Hunger (excerpt)

by Arthur Rimbaud
Translated from the French by Louise Varése

If I’ve a taste, its not alone
For the earth and stones,
Rocks, coal, iron, air,
That’s my daily fare.

Turn my hungers, hungers browse
On the field of sound,
Suck up bindweed’s gay venom
Along the ground.

Eat the pebbles that one breaks,
Churches’ old stones;
Gravel of ancient deluge taste,
And loaves scattered in grey brakes.

*

Howling underneath the leaves
The wolf spits out the lovely plumes
Of his feast of fowls:
Like him I am consumed.

Salads and fruits
Await but the picking;
But violets are the food
Of spiders in the thicket.

Let me sleep!  Let me seethe
at the altars of Solomon.
Broth run over the rust
and mix with the Cedron.

–Read at St. Lydia’s on February 27