draft of DAWN from Three Persons: Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud

I held the summer’s sun in my throat.
Of the palaces
the water was dead.

From road to wood I walked in the swarms
of one’s shadow,
the stones turned their heads.

A flower’s wing
told me her name
though silently

on the path
of white cold
shimmerings

where I laughed
at a waterfall
from its silver top.

Then off the satellite’s
path, into the piney
wind’s translation.

In a field of clocks,
I waved off my arms.
In the city of death’s note

I discovered the goddess
stripped of her veil;
between steeples

and domes–
like a thief
after marble

or precious creak
washed stone
I chased her back

into the wood,
back into the pine
and the laurel.

I wrapped her in all her veils
feeling dawn’s immensity.
When I woke

It was noon.
My body
on the wrong

side of the bed.