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POETS SEVEN YEARS OLD, by ARTHUR RIMBAUD Poet's Biography First Line: And the mother, closing the exercise book Last Line: Canvas, with a violent premonition of sails! . . . Subject(s): Children; Poetry And Poets - French; Childhood | ||||||||
And the Mother, closing the exercise book, Went off satisfied and very proud, not seeing In the blue eyes and beneath the bumpy forehead That her child's soul was filled with revulsions. All day he sweated obedience; very Intelligent; but certain nasty habits, several traits, Seemed to show bitter hypocrisies in him. Passing through dark halls with musty drapes He would stick out his tongue, his two fists In his groin, and in his closed eyes see dots. A door would be open to evening; by lamplight He could be seen upstairs sulking on the banister Beneath a gulf of day which hung from the roof. In summer Above all, vanquished, stupid, he would stubbornly Lock himself up in the coolness of latrines. He would think there, tranquil, dilating his nostrils. When in winter the little garden behind the house, Washed of the smells of the day, became immooned, He, stretched out at the foot of a wall, buried in the mud And pressing his eye flat so as to have visions, Would listen to the swarming of the scaly trellises. As for pity! his only intimates were those children- Feeble, with blank foreheads, eyes fading on their cheeks, Hiding thin fingers yellow and black with mud Under clothes stinking of diarrhea and all shabby- Who conversed with the gentleness of idiots; And if having discovered him at such filthy pities His mother became frightened, the deep tenderness Of the child would overwhelm her surprise. It was good. She would have the blue look-that lies! At seven he was writing novels about life In the great desert where ecstatic Liberty shines, Forests, suns, banks, savannas! He was aided By illustrated papers in which, blushing, he looked At Spanish and Italian women laughing. When, brown-eyed, mad, in printed cotton dresses -Aged eight-the daughter of the workers next door, Had come, the little brute, and when she had jumped On his back in a corner, shaking her braids, And he was underneath her, he would bite her buttocks (For she never wore panties) And then bruised by her fists and by her heels He would take the savors of her skin back to his room. He dreaded the pale Sundays of December When, all spruced up, at a little round mahogany table He would read a Bible edged in cabbage-green. Dreams oppressed him each night in the alcove. He loved, not God, but the men whom in the russet evening, Dark, in blouses, he would see returning to the suburbs Where the criers with three rollings of the drum Make the crowds laugh and groan at proclamations. He could yearn for the amorous meadow, where luminous Billows, healthy perfumes, golden pubescences Make their calm movement and take their flight; And as he delighted most in somber things, When, in the bare room with closed shutters, High and blue, filled with an acrid dampness, He would read his novel, which he always thought about, Full of heavy clayey skies and drowned forests, Of flesh-flowers opened in the depths of celestial woods- Dizziness, failings, routs, and pity!- While the din of the neighborhood sounded Below, alone, lying on pieces of unbleached Canvas, with a violent premonition of sails! . . . | Other Poems of Interest...THE THREE CHILDREN by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN CHILDREN SELECTING BOOKS IN A LIBRARY by RANDALL JARRELL COME TO THE STONE ... by RANDALL JARRELL THE LOST WORLD by RANDALL JARRELL A SICK CHILD by RANDALL JARRELL CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON THE DEATH OF FRIENDS IN CHILDHOOD by DONALD JUSTICE THE POET AT SEVEN by DONALD JUSTICE |
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