Day 22 of the 2007 Fun-a-Day project with the Artclash Collective.

Evening Prayer
By Arthur Rimbaud, trans. Dennis J. Carlile

I live parked, like an angel in a barber's chair,
In my fist a fluted thick mug of beer,
My gullet and gut bend curving, pipe here
Clenched in teeth, veiled in puffs of impalpable air.

Like the dung in some old dovecot, simmering,
Countless Dreams within me gently smolder.
Soon enough my sad heart's like a sapling
Running bloody tears of young and sullen gold.

Then, when I've thoroughly damped down my Dreams,
I turn, after thirty or forty beers,
And address my prayers to a pressing need.

Easy as the Lord of cedar and of hyssops,
I piss to the dark skies, up high and oh-so far,
To the nodding assent of great heliotropes.