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Arthur Rimbaud – from Rimbaud Complete [translated by Wyatt Mason]

This time, it’s the Woman I saw in the city, and to whom I spoke, and who speaks to me.

I was in a lightless room.  I was told she was there; and I saw her in my bed, all for me, lightlessly!  I was very emotional, not least because this was happening in my family home; and so an unease took hold of me!  I was dressed in rags, while she, clearly a woman of the world who was giving herself to me; she had to leave!  With a nameless unease, I took her, letting her fall off the bed, nearly naked; and in my unspeakable weakness, I fell upon her and dragged us through the dark rugs!  The family lamp reddened the neighbouring rooms one after the next.  And then the woman disappeared.  I shed more tears than God could ever have asked.

I went out into the endless city.  O fatigue!  Drowning in the deaf night and in the flight of joy.  It was like a winter night, with snow that would snuff out the world once and for all.  Friends to whom I cried out where is she responded falsely.  I went to the windows where she stands each night; I ran to the buried garden.  I was cast out.  I cried endlessly, because of all this.  Finally, I went down into a place filled with dust, and sitting on some sort of frame, I let my body cry itself dry of every tear – Nonetheless, any exhaustion returned over and over.

I understood that she had gone back to her daily life; and that this kind turn and the possibility of its recurrence was now more distant than a star.  She didn’t return, and never will, this Adorable who paid me a visit – something I never could have foreseen.  Unquestionably, this time I cried more than all the world’s children