At 21 Rimbaud gave up writing (he had already changed what is called "literature" forever) and traveled to Ethiopia; he got sick there and died in France from cancer, after his right leg was amputated, at the age of 37.
I am really not sure if the translated version is as powerful as the original one in french, but:
VOWELS
A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue : vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
Which buzz around cruel smells,
Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
In anger or in the raptures of penitence;
U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;
O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:
O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes!
(Rimbaud is the young one sitting on the left, with big hair)
Agathe
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