Ed. note: Wayne Terwilliger, our Paris correspondent, passed along Jacques Martin’s translation of a sonnet by Arthur Rainbow, the pseudonym of a Franco-American poet keeping a low profile on the Ile St Louis.
Rimbaud, According to Rambo
Stop those drugs from reaching American soil.
Clean up San Francisco and let Tony Bennett sing.
Let freedom ring. I have nothing to offer but toil,
blood, sweat, and tears. What goes up, must come down.
Poetry is like Africa but less exciting.
I don’t see the point of writing poems or going to town
where the cafes, teeming with tits, try their best to fling
their gadgets in your face. The principles are the frown
on the face of the portrait of a poker player
who learned church Latin in the provinces of France.
Nevertheless the queen couldn’t tell off the mayor
because neither of them learned to dance
because they abolished the dance in all its elegance
because life was a game contrived by chance.
— Arthur Rainbow
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Author: The Best American Poetry
