Dance of the Hanged People

Hurray! the gay dancers whose bellies are gone!
You can cut capers on such a long stage!
Hop! never mind whether its fighting or dancing!
Maddened, they saw on their fiddles!

Oh the hard heels, no one's pumps are wearing out.
And nearly all have taken of their shirts of skin.
The rest is not embarrassing and can be seen without shame.
On each skull the snow places a white hat.

The crow acts as a plume for these cracked brains,
A scrap of flesh clings to each lean chin
You would say, to see them turning in their dark combats,
They were stiff knights clashing pasteboard armours.

Ho there, shake up those funeral braggarts,
Craftily telling with their great broken fingers
The beads of their loves on their pale vertebrae:
Hey the departed, this is no monastery here!

Oh! but see how from the middle of this Dance of Death
Springs into the red sky a great skeleton, mad,
Carried away by his own impetus, like a rearing horse,
And, feeling the rope tight again around his neck,

Clenches his knuckles on his thighbone with a crack
Uttering cries like mocking laughter,
And then like a mountback into his booth,
Skips back into the dance to the music of the bones!

Rimbaud