Eternity
By Arthur Rimbaud
(translated by D. Wilde)
It's recovered.
What? -- Eternity.
It's the sea gone
With the sun.
Guardian spirit,
Let's whisper consent
To empty night
And the day on fire.
From human prayer,
From common impulses,
From them you're cut free
And fly that way.
Since for you alone,
Embers of satin,
Duty is discharged
Without saying: finally.
Not hope, there,
Nor guide.
Knowledge with patience,
Agony's certain.
It's recovered.
What? -- Eternity.
It's the sea gone
With the sun.
More about Rimbaud
Botanoluminescence
From mid-September to mid-October hereabouts, sunlight slants
in through birches, oaks and pines at angles unseen in any other
time of year. In late afternoon the scarlet sumac and goldenrod
skeletons and even stands of horseweed radiate energy that
practically sets the day on fire. The angle of the sunlight is prying
something loose. The dry brown stalks and inflorescences of grass
are illuminated as if from inside.
It takes superhuman patience to keep a scientific eye.
The maples, Thoreau observed, are "the most beautiful of all
tangible things." Their red leaves, and the copper beech leaves,
purple grasses and burst milkweed pods become prisms of things
unseen, directing otherwise invisible glints of divinity onto your
retina and transforming them there, right in the same angle where
the sea and sun vanish into each other. In the crystal clear autumn
sunlight, the intangible is as near to tangible as it can get and not
kill you.
More stuff like this from the sun-line-cave world is available instantly
in e-version by going here.
More botanoluminescent photos.
_____________________________________________________
