from 'A Season in Hell' by Arthur Rimbaud




On the road, on winter nights, no shelter, no clothes, no food, a voice would fasten on my heart:

'weakness and strength: the fact is you are here - that much is strength. You don't know where you're going or why. Go everywhere, answer every greeting. You're no more likely to get yourself killed than if you were already a corpse.'

In the morning my eyes would be so blank, my expression so dead, that people I encountered may not even have seen me.




Arthur Rimbaud - Selected Poems and Letters
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Jeremy Harding and John Sturrock
Penguin Books, 2004, p. 147