Supervert’s New Translation of ‘To Arthur Rimbaud’

 To Arthur Rimbaud
 by Helmut Maria Soik
 
 Your blast calculations were     
 right on the money, my boy                          
 the armored wall of poetic imagination
 collapsed under your hand                       
  
 But what the hell                                      
 happened to your right leg?                      
 The knee is swollen like a pumpkin           
 in the African grass of your fervid nights. 
 Why didn't the ship's boilers explode 
 on the high seas
 and put an end
 to your misery?
  
 That you rot away in a bloody bed
 Arthur, as the nun's voice from the graveyard
 rings out through the Hôpital 
 de la Conception
 That you cry out in the night from your poppy jungle
 That you cry out to the tam-tam of knife dancers
 is no longer just your own concern.
 It's the price you pay
 for rebelling against the Christian
 welfare state
 for being a partisan
 of absolute freedom
 for nailing the note                     
 "Dieu est mort"
 on the church door
 for declaring the bankruptcy
 of our broken-down culture.
  
 "Monsieur, I will decide
 whatever 'real life' they're ranting about,
 the non-conformists," says 
 the god of the bourgeoisie
 putting his bowler hat
 on the head of Hugo's Hermes              
 calling out the whole city of Paris
 in front of the Pantheon
 so the academy's brightest lights                         
 can bend a knee before the Te Deum of horse hooves.
  
 Go back to sleep, Arthur, don't wake up
 with your one good leg
 your belt of Abyssinian gold
 among the rotting anemones of snow.
 Go back to sleep, Jean Arthur, my angel
 under your kitschy tombstone of
 eighteen ninety-one! At least 
 you only died one death
 like the poor sunflower
 that languished
 by itself
 on the table in the waiting room.

Translated from the German by Supervert.