The Moon Has Heard
A late soccer practice left me home alone to my own devices. Redbreast 12 from a teacup. I left the Glencairns in Scotland. Mei welcomed me into the big chair with a disinterested huff. I settled in for a bit of reading.
Since then the Moon has heard jackals cheeping in thyme deserts,—and eclogues in wooden shoes grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the budding purple forest, Eucharis told me that spring had come.
—Well up, pond,—Foam, roll on the bridge and above the woods;—black cloths and organs,—lightning and thunder,—rise and roll;—Waters and sorrows, rise and revive the Floods.
For since they subsided,—oh the precious stones shoveled under, and the full-blown flowers!—so boring! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her coals in the clay pot, will never want to tell us what she knows, and which we do not know.
— Arthur Rimbaud, “After the Flood,” Illuminations, translated by John Ashbery
And here I sit, a grown man moved nearly to tears. If anyone happens to stumble across this page, take this as a sign. Forget whatever you’re doing and go read Illuminations.