Interpretation of "Barbare" ("Barbaric") by Arthur Rimbaud

* * * * * * *
,

Rough

Days and decades long ago, people and places later....

The raw meat streamer lolls on milky silk, on flowers closed for the night (they're not there).

Recycled war songs in heart and head are nothing like the old killers.

-- Oh! The raw meat streamer lolls on milky silk, on flowers closed for the night (they're not there).

Whew!

Tiny torches rain in a cyclone of rime -- whew! Flares in drops of diamond gusts spew from the heart of eternal earth rock hard just for us. Oh, Earth!

(Far from old love nests and hearths still heard and felt....)

Tiny torches and the sea foam. A music, then tectonic shifts and icicles thrown at Orion's belt.

Oh, ecstasies, Earth, oh melody! As if by magic, solids, then sweat, velvet hair and staring eyes, all floating. And boiling white tears - whew again - and a soothing voice starts to murmur in seamounts¹ and Arctic caves.

The raw ....

interpretation by Greg Baysans

¹seamounts: "Researchers have discovered a pair of seafloor volcanoes, or seamounts, that serve as inflow and outflow points for a vast ocean-floor plumbing system.[...] [C]old water is flowing into the sea-floor through a large seamount known as Grizzly Bare [sic]. The outflow point is 32 miles away at a smaller volcano called Baby Bare. ¶They calculated that it takes about 40 to 400 years for water to flow from one seamount to the other." - February 12, 2003 news wire item

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