Poetry Magazine
To a Reason
A tap of your finger on the drum releases all sounds and initiates the new harmony.
A step of yours is the conscription of the new men and their marching orders.
You look away: the new love!
You look back,—the new love!
“Change our fates, shoot down the plagues, beginning with time,” the children sing to you. “Build wherever you can the substance of our fortunes and our wishes,” they beg you.
Arriving from always, you’ll go away everywhere.
A step of yours is the conscription of the new men and their marching orders.
You look away: the new love!
You look back,—the new love!
“Change our fates, shoot down the plagues, beginning with time,” the children sing to you. “Build wherever you can the substance of our fortunes and our wishes,” they beg you.
Arriving from always, you’ll go away everywhere.
Source: Poetry (April 2011).
Biography
Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) is the supreme child genius in the history of poetry. Born in Charleville, France, he attended school there, then left for Paris where he embarked on a disastrous but enormously productive erotic relationship with another great poet, Paul Verlaine. When that affair wrecked itself spectacularly—with Verlaine sent to prison for shooting Rimbaud—Rimbaud apparently abandoned poetry, left Europe, eventually . . .
Avant-Garde All the Time: Continental Drift
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