“Dawn” by Arthur Rimbaud is the second piece for National Poetry Month. This is taken from the book “Rimbaud Complete”, published in 2002 by Modern Library.
I held the summer dawn in my arms.
Nothing stirred on front of the palaces. The water was dead. Camps of shadows rested on the road through the woods. I walked, awakening live warm breaths as precious stones looked on and wings soundlessly rose.
The first undertaking, in a path already filled with cool pale glimmers of light, was a flower that told me its name.
I laughed at a blonde wasserfall whose tresses streamed between firs; at the silvered summit I recognized the goddess.
So, one by one, I lifted her veils. In a lane, whirling my arms. In a field, shouting to a rooster. Into the city she fled, between steeples and domes, and I gave chase, running like a beggar on marble docks.
At the crest of the road, near a stand of laurels, I enveloped her in her gathered veils, and felt something of her boundless shape. Dawn and the child fell to the forest floor.
It was noon when I awoke.
