A Found Sonnet: Blue and Black Gemstones
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
“I cannot accept this death. It’s been some
Years now since we’ve seen each other. Rimbaud,
Though (Arthur’s art and face), still shines out from
The back of my dark brain. Rimbaud is a low,
Bright sun which burns inside me, that does not
Want darkness snuffed out of my mind. That’s why
I dream of Rimbaud every night. No blot
Will rub him out. I can’t forget his bi-
Striated eyes, their double blues.” That’s how
Paul’s friend in later years wrote down the pain.
I’ve hardly had to change them, to allow
The scars to speak their pulsing meaning. Plain
..Agony showed Verlaine couldn’t be wise
….Behind what were his “black diamond eyes.”
[Arthur Rimbaud and Oscar Wilde were born four days apart from each other.
They both died and are buried in France. Wilde arrived as a student at Oxford
at the same time that Rimbaud was abandoning poetry and teaching French in
the large house of his employer in Reading, Berkshire, England. Many years
later, long after Rimbaud’s death, Wilde was sent to prison in Reading and put
in a solitary cell and forced into hard labor for two years. It is a short stroll
from that jail to Montpellier House where Rimbaud had worked and lived.]