Comedy of Thrist: 1-3

1. The Parents

We are your Grand-Parents, the Grown-Ups!
Covered with the cold sweats of the moon and the greensward.
Our dry wines had heart in them!
In the sunshine where there is no deception,
what does man need? To drink.
Myself: To die among barbarous rivers.

We re your Grand-Parents of the fields.
The water lies at the foot of the willows:
see the flow of the moat round the damp castle.
Let us go down to our storerooms;
afterwards, cider or milk.
Myself: To go where the cows drink.

We are your Grand-Parents; here,
take some of the liqueurs in our cupboards;
Tea and Coffee, so rare, sing in our kettles.
Look at the pictures, the flowers.
We are back from the cemetery.
Myself: Ah! To drink all urns dry!

2. The Soul

Eternal Undines, split the pure water.
Venus, sister of azure, stir up the clear wave.
Wandering Jews of Norway, tell me of snow;
old beloved exiles tell me of the sea.
Myself: No, no more of these pure drinks,
these water-flowers for glasses;
neither legends nor faces quench my thirst;
singer, your god-child is my thirst so mad,
a mouthless intimate hydra
which consumes and ravages.

3. Friends

Come, the Wines are off to the seaside,
and the waves by the million!
Look at wild Bitter rolling from the mountain tops!
Let us reach, like good pilgrims, green-pillared Absinthe…

Myself: No more of these landscapes.
What is drunkenness, friends?
I had soon - rather, even - rot in the pond,
beneath the horrible scum, near the floating driftwood.
Arthur Rimbaud

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