Ma Bohème (Jean-Arthur Rimbaud)

MA BOHÈME Jean-Arthur Rimbaud . Je m'en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées; Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal; J'allais sous le ciel, Muse, et j'étais ton féal; Oh! là là! que d'amours splendides j'ai rêvées! . Mon unique culotte avait un large trou. Petit-Poucet rêveur, j'égrenais dans ma course Des rimes. Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse. Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou . Et je les écoutais, assis au bord des routes, Ces bons soirs de septembre où je sentais des gouttes De rosée à mon front, comme un vin de vigueur; . Où, rimant au milieu des ombres fantastiques, Comme des lyres, je tirais les élastiques De mes souliers blessés, un pied près de mon coeur! . I am not even going to try to make the English translation a poem. The above is a poem Jean-Arthur Rimbaud wrote about his wanderings as a vagabond, immersing himself in nature. A rough translation of it is as follows: . MY WANDERINGS AS A VAGABOND . I used to take to the road, with my hands in my pockets full of holes and a coat that was getting more imaginary than real. I used to walk beneath the sky, oh Muse; I was your devotee. Wow, what splendid loves I dreamed of then! . My only pair of trousers had a big hole in it and as I walked, a dreamy Tom Thumb, I spouted lines of verse. My inn was the constellation of the Great Bear. In the sky my stars made a gentle rustling. . And I used to listen to them, while sitting at the roadside on those good September nights when I could feel drops of dew on my forehead, like invigorating wine. . There, making poems amid fantastical shadows, I would stretch and pluck like lyre-strings the laces of my wounded shoes, with one foot up near my heart.