For the upcoming new edition of Merde à la Belle Époque, here’s some early Rimbaud. This poem has been translated before, but this may be the first attempt in rhyming verse. And I was careful to preserve Rimbaud’s alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes as well.

THE ACCURSED CHERUB
(Arthur Rimbaud, 1871)

The roofs are bluish, doors are whitish,
Like when a Sunday’s turning nightish,

Upon the outskirts, all is mum,
The Street is white, and night has come.

Strange houses rise above the gutters,
Embellished with Angelic shutters.

But, near a border stone, behold
Come running, poor and numb with cold,

A dusky Cherub, who then tarries
Because he ate too many berries.

He takes a dump: and runs away:
But his accursed dump will stay

Beneath the holy moon that watches,
A cesspit specked with bloody blotches!