;
Where,
rhyming in the midst of fantastic
shadows,
Like lyres I plucked the elastics
Of my
wounded shoes, one
foot near my heart!
Rimbaud, "My Bohemian
Life (Fantasy)," in
Rimbaud: Complete Words, Selected Letters, Wallace Fowlie trans., Chicago: UCP, 1966, 63.
