[NDC Halloween] Le Bal des Pendus (Halloween Cut)

Arthur Rimbaud - Le Bal des Pendus (1870) 🇫🇷 Au gibet noir… manchot aimable… Dansent… dansent… les paladins… Les maigres paladins du diable… Les squelettes de Saladins. Paladins… du diable… dansez… dansez… Messire Belzébuth tire par la cravate! Ses petits pantins noirs… grimaçant sur le ciel! Et leur claquant au front… un revers de savate! DANSENT! DANSENT! Les cordes crient! Les corps se plient! Hurrah — les gais danseurs sans vie! Je les vois… je les vois… Respire. Hurrah! la bise siffle — au grand bal des squelettes! Le gibet noir mugit… comme un orgue de fer! A l’horizon… le ciel… d’un rouge… d’enfer… — faint child voice humming a Noël — 🇬🇧 At the black gallows, one-armed fool, they dance, they dance — the devil’s crew. The skinny knights, the bony few, the skeletons of what we knew. Lord Beelzebub yanks their ties, his little black puppets grin at the skies. He slaps their skulls, a leather sting, and makes them dance to a Christmas hymn. Hurrah, the merry dancers, skin long gone, you can jump now — your bones weigh none. Hop till you forget if it’s fight or fun; Beelzebub’s bow scrapes on and on. Hard heels, no soles to lose, bare skulls wear snow for hats and hues. The crow’s black plume on cracked bone stays, and flesh still trembles in their dazed remains. They turn, they twist, in ruined grace, their hollow hearts beat out of place. The wind howls through each splintered chest, and the dead keep time with what’s left. Hurrah, the wind shrieks through the skeleton ball, the black gallows moans like an iron hall. Wolves howl back from violet trees, and hell’s red sky refuses to freeze. Shake them, shake those funeral men, who with cracked fingers count love again, sliding beads along pale spines — no chapel here, just crossed lines. Then, from the center of the corpse parade, a mad skeleton leaps in flame and shade, lifted up by the gallows’ strain, still gripping tight its broken chain. It cracks its bones in laughter’s sound, snaps a femur against the ground, and vanishes back into the throng — to the rhythm of death’s own song. At the black gallows, one-armed fool, they dance, they dance — the devil’s crew. The skinny knights, the bony few, the skeletons of me and you. Dance, even when there’s nothing left to move.