…it would be a very good thing if people were taught how to speak.  Language is the noblest instrument we have, either for the revealing or the concealing of thought; talk itself is a sort of spiritualized action; and conversation is one of the loveliest of the arts.

Court and Society Review, 4 May 1887

Oscar Wilde, Nothing…Except My Genius, Penguin Books, 1997

My Little Mistresses

A tincture of tears washes
The cabbage-green skies:
Beneath the dripping tree with tender shoots,
Your waterproofs
Whitened by peculiar moons
With round staring eyes,
Knock your kneecaps together,
My ugly ones!
We loved each other in those days,
Blue ugly one!
We used to eat boiled eggs
And chickweed!
One evening you anointed me poet,
Blond ugly one:
Come down here, let me smack you
Across my knees;
I have puked up your brillantine,
Black ugly one;
You would stop the sound of my mandolin
Before it was out of my head.
Ugh! My dried spittle,
Red-headed ugly one,
Still infects the wrinkles
Of your round breast!
O my little Mistresses,
How I hate you!
Plaster with painful blisters
Your ugly bosoms!
Trample upon my little pots
Of feelings;
Now then jump! Be ballerinas for me
Just for a moment!
Your shoulder-blades are out of joint,
O my loves!
With a star on your hobbling backs
Turn in your turns!
And yet after all, it’s for these shoulders of mutton
That I’ve made rhymes!
I’d like to break your hips
For having loved!
Insipid heap of fallen stars,
Pile up in the corners!
- You’ll be extinguished in God, saddled
With ignoble cares!
Whitened by peculiar moons,
With round staring eyes,
Knock your kneecaps together,
My ugly ones!

A.R

- As translated by Oliver Bernard: Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962).
- Text of the letter to Paul Demeny, May 15, 1871.

來源：http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Mistresses.html

來源: http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/Biographie.html

Nina’s Replies

HE - Your breast on my breast,
Eh? We could go,
With our nostrils full of air,
Into the cool light

Of the blue good morning that bathes you
In the wine of daylight?…
When the whole shivering wood bleeds,
Dumb with love

From every branch green drops,
Pale buds,
You can feel in things unclosing
The quivering flesh:

You would bury in the lucerne
Your white gown,
Changing to rose-colour in the fresh air the blue tint which encircles
Your great black eyes,

In love with the country,
Scattering everywhere,
Like champagne bubbles,
Your crazy laughter:

Laughing at me, suddenly, drunkenly -
I should catch you
Like this - lovely hair, ah! -
I should drink in

Your taste of raspberry and strawberry,
Oh flower-flesh!
Laughing at the fresh wind kissing you
Like a thief,

At the wild rose, teasing you
Pleasantly:
Laughing more than anything, oh madcap,
At your lover!…

Seventeen! You’ll be so happy!
Oh! the big meadows
The wide loving countryside!
- Listen, come closer!…

Arthur Rimbaud

來源: http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Evening.html