In 1873, French poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, lovers, quarreled on a Brussels train station platform. Rimbaud wanted to leave, having enough of the tumultuous relationship, but Verlaine insisted he stay. Rimbaud refused and in a blind rage, Verlaine shot him in the wrist. For his crime he served two years in a Brussels prison. During this time, he desperately tried to repent for this sin and wrote poems and letters of and to Rimbaud. Having no writing utensils he was forced to use the coffee rations in the prison to write on contraband paper. This story inspired the following poem. Enjoy.
Verlaine to Rimbaud (from a Belgian Cell)
He dips the tip in the grinds,
Swirls it to the point,
Extracting a blotch to smear
Across the selected scrap
Of contraband paper.
The scene, an acidic departure
On a train platform,
Reverberates aloft in his mind:
He scratches words and phrases—
Incantations to the blue-eyed devil—
And mutters over his tears:
Immutable devotion and adoration
To the young man,
That very demon, laid wounded
In a sterile bed with our prisoner’s
Bullet lodged in his hoof.
Counting hours, measuring the remaining,
He scribbles corporeal anxiety,
Fermenting his art in absolute desire,
Desperation and the aching sense
Of the finality of all this poison.
Two years to repent,
A lifetime to recover:
A man driven to madness,
Driven by the feeble,
Flaccid deathly yelp of his passion
To write the final verses—
First in spoiled coffee grounds
And then, if he must,
In the briny remnants of his pleas—
To his intent, to his muse,
The sardonic, young Saint of Charleville.
He no longer wrote of love,
But, only, about it:
Bereft the pulse of his wonder
He lingered among the cafes of Paris,
A mind soaked in Absinthe,
To die a pauper,
Leaving behind only a wealth of poetry
And a haunting fleck of shrapnel in Brussels.
