“Why Rimbaud” [by David Shapiro]

Why Rimbaud

         for D. L.

Why Rimbaud, ambivalent boy 

Who renounced music

Geology, murder, adulthood,

throwing a stone at a stranger

A butterfly lands on his lapel

like a Jewish star.  No more music.

— David Shapiro

from In  Memory of an Angel by David Shapiro (San Francisco: City Lights, 2017)