incandescens | La Fee

My tiny test bottle of French absinthe arrived today, together with an absinthe spoon and two sugar cubes. This to some extent compensated for an extremely annoying meeting which had been planned for 2 hours and went on for almost 3. The first would have been bad enough. :P

Ah well. I think I'll try and go up to London on Saturday, gross extravagance as it is, and visit the Colindale area where all the Japanese shops are supposed to be. Self-indulgence, here I come. I do hope I can run across Minnekura's _Executive Committee_. And a few other things, too.

In honour of absinthe, I enclose this translation of a poem by Antonin Artaud (1896-1948).

VERLAINE BOIT (VERLAINE DRINKS)

There will always be whores on street corners,
Lost shells stranded on the stellar shores
Of a blue dusk which belongs neither here nor on earth
Where taxis roll by like bewildered beetles.

But they roll less than in my whirling head
The green gem of absinthe deep in the glass
Where I drink perdition and the thunder
Of the Lord's judgement to roast my naked soul.

Ah! How the tangled spindles of the streets
Turn and spin the fabric of men and women,
As if a spider were weaving her web
With the filaments of uncovered souls.

---