After the Flood

After the idea of the flood had receded, a rabbit paused in the clock flowers and the holy clover, and said his prayers through the rainbow of the Spider’s web.

Oh! The precious gems hid themselves away,–and the flowers were already regarding the world.

Down the sprawling main drag, stalls were erected, and high-tiered boats were hauled to the sea, as in old prints.

The blood flowed at Blue Beard’s place,–through the abbatoirs, and those houses where the Seal of Jehova blanched the windows. The blood and the milk flowed. The beavers built. “Mazagrans” smoked in the taverns.

In the great houses of dripping glass, sad infants regarded their reflections.

Clackety-clack goes the door, as in the village square, the idiot waves his arms. Understood he is by the weathervanes, and the squatting roosters atop steeples far and wide.

Madame establishes her piano in the Alps. The mass and First Communion are celebrated amidst a hundred thousand cathedral altars.

Caravans depart. Hotel Splendid was built amidst chaos, the ice and the polar night.

The Moon, forever after, heard the jackals howl, across time’s deserts;– in the orchard, the eclogues grunt in their wooden clogs.

Then, in the budding, burgeoning forest, bursting violet, Eucharist told me of the coming of the Springtime

Secret pond, overflow!–Foam, roil, roll over the bridge, roil over the woods;–black palls and innards–thunder and lightning–rise and roil!–Watery sorrows, arise!–Return to us the Flood!

It has been this way since they disappeared,–Oh! The gems hide their shining faces, while flowers spread into new life!–It’s all so boring, somehow! And the Witch-Queen burns her incense in an earthen bowl; will never confess, nor speak to us of our ignorance.

https://vocal.media/poets/arthur-rimbaud-after-the-flood-and-flowers-1886