"Rimbaud" by Wystan Hugh Auden

The nights, the railway-arches, the bad sky,
His horrible companions did not know it;
But in that child the rhetorician’s lie
Burst like a pipe: the cold had made a poet.

Drinks bought him by his weak and lyric friend
His five wits systematically deranged,
To all accustomed nonsense put an end;
Till he from lyre and weakness was estranged.

Verse was a special illness of the ear;
Integrity was not enough; that seemed
The hell of childhood: he must try again.

Now, galloping through Africa, he dreamed
Of a new self, a son, an engineer,
His truth acceptable to lying men.

December 1938

to burst - to break or cause to break open or apart suddenly and noisily, esp from internal pressure; explode

five wits - the five senses or mental faculties

Рембо (перевод Р. Шустеровича)

Тьма под мостами, злые небеса;
Его ватаге вряд ли внятно это,
Но в сорванце — витийства словеса
Фонтаном: холод породил поэта.

Абсент, что лил нестойкий лирик-друг,
Пятёрке чувств мутил дорогу к миру,
Рутинной ерунды смывая круг —
Пока он вовсе не отбросил лиру.

Поэзия — афазии пример,
Быть цельным недостаточно. Провал.
Поди, другое детство одолжи.

По Африке болтаясь, он мечтал
О новом "я" — наследник, инженер,
Чьи истины приемлемы для лжи.

J. Fuller A Reader's Guide to W.H.Auden

'Rimbaud'  contains imagery that inevitably suggests Blake's 'The cistern contains; the fountain overflows' - a thought that Auden takes up again in 'New Year Letter' , where he describes Rimbaud as having 'strangled an old rhetoric'. Not only did Rimbaud help to break the tyranny of the alexandrine; he helped to free truth from its confinement in art, to bring the experience of poetry into real life as a 'dereglement de tous les sens' (the 'weak and lyric friend' being, of course, Verlaine). But finally 'integrity was not enough'. The new life as merchant and explorer is seen as the failed visionary's second attempt at wholeness (Dr Starkie's work on Rimbaud began with her monograph on the African period).