walking - two translations

"I was heading off with fists in tattered pockets;
My overcoat also becoming idealised;
I rambled under the sky, Muse, your supplicant;
Oh! So fantastic! What exquisite loves I dreamed.

A gaping hole in my only pair of trousers ...
-- Tom Thumb the dreamer, I sowed rhymes while wandering ..."

- Arthur Rimbaud, from 'Ma Boheme' (A fantasy), trans by John Kinsella


"On the road again, one fist in the hole I've poked
in a trouser pocket, my topcoat notional
as the sky I'm wrapped in, muse, your slave, your liege
lieutenant. Oh my! The affairs I've had a hand in
through that hole in my pants, Tom Thumb at his dopey dreamwork. ..."

- Arthur Rimbaud, from 'Ma Boheme' (A Gipsy's Life), trans by David Malouf


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