Vowels

Adaptations: It Was Nobody | The Storm | Hardly Disfigured | Vowels | Sacred Defoliation | Him | The United Fruit Company

 

Vowels

                  after Rimbaud

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue — vowels,
One day I’ll tell your secret origins:
A, black hairy corset of dazzling flies
That boom around cruel stenches,

Gulfs of shadow; E, candor of steams and tents,
Proud glacier spears, white kings, shivers of Queen-Anne’s-lace;
I, maroons, spat blood, laughter of beautiful lips
In anger or in penitent intoxications;

U, cycles, divine vibrations of viridian oceans,
Peace of pastures seeded with animals, peace of wrinkles,
Of alchemical print on studious foreheads;

O, supreme Bugle full of strange shrill cries,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:—
O, the Omega, violet ray of His Eyes!

 

(Previously appeared in: Fogged Clarity)