Cuando arthur donovan vino del sur Hizo una parva con sus maldades resentimientos tristezas Les prendio fuego en el crepusculo Para espantar a los mosquitos de paso
Quedo solГsimo apoyado en bellezas "y quo va a hacer" decia arthur donovan con luz O suavidad o dulzura pechonas Contando su poquito
"y quo va a hacer" decia Pero una mirada que le dieron como amparo o amor le sostenia el esqueleto En esa mirada arthur donovan estaba parado Y hacia senales contra el mundo
"ah mirada" decia arthur donovan el entendido en sombras "solos estamos por aquГ" decia y ya la noche le rebajaba el sufrimiento A pajaros a tierra Mojada respirando
Cuando arthur donovan murio Saco una mano afuera extendiondola Como quien pide lluvia o nido o no tanta soleda Olvido si no hay caso
Como llovio sobre esa mano No hubo gente que no llorara por allГ Pero ni hojita le crecio al puro hueso Comido por el aire
"y quo va a hacer" decia arthur donovan Mientras el viento lo limpiaba Y ol levantaba su mirada famosa Como calor desobediente a la suerte fatal
So it came to pass and the battle begun By the bite of an adder, A sword shinning in sun You pierced Mordred's heart With the spear you found He split your head Knocking you to the ground
Return my sword to the Lady of the Lake I've not long, For tomorrow I won't make Place my body on my shield Use it as my tier Let my people see and shed any tears Bear me away To the far sacred shore My eyes are dimming I can see no more Seal my dreams in my breast to be This be my final request I'll ask of thee
He is a farmer of these lands You can tell from his calloused hands He's worked many a plow See the sweat on his brow He spends his day out there in the field Waiting to see what the earth will revile Every day he gets up early to toil He's happiest out in the soil He loves the smell of fresh turned earth Deep in his soul he knows of its worth With a happy heart he'll sow his seeds He knows all the people it feeds So with a smile he'll go thru the day Listening to what the wind has to say He puts in all his hard labor And prays God shows him favor
Searching for Zanzibar A Tribute to Arthur Rimbaud
All is not what it seems Because I was an atheist Long before I realized I was God, But that was much, much later Then, at that time, I succumbed To the lurid but exciting depths Of freedom, the joy of love and danger Of searching and of knowledge, Embracing every moment; I surrendered to ungovernable impulses That invoked within my very existence
Still to realise the true extent of this It's perhaps best to start before the beginning Before the earth embalmed me A time when Cyparisse had not Yet set root in my belly Nor made sap of my blood A time when it was possible to speak To Panza's donkey when I thought of Zanzibar A time when the vagrancy of my soul Had not yet embarked On its erratic itinerary Plunging me eventually Into the bright light Of tainted and squalid reality
Like oscillating libraries, noise oppressed, Contradictions of dreams Suddenly I took flight, With violent wrenches of imagination In Persia being worshipped Beneath the moon by Gods; Caressed by those impetuous charms A dazzling vision I thought of death the only sister of charity Whose dark night has no malevolence; Black and white, silences that migrated In sonorous symbolism took control Shimmering like a painting of a sorrow
Streaked with unashamed colours A single tear from a promethean candle I would move to lick the stain of destiny That pillar inhaling its black perfumes Like a communicant on his knees. Exiled in reality, I saw what I had never saw Or only thought I saw now condemned To see what has never been seen
Words corralled themselves in my mind Writhing maggots on a corpse Wriggling for position waiting to be pronounced How they flew, taking wings Hovering for an instant above the page Hunting out the detritus of man To feast upon the putrid flesh of misery I too went searching For my ancient feast; for Zanzibar
However hideous pages From the note book of the damned Imprisoned the words, stampeded the search Scattering it in many directions Shattering blue-white eyes A castrated country, century, impotent, impure Like politics, the prostitute that can be purchased by coin Like so much bread in the market, A thousand profanities became the popular song But silence is the real language of the fool
For he alone bears witness to what he feels Misfortunes not understood, weeping the popular ballad Morality and law, parades of red robed Judges Carcasses, a circus for carrion crows Yet like a cannibal the dead were still buried in my belly The gloss of reason hiding madness Like so many veneered fronts in a proud precinct
Paraded in full view, silence is demanded and got The words wither, fake time continues, To count the unrelieved falsehood the chimera of life; Reason did not imprison me My life being not heavy enough Was allowed to take flight To float above the reasoned realm Revelations of the truth realised only by detachment Devoured my mind increased my errorless purpose The search for Zanzibar
Accepted values; valued only; Because of this acceptance Are accepted as value Thus accepted in silence The fools resign themselves To a false reality One that nails them to a poisoned cross
In the gardens of the dead Like rowed tulips that Gardeners know how to match I found myself, among those who had gone Remembered yet forgotten Whose edifice unlike their lives Reached not upwards but down. I smelt the scent of unknown things The perfumes of eternity that histories bind; Intensity, a murmur; gurgle, as in a child Yet extreme its aberrations Like celluloid hand that Had never known toil Or wiped sweat from a brow Laughed yet grimaced Its smile a crimson smear The sorrow that it felt A burnished hand upon its nakedness To see its enshrouded presence in such a garden One well stocked and growing Caressed my being with its glee To turn white feel the touch Of its venomous fingers upon my flesh; Its purpose, to prevent any search for Zanzibar
The stench of death Then cast its' new Yet antediluvian gaze Upon its purpose Odour of grave Faraway nonexistent Yet it is perfume to those Who feast upon its scent Moistures mingling with the air Its common purpose Floating like un-forgiveness Its atmosphere ozone sans holes Its meaning ever present Its' outcome to halt The search for Zanzibar
And so the stencils of oriental scribes Like black shadows overpowered my reason Floating high above, adrift on an expanse of darkness However, presently that azure ink Raised its curtain before my very eyes Revealing the stage, the illuminated stage On which I was to set my drama Where the phantoms of my imagination Would enact their mysterious mysteries; A poetic alchemy
Then a golden spark of pure Nocturnal light blinded me In an instant I saw, observed The sun drown in its deathly sea Its healing wings spread Fear would see it rise again Still searching for that fatal flaw, happiness How many lives do I need? How many existences will it take? Incarnations a hundred times Searching for Zanzibar. Awakening to continue to Live the saddest of my dreams
Furtive footsteps through Cimmerian landscapes Ah such enchantment, do you understand? Ah such a charm, listen to its undying echo Feel its charge, that siren call Cosmic summons, the vagrancy of mind That caresses the imagination Whose tender touch can place you At the apex of the universe Can lead to Zanzibar.
And so the subtle and foolish tortures Inflicted upon me by I, my quest began One that would ascertain, take centre stage Make an unheard appearance of a philosophy That, I am everyone and everyone else is me Eventually at some point In time and space we are all one All linked, for we are condemned Yes condemned to live these lives This is why the dead have dreams Dreams about the tyrants and demons Of other lives of who they were; Who they have yet to become. Nourished on half truths, Forever pulling at the thread The rotted rags of reason Those tattered twines Unravelling the stitching of reality Of hallucinations, empty illusions And tarnished dreams create a constant struggle
Therefore for every conscious thing That happens in the world There must be a responding reverberation Within the human soul Let us put a halt to the calls For the death of imagination And demands for imagination to be silent Such absurdities For imagination is the true door to reality For only in imagination Can there be a bearable act Of self examination It is memory that hurts More than the imagination Always prefer the imaginary to the real Imagination is neither an exit From our nightmares nor An escape from reality But the place we are all trying to get to, Zanzibar its shared images Its story, its own life a new reality.
Mysteriously in the midst of unknown Mazagran landscapes I feel The full impact of fleeting visions Without the limitations of space or time Feel the act of experiencing their reality This requires no explanation, no proof Either together or separate Because simply they are, Judgement, condemnation Punishments are gone There is no cleansing a world Without consciousness Landscape devoid of people 'La Lune' growling in the orchard of the sea Calypso again one or ten Eucharis, tempest or temptress Take both the meaning and the experience Taste the tear drops of the sun Telemachus searching, searching Zanzibar
The idol, tentacles undulating Vibrations of collective knowledge The blank face, featureless Touching around the domain of Atlas Speaking in a thousand different tongues Moving but still, blocks my path Disturbs the line of imagination Makes reality quiver Dream flowers sway in its cosmic wind. Yet Alhazers' iridescent arch allows The steerage of my passage Without pious pilgrimages to empty silences that Contain an eternity of tears Who graciously offers coverage For the echo of footsteps Allowing the magic moments to come
Robbed of sunlight, artificial night shines Its deception attempting to secure knowledge Of a future unknown, winning only it's unattainably Offering instead knowledge of the past Master of silence, offers only knowledge Of invaded consciousness Bedlam of paradise where Eros and Pan In congress sleep, close at Zanzibar.
Lifeless beauty that lives everlasting Time that reason cannot change, only help. O enchanted torture you have stolen The taste from my mouth Masked I against the spectre of reality Proclaimed the age of 'hasashin' The creator of recollections, maker of memories Possessor of impulse giver of echo That rings in the ear Cloud cast its surroccoian shadow Air tinged with the aftermath of fire Floating in an Asian wind, so subtle Like a breath suddenly the sound of song Of dance rents the solitude Silence is slashed like a canvass screen Happiness pours forth unconfined Unfettered, both faces of Kandinsky as one I extinguish the light, turn to the wall Gazing upon its Janis face My eyes behold the giver of pleasure.
Then I found myself in an extraordinary place Whose skies where made of crystal glass Water of the enchanted land was blue-grey Bridges zig-zagged its shimmering domes I stared as masts and parapets came to life Its people, musicians sporting Tangerine and white livery danced The air filled with the sound of their music Then as if from nowhere a light hit my eyes Blinking, this apparition was gone Can I not always believe what I see Just because I see what I believe The inhabitants at once became spectres Engulfed in thick clouds of smoke and sulphur Erinyies roamed, inflicting madness A circus of the macabre sped past Its symbols of death fluttering frantically Around this false and fragile world Suggested children, like creatures in an imagination Were made ready for their rebirth By the touch of the poets pen A thousand Cheribino
In another, swirling sonorous scenes Stormed the citadels of my mind Marched through my imagination Mab engulfed the long closed Cemeteries of my thought allowing me To see the dreams of others Like precious pearls prised from their shells Their visualisation so intense Joy overcame me at once Then a swarm of kisses descended upon me Like a regiment of famished men Feasting for the first time I freely gave myself as the main course In the most beautiful of banquets In another, yielding to these seductions I was enraptured by portraits of beautiful young men Which appeared to be on the point of speaking They were most mysterious their intrinsic Charm so beautiful, stimulated desire Whose assuagement was so pleasurable That it might be called pure ecstasy A perfect pleasure which had never before existed Entirely individual and new
Thus upon the horizons of my mind Had been shed a mysterious light In which I now saw everything bathed I was summoned by the Prince Knowing dreams have no limits I obeyed his call For a long time failing to set Foot on the shores of reality Drinking from the wells of magic While angels danced on grassy slopes Disturbed by flames The stars shot out their fragrance
Sweet smelling; blue abyss On I went to the court, the court of the Prince of Poets, a visitor to life There I spat out the bit of liberty Embraced the Prince Courtesans mocked me, ridiculed Laughed and taunted me Their jibes merely part of Their own deluded reality, not of mine They did not serve my purpose Dressed as they were In meaningless words Clothed in phrases of falsehood They tried to make me compromise There was fire burning in my eyes Vivid dreams were eating up my mind They wouldn't let me be There were dead men lying By the sides of the road With daylight in their eyes I saw villages under the sea I stood at Galactic central point Watched the earth burn They did not know The way to Zanzibar Could the Prince show me?
However each morning I awoke I found myself in a purgatorial fog I roamed lost the alternative harbour For my soul still distant The Prince, I discovered, existed In a twilight world of mysterious ailments He denied his feelings Such denial only immersed him In maintaining the world of external restraints It created emptiness, a vacancy Filled by material concerns I pleaded with him The emerald gene came down Soon the leaves of grass Whispered another order of existence Strangeness of sensation Intoxication of vision Unhinged for mortals And as the sound increased one cannot Describe what else it is that has been I viewed a world transparent Devoid of illumination within which Was never a sea or land Then the prophets were stoned For they were all liars And I saw the most beautiful flower Unfolding out of its own roots For such a flower cannot Unfold other than it does I stood on the threshold of Orcus I met Abbas Effendi the Gene without a name Bab, Upanishads spilled music in my ears Called to me in the most spectacular of colours It was wonderful for the colours Were like my dreams, red, black and green I witnessed the three, sometimes as one Other times as two, again and again The self eternal and inseparable sons Of Shakyamuni caressed me with their thoughts Their music and colour moved about me In ecstatic rhythm like the peaceful Waves of the ocean as upon a shore I read the sentences of silence Breathed the perfume of never fading flowers Walked in cherry blossom snow Heard Hafiz reciting in the night I saw for the first time The unfinished likeness of others.
Then one day the Prince With a sweeping theatrical and So to speak, allegorical flourish bowed Called me an exiled angel Said the time had come to travel To leave the images of naked heels Imprinted in the clay We wondered Then as if by magic, suddenly the shadows Of houses, halls, and a church Emerged like enchanted islands in a fairy tale The spiritualised forms of civilisation I was approached by a graceful youth Draped in cobweb lawn He was pale, delicately beautiful Spanish looking, but his name was Alexis Sonyeuse Whose family it was said was Related to the French Emperor Napoleon It was also rumoured that he had Had a tempestuous affair with the Bishop of Monaco And once slept with his half brother Julian Apollinaire When he spoke he was at once original Delicious, moving, droll and discreetly melancholy Listening to him was like breathing The perfume of wondrous flowers But the scent of datura hung about him Paralleling his every movement Another youth, Edmond also greeted me He was a young man with aristocratic features A complexion pink, like a girls And a bearing at once charmingly gracious And audaciously insolent His shirt was strange, the lining A peculiarly orange colour A flame coloured taffeta Like the petticoats of a whore
They looked at me Furtive glances emanated from their eyes Training a profound stare upon my person The two youths took me to 18 Avenue de Friedland There two boy servants Adoum and Outhman greeted us Spinario's lay about its confines Frezans caressing them As they touched their feet A hundred echansons moved With dazzling delicacy dispensing dreams In drops from crystalline cups Here I witnessed the tragic faces of the population Urnings, cleaning in the midst of anarchist trials The room a fiery red, stained with light The caress of forgotten thought Like the thickness of a sorrow Musicians playing on broken strings Crimson whores, who defied the King of Naples We moved past wretches Like Virgil, but Danteian Saw the usurers heard the rustling Of lute strings the clinking of grey paper Observed in this Minatare's lair The purchase of a twelve penny dagger Liberty of speech meeting its great reckoning In a little room, Ingram the poltergeist Of misfortune was there Dead Scythian, who ever loved you Loved you as you might, loved you at first sight.
This was a new and exciting world Whose environs were populated By the most mysterious and colourful of people I was introduced by the two youths To a suicidal young painter who Was rebelling against his class He was a somewhat forced intellectual With an over quixotic passion for equality Still he was warm, kind and impulsive Poetry, he made it known Had opened his mind to the invisible Beside him was a painting Exemplifying a new kind of observation In a style absolutely faultless Each structure clear, each brush stroke Falling exactly into place Inscribed in the top left Corner were the words "Quod me nutrit me destruit" An introduction to himself of a tall youth Whose eyes possessed a constant Vagrancy of desire Who seemed at once, for one so young To have led a violent, voluptuous and unbridled life I was pleased with him Liked him for he possessed All the bad qualities it was possible For any one individual to have He had tasted the essence of satanic delights Owned the freedom of the illegitimate Preferring pleasure to penance He was an oasis in the pitiless deserts of life Completely, unashamedly and deliciously immoral An able assistant to the executioner of the heart
Then, beckoned by Alexis Who was flanked By a mute, nameless Eros I was taken to an enchanted forest In which I was immediately lost And was quite happy to be so It was so delicious I knew not how I had entered nor where I would come out I moved without advancing Advanced without moving But always with the same result We vibrated before the same shape of splendour The idea united us We were both lovers of the same spiritual flight We went beyond time where fulfilment is eternal Voyages on earth may end But this is not the true end for nothing ends Then I found myself crying Over the desolate hearse at Chareville For he left an afterlife in my memory.
A quartforche confronted me Alexis with perfumed gloves Caressed my face He did not want me to choose Not instantly, he spoke once more. You are the one who will pierce the air Penetrate the sky Wonder your way among the stars Overpass the margins of the world Imaginary divisions among spheres Will you shatter Smash the false mathematics Of a blind but popular philosophy And quenching the fire In the Campo del Fiori You will become the Gene Of a million youthful minds Whose iambic devotion will Last as long as the sun ascends Giving birth to untold heroic frenzies Discard the vulgar trodden paths Walk, as you must, with Trismegistus For you are the shadow of ideas Your destiny to look and menace The heavens and frighten false gods You shall teach eyes to see The gardens of the skies Let each of your senses have its desires But beware the Prince His voice with Cassandraian syllable warned For it is your mind that is the parchment Of his pen He will write upon it What comes to his mind Be it vile or be it kind Etch upon an ink stained soul Whose shadow now as black as coal Is like the silence of a sorrow He is not what you seek He is not Prince but Priest Revealing others mysteries So that it is he who may be praised
I felt the cob web lawn surround me Hands gently moved across my existence Our souls were drawn together We wore eternal friendship I gazed upon him His hair was weeping on his brow Like the shifting branches of a willow tree A melancholy cry echoed from him in fright He wept, Alas you are cursed, for you Will see Zanzibar but it will Be forever just beyond your reach . Those long sought shores That seduce you will never succumb to your embrace Nor feel your tread, or bathe in your beauty For you are the youth that turns the heads of men". In despair I screamed Nuper me in littore vidi. It has been another shore Alexis said softly Smoothing the tears on my cheeks Now I must take my leave Shall I encounter you again I asked Yes, even unto the last When only one foot imprints the travelled clay Come with me I pleaded. No, he said It's wrong to hunger after The happiness of another Each must find his own The mask of another Cannot be worn No matter how good it feels Alexis walked then turned back You will live like Athalaric Drink from many cups But for you, to be a seer holds A more powerful intoxication Do not try to grasp love Nor hold it in your hands You should realise that love is Winged and cannot be possessed like an object He was gone.
Awakening as if from a dream The Prince motioned to me Loathe to remember the words of Alexis I went with him
Moving among a deserted, disgusting landscape That showed the baseness and madness of mankind
