Yes, this post should have gone up on Friday. Yes, it is now Saturday. I've been extremely busy (even more than usual) with work lately, so I'll have to apologize to all of you for the haphazard posting lately.
Here's Rimbaud, brilliant decadent that he was, seeing the evil of church and king weighing down upon the world. I'm fond of this poem, and it hits hard.
But it's interesting that Rimbaud notes that "nature" meant the slain to smile. Nature's a bitch of an interesting concept, being a human category for "big shit that takes place outside our control but which we can fuck up when we feel like it."
Especially in the 19th century, it often took the traditional spot of God in the secular mind. Hence you'd hear: nature wants this, natural laws indicate that, to do so would be unnatural. People love to invoke something larger and vaguer than themselves to settle tricky, insoluble arguments, whatever their creed. Next time you hear someone chatter off that "the laws of the market suggest" or "this group of people will naturally..." keep that in mind.
Of course, one can certainly make the argument that machine guns, mass slaughter and greedy religious institutions are just as natural as rural serenity. But whether as god or devil, we seem to like to see nature as something apart from ourselves.
Without further rambling, the poem:
While the red-stained mouths of machine guns ring
Across the infinite expanse of day;
While red or green, before their posturing King,
The massed battalions break and melt away;
And while a monstrous frenzy runs a course
That makes of a thousand men a smoking pile-
Poor fools! - dead, in summer, in the grass,
On Nature's breast, who meant these men to smile;
There is a God, who smiles upon us through
The gleam of gold, the incense-laden air,
Who drowses in a cloud of murmured prayer,
And only wakes when weeping mothers bow
Themselves in anguish, wrapped in old black shawls-
And their last small coin into his coffer falls.
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