Poems

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

This selection by Peter Washington first published in Everyman’s Library, 1993
From Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire. Translation by Richard Howard.
Translation copyright © 1982 by Richard Howard. Reprinted by permission of David R. Godine, Publisher.
The prose poems are from Petits Poèmes en Prose, translated as Twenty Prose Poems by Michael Hamburger.
Translation copyright © 1946, 1968, 1988 by Michael Hamburger.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Published in the United Kingdom by Everyman’s Library, Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT. Distributed by Random House (UK) Ltd.

US website: www.randomhouse.com/everymans

ISBN 0-679-42910-7 (US)
1-85715-701-X (UK)
Ebook ISBN 978-0-375-71273-9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baudelaire, Charles, 1821–1867.
[Poems. English. Selections]
Poems / Charles Baudelaire.
p. cm.—(Everyman’s library pocket poets)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-679-42910-7
1. Baudelaire, Charles, 1821–1867—Translations into English. I. Title. II. Series.

PQ2191.A2 1993

93-14363

841’.8—dc20

v3.1

‘I Prize the Memory…’

The Punishment of Pride

‘Urn of Stilled Sorrows…’

‘You’d Sleep with Anyone…’

Sed Non Satiata

‘Even When She Walks…’

‘What Will You Say Tonight…’

Invitation to the Voyage

The Irreparable

Conversation (One Side)

Autumnal

Song for Late in the Day

A Fantastic Engraving

To a Red-Haired Beggar Girl

‘I Have Not Forgotten…’

‘You Used to Be Jealous…’

Damned Women: Delphine and Hippolyta

Damned Women

The Two Kind Sisters

Allegory

Metamorphoses of the Vampire

The Death of the Poor

The Death of Artists

A Strange Man’s Dream

The Promises of a Face

Epigraph for a Banned Book

PROSE POEMS

The Old Woman’s Despair

The Fool and the Venus

Crowds

A Hemisphere in a Head of Hair

Invitation to the Voyage

Solitude

Get Drunk!

The Favors of the Moon

Index of First Lines

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

LES FLEURS DU MAL

translated by Richard Howard

to the impeccable poet

to the perfect magician of French letters

to my beloved and revered master & friend

Théophile Gautier

with a sense of the deepest humility

I dedicate these sickly flowers

C.B.

TO THE READER

Stupidity, delusion, selfishness and lust

torment our bodies and possess our minds,

and we sustain our affable remorse

the way a beggar nourishes his lice.

Our sins are stubborn, our contrition lame;

we want our scruples to be worth our while –

how cheerfully we crawl back to the mire:

a few cheap tears will wash our stains away!

Satan Trismegistus subtly rocks

our ravished spirits on his wicked bed

until the precious metal of our will

is leached out by this cunning alchemist:

the Devil’s hand directs our every move –

the things we loathed become the things we love;

day by day we drop through stinking shades

quite undeterred on our descent to Hell.

Like a poor profligate who sucks and bites

the withered breast of some well-seasoned trull,

we snatch in passing at clandestine joys

and squeeze the oldest orange harder yet.

Wriggling in our brains like a million worms,

a demon demos holds its revels there,

and when we breathe, the Lethe in our lungs

trickles sighing on its secret course.

If rape and arson, poison and the knife

have not yet stitched their ludicrous designs

onto the banal buckram of our fates,

it is because our souls lack enterprise!

But here among the scorpions and the hounds,

the jackals, apes and vultures, snakes and wolves,

monsters that howl and growl and squeal and crawl,

in all the squalid zoo of vices, one

is even uglier and fouler than the rest,

although the least flamboyant of the lot;

this beast would gladly undermine the earth

and swallow all creation in a yawn;

I speak of Boredom which with ready tears

dreams of hangings as it puffs its pipe.

Reader, you know this squeamish monster well,

– hypocrite reader, – my alias, – my twin!

CONSECRATION

When by an edict of the sovereign powers

the Poet enters this indifferent world,

his mother, spurred to blasphemy by shame,

clenches her fists at a condoling God:

‘Why not have given me a brood of snakes

rather than make me rear this laughing-stock?

I curse the paltry pleasures of the night

on which my womb conceived my punishment!

Since I am chosen out of all my sex

to bring this scandal to my bed and board,

and since I cannot toss the stunted freak,

as if he were a love-letter, into the fire,

at least I can transfer Your hate to him,

the instrument of all Your wickedness,

and so torment this miserable tree

that not one of its blighted buds will grow!’

Choking on her enmity, and blind

to operations of the eternal plan,

she readies in a Gehenna of her own

the torture-chamber of a mother’s crimes.

Yet under an Angel’s unseen tutelage

the outcast child, enchanted by the sun,

will recognize in all he eats and drinks

golden ambrosia and nectar of the gods.

With winds for playmate and with clouds for nurse,

he sings the very stations of his cross –

the Spirit who attends his pilgrimage

weeps to see him happy as a bird.

Those he longs to love give him wide berth,

or, since he offers no resistance, vie

to be the first to make him moan with pain,

testing their violence, one after the next.

Fouling the food that he is meant to taste,

they spit in his wine, mix ashes in his bread,

whatever he touches they declare unclean

and claim they fear to walk where he has been.

Meanwhile his wife, in public places, cries:

‘Since he believes me worthy to adore,

I’ll deal in worship as old idols did

and, like them, have myself touched up with gold;

why not? I’ll glut myself with frankincense

and genuflections, gifts of meat and wine –

we’ll see if in so reverent a heart

my smile usurps the honor of the gods!

and when I weary of these impious tricks

the time will come for a laying-on of hands:

these frail and adamant hands, these harpies’ nails

will claw their way into his waiting breast;

as if a sparrow trembled in my fist

I’ll tear his beating heart out of his flesh

and toss it underfoot disdainfully

to make a mouthful for my favorite pet!’

To Heaven where he sees a splendid throne

the oblivious Poet lifts his pious arms,

and blinding flashes of his intellect

keep him from noticing the angry mob:

‘Thanks be to God, Who gives us suffering

as sacred remedy for all our sins,

that best and purest essence which prepares

the strong in spirit for divine delights!

I know the Poet has a place apart

among the holy legions’ blessed ranks;

You will invite him to the eternal feast

of Dominations, Virtues, Thrones and Powers:

I know that pain is the one nobility

upon which Hell itself cannot encroach;

that if I am to weave my mystic crown

I must braid into it all time, all space…

But even the lost gems of ancient Palmyra,

metals sunk in the earth, pearls in the sea,

set by Your hand, could not approximate

the brightness of this perfect diadem!

for it will be made of nothing but pure light

drawn from the hallowed hearth of primal rays,

of which our mortal eyes, for all their might,

are only a mournful mirror, a darkened glass.’

THE ALBATROSS

Often, to pass the time on board, the crew

will catch an albatross, one of those big birds

which nonchalantly chaperone a ship

across the bitter fathoms of the sea.

Tied to the deck, this sovereign of space,

as if embarrassed by its clumsiness,

pitiably lets its great white wings

drag at its sides like a pair of unshipped oars.

How weak and awkward, even comical

this traveller but lately so adroit –

one deckhand sticks a pipestem in its beak,

another mocks the cripple that once flew!

The Poet is like this monarch of the clouds

riding the storm above the marksman’s range;

exiled on the ground, hooted and jeered,

he cannot walk because of his great wings.

ELEVATION

Above the lake in the valley and the grove

along the hillside, high over the sea

and the passing clouds, and even past the sun!

to the farthest confines of the starry vault

mount, my spirit, wander at your ease

and range exultant through transparent space

like a rugged swimmer revelling in the waves

with an unutterable male delight.

Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere

to a higher plane, and purify yourself

by drinking as if it were ambrosia

the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness.

Free from the futile strivings and the cares

which dim existence to a realm of mist,

happy is he who wings an upward way

on mighty pinions to the fields of light;

whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise

into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked,

outreaches life and readily comprehends

the language of flowers and of all mute things,

CORRESPONDENCES

The pillars of Nature’s temple are alive

and sometimes yield perplexing messages;

forests of symbols between us and the shrine

remark our passage with accustomed eyes.

Like long-held echoes, blending somewhere else

into one deep and shadowy unison

as limitless as darkness and as day,

the sounds, the scents, the colors correspond.

There are odors succulent as young flesh,

sweet as flutes, and green as any grass,

while others – rich, corrupt and masterful –

possess the power of such infinite things

as incense, amber, benjamin and musk,

to praise the senses’ raptures and the mind’s.

‘I PRIZE THE MEMORY…’

I prize the memory of naked ages when

Apollo relished gilding marble limbs

whose agile-fleshed originals achieved

their ecstasy with neither fraud nor fear

and, nursed by that companionable sky,

enjoyed the health of a sublime machine.

Cybele then, abundant in her yield,

did not regard her sons as burdensome,

but, tender-hearted she-wolf, graciously

suckled the universe at her brown dugs.

Lithe and powerful, a man deserved

his pride in beauties who called him their king –

flawless fruit engendered without shame,

whose ripened flesh asked only to be tried!

Today the poet eager to recall

such human splendor, visiting the sites

where men and women show their nakedness,

must feel a cold revulsion in his soul

at the display of flesh he contemplates.

How these deformities cry out for clothes!

– wretched bodies, regular grotesques,

runty, paunchy, flabby, scrawny, lame,

brats whom Utility, a pitiless god,

has swaddled in his brazen diapers!

Look at the women – pale as tallow, gnawed

and nourished by debauch – the girls who bear

the burden of their mothers’ vice or wear

the hideous stigmas of fecundity!

True, in our corruption we possess

beauties unrevealed to ancient times:

countenances cankered by the heart

and, so to speak, the charm of listlessness;

but subtle though they are, such artifacts

of a belated muse will never keep

our sickly race from offering to youth

its truest homage; youth we worship still,

its frank expression, its untroubled brow,

its eyes as bright as water; sacred youth

that shares – unconscious as a singing bird,

a flower, or the blue sky’s radiance –

its song, its scent, its irresistible warmth!

GUIDING LIGHTS

Rubens

Garden of Sloth, Lethe’s fountainhead,

pillow of flesh where no dream is of love

but where life seethes and surges endlessly

like wind in heaven, sea within the sea;

Leonardo

A mirror somber in its distances

where charming angels with a mysterious

gentle smile appear beneath the shade

of pines and glaciers which enclose their realm;

Rembrandt

Sorry hospital echoing with sighs,

adorned by one enormous crucifix,

where tearful prayers rise from excrement

and a sudden ray of winter sunlight falls;

Michelangelo

No man’s land where every Hercules

becomes a Christ, where mighty phantoms rise

bolt upright from their graves and in the gloom

rend their shrouds by reaching out their hands;

Puget

Faun’s impudence and a prize-fighter’s rage,

jaundiced and weak, your great heart gorged with

that you could find the beauty in their crimes – [pride

you, the convicts’ melancholy emperor;

Watteau

Festivities where many famous hearts

flutter like moths as they go up in flame,

the chandeliers in this enchanted glade

cast a madness on the minuet;

Goya

Nightmare crammed with unfathomable things,

witches roasting foetuses in a pan,

crones at a mirror served by naked girls

who straighten stockings to entice the Fiend;

Delacroix

Evil angels haunt this lake of blood

darkened by the green shade of the firs,

where under a stricken sky the trumpet-calls

like a fanfare by Weber fade away…

These blasphemies, these ecstasies, these cries,

these groans and curses, tears and Te Deums,

re-echo through a thousand labyrinths –

a holy opium for mortal hearts!

A thousand sentries pass the order on,

a cry repeated by a thousand messengers;

hunters shout it, lost in the deep woods;

the beacon flares on a thousand citadels!

This, O Lord, is the best evidence

that we can offer of our dignity,

this sob that swells from age to age and dies

out on the shore of Your eternity!

THE SICK MUSE

Good morning, Muse – what’s wrong? Something you saw

last night is left in your hollow eyes;

your color’s bad, your cheeks are cold

with horror, with madness! – and you don’t say a word.

Are you silenced by the love and fear dispensed

by greenish vampires, rosy ghouls?

Or sunk in some legendary bog,

held under by nightmare’s unrelenting fist?

Not like this…I want you safe and sound,

thinking fit thoughts, breathing deep,

your Christian bloodstream coursing strong

and steadfast as the copious Classical vein

in the double realm of Pan and Apollo –

Lord of the Harvest, Father of Song.

THE MUSE FOR HIRE

My palace-loving Muse, can you afford –

once January launches out of the North

night after night of desolating snow –

the coals to comfort your frostbitten feet?

Are streetlamps through your shutters stove enough

to make your huddled shoulders warm again?

When your belly is as empty as your purse,

what will you do – harvest the stars for gold?

Try other ways to earn your nightly bread:

suppose you swing a censer (just for show)

and like a choirboy mumble all the hymns;

or, naked as an acrobat, reveal

laughing charms so wet with secret tears

they rouse the tired businessman to pay.

THE BAD MONK

There was a time when all refectory walls

were frescoed with the images of Truth

whose influence, kindling pious appetite,

tempered the chill of their austerity.

Christ was the Master then, and more than one

illustrious (and unremembered) monk

would scour the cemetery for his theme

and for his models, glorifying Death.

My habitation for eternity

is standing bare, the tomb that is my soul –

I haunt the naked walls of this sad place…

O slothful cenobite! When shall I make

the living pageant of my misery

into the work of my hands and the love of my eyes?

THE ENEMY

My youth was nothing but a lowering storm

occasionally lanced by sudden suns;

torrential rains have done their work so well

that no fruit ripens in my garden now.

Already the autumn of ideas has come,

and I must dig and rake and dig again

if I am to reclaim the flooded soil

collapsing into holes the size of graves.

I dream of new flowers, but who can tell

if this eroded swamp of mine affords

the mystic nourishment on which they thrive…

Time consumes existence pain by pain,

and the hidden enemy that gnaws our heart

feeds on the blood we lose, and flourishes!

ARTIST UNKNOWN

Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires

Sisyphean patience for its song.

Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short

and Art is long.

No illustrious tombstones ornament

the lonely churchyard where I often go

to hear my heart, a muffled drum, parade

incognito.

‘Many a gem,’ the poet mourns, abides

forgotten in the dust,

unnoticed there;

‘many a rose’ regretfully confides

the secret of its scent

to empty air.

GYPSIES ON THE ROAD

The prophet-tribe with burning eyes set out

yesterday, women bearing on their backs

brats whose clamorous greed is satisfied

by offering an ever-ready dug;

beside a wagon sheltering their brood

the men trudge, shouldering their oily guns

and gazing nowhere, eyelids heavier

for having lost their castles in the air.

The cricket hidden in its sandy lair

sings all the louder as they pass;

a favoring Goddess makes the desert bloom,

and where they wander springs transform the rock,

these vagabonds in front of whom unfurl

familiar empires of oncoming night.

IMPENITENT

When Don Juan went down to that last river

and had given Charon his coin,

a grim beggar proud as the first Cynic

vengefully rowed him across.

Women parading their fallen breasts

writhed in the darkness behind him,

and their moans faded like the lowing

of cattle led to slaughter.

Grinning, Sganarelle demanded his pay,

while Don Luis, in a fury,

cursed from the shades lining the shore

a son who mocked his father.

Veiled and trembling, Elvira beckoned

the false husband – the lover! –

imploring repeatedly one last smile

sweet as his first promise.

Huge in armor the Stone Guest towered

at the prow where the stream divided;

but over his sword the hero stared at the wake

and calmly ignored them all.

THE PUNISHMENT OF PRIDE

Once upon a time, in the wondrous age

of theological splendors, runs the tale,

one of the greatest Doctors of the Church,

having wakened many slumbering hearts

and plumbed them to their pandemonic depths,

having risen to celestial heights

by ways unheard-of, even to himself,

where only the Pure in Spirit can have climbed –

this man, as one above himself and moved

to panic by Satanic pride, exclaimed:

‘Little Jesus! I have raised Thee up;

yet had I sought to pierce Thy armor’s chink,

Thy shame would be the equal of Thy Fame,

and Thou no more than a vile homunculus!’

Upon the instant, Reason’s light went out

and darkness shrouded this once-searching mind;

Chaos made her shrine within a skull

which once had been a living temple filled

with opulence and ceremonial speech!

Night and silence were its tenants now,

as in a cellar when the key is lost.

Henceforth he was no more than an animal,

knowing neither season, day, nor hour,

and when he stumbled blindly through the fields,

filthy and futile as a worn-out thing,

the children laughed and chased him, throwing stones.

BEAUTY

Conceive me as a dream of stone:

my breast, where mortals come to grief,

is made to prompt all poets’ love,

mute and noble as matter itself.

With snow for flesh, with ice for heart,

I sit on high, an unguessed sphinx

begrudging acts that alter forms;

I never laugh – and never weep.

In studious awe the poets brood

before my monumental pose

aped from the proudest pedestal,

and to bind these docile lovers fast

I freeze the world in a perfect mirror:

the timeless light of my wide eyes.

THE IDEAL

My heart is closed to belles in curlicues,

those worshipped beauties of a shopworn age

when fingers were for spinets and when feet

wore out six pairs of silver-buckled shoes.

I leave to Gavarni, anemia’s laureate,

his twittering flock of insubstantial girls –

in all those sallow blossoms who could find

one rose to reconcile my red ideal?

This heart is cavernous and it requires

Lady Macbeth and an aptitude for crime,

some Aeschylean flower of the South,

or Michelangelo’s great daughter, Night,

who slumbrously contorts the marble charms

he carved to satiate a titan’s mouth.

GIANTESS

Had I been there when primal Nature teemed

with monstrous progeny, I would have tried

to live beside some mammoth girl, the way

a cat will sprawl at the feet of a queen;

loving to watch her ripen (body and soul

growing tremendous with her terrible games),

to guess from rainclouds darkening her eyes

what thunderbolts were gathered in her heart;

scaling the slopes of her enormous knees,

to saunter through the landscape of her lap,

and when the fetid summers made her stretch

herself across the countryside, to sleep

untroubled in the shadow of her breasts

like a peaceful village at the mountain’s base.

JEWELS

My darling was naked, or nearly, for knowing my

[heart

she had left on her jewels, the bangles and chains

whose jingling music gave her the conquering air

of a Moorish slave on days her master is pleased.

Whenever I hear such insolent harmonies,

that scintillating world of metal and stone

beguiles me altogether, and I am enthralled

by objects whose sound is a synonym for light.

For there she lay on the couch, allowing herself

to be adored, a secret smile indulging

the deep and tenacious currents of my love

which rose against her body like a tide.

Eyes fixed on mine with the speculative glare

of a half-tamed tiger, she kept altering poses,

and the incorporation of candor into lust

gave new charms to her metamorphoses;

calmly I watched, with a certain detachment at first,

as the swanlike arms uncoiled, and then the legs,

the sleek thighs shifting, shiny as oil,

the belly, the breasts – that fruit on my vine –

clustered, more tempting than wicked cherubim,

to undermine what peace I had achieved,

dislodging my soul from its rock-crystal throne

of contemplation, once so aloof, so serene.

As if a new Genesis had been at work,

I saw a boy’s torso joined to Antiope’s hips,

belying that lithe waist by those wide loins…

O the pride of rouge upon that tawny skin!

And then, the lamp having given up the ghost,

the dying coals made the only light in the room:

each time they heaved another flamboyant sigh,

they flushed that amber-colored flesh with blood!

HYMN TO BEAUTY

Do you come from on high or out of the abyss,

O Beauty? Godless yet divine, your gaze

indifferently showers favor and shame,

and therefore some have likened you to wine.

Your eyes reflect the sunset and the dawn;

you scatter perfumes like a windy night;

your kisses are a drug, your mouth the urn

dispensing fear to heroes, fervor to boys.

Whether spawned by hell or sprung from the stars,

Fate like a spaniel follows at your heel;

you sow haphazard fortune and despair,

ruling all things, responsible for none.

You walk on corpses, Beauty, undismayed,

and Horror coruscates among your gems;

Murder, one of your dearest trinkets, throbs

on your shameless belly: make it dance!

Dazzled, the dayfly flutters round your wick,

crackles, flares, and cries: I bless this torch!

The pining lover for his lady swoons

like a dying man adoring his own tomb.

Who cares if you come from paradise or hell,

appalling Beauty, artless and monstrous scourge,

if only your eyes, your smile or your foot reveal

the Infinite I love and have never known?

Come from Satan, come from God – who cares,

Angel or Siren, rhythm, fragrance, light,

provided you transform – O my one queen!

this hideous universe, this heavy hour?

BY ASSOCIATION

These warm fall nights I breathe, eyes closed, the scent

of your welcoming breasts, and thereupon appears

the coast of maybe Malabar – some paradise

besotted by the sun’s monotonous fire;

an idle isle where Nature grants to men

with bodies slim and strong, to women who

meet your eye with amazing willingness,

the rarest trees, the ripest fruit; and then,

guided by your fragrance to enchanted ground,

I glimpse a harbor filled with masts and sails

still troubled by the slow-receding tide,

while the aroma of green tamarinds

dilates my nostrils as it drifts to sea

and mingles in my soul with the sailors’ song.

THE HEAD OF HAIR

Ecstatic fleece that ripples to your nape

and reeks of negligence in every curl!

To people my dim cubicle tonight

with memories shrouded in that head of hair,

I’d have it flutter like a handkerchief!

For torpid Asia, torrid Africa

– the wilderness I thought a world away –

survive at the heart of this dark continent…

As other souls set sail to music, mine,

O my love! embarks on your redolent hair.

Take me, tousled current, to where men

as mighty as the trees they live among

submit like them to the sun’s long tyranny;

ebony sea, you bear a brilliant dream

of sails and pennants, mariners and masts,

a harbor where my soul can slake its thirst

for color, sound and smell – where ships that glide

among the seas of golden silk throw wide

their yardarms to embrace a glorious sky

palpitating in eternal heat.

Drunk, and in love with drunkenness, I’ll dive

into this ocean where the other lurks,

and solaced by these waves, my restlessness

will find a fruitful lethargy at last,

rocking forever at aromatic ease.

Blue hair, vault of shadows, be for me

the canopy of overarching sky;

here at the downy roots of every strand

I stupefy myself on the mingled scent

of musk and tar and coconut oil for hours…

For hours? Forever! Into that splendid mane

let me braid rubies, ropes of pearls to bind

you indissolubly to my desire –

you the oasis where I dream, the gourd

from which I gulp the wine of memory.

‘URN OF STILLED SORROWS…’

Urn of stilled sorrows, I worship you

as if you were the dome of night itself,

and all the more because you turn away

and seem, for setting off my darkness, more

mockingly to magnify the space

which bars me from those blue immensities.

I lay my siege, advance to the attack

like worms that congregate around a corpse,

and prize that cold disdain, o cruel beast,

which makes you even lovelier to me!

‘YOU’D SLEEP WITH ANYONE…’

You’d sleep with anyone at all, you slut!

(A clue to just how bored you are and just

how brutal boredom makes your soul.) To keep

your teeth incisive for this singular sport,

you claim a daily ration of…fresh hearts!

Your eyes, lit up like shops to lure their trade

or fireworks in the park on holidays,

insolently make use of borrowed power

and never learn (you might say, ‘in the dark’)

what law it is that governs their good looks.

Blind and unfeeling instrument of pain,

my salutary leech, how could you fail

to see in every mirror that you pass

your ‘charms’ go pale if not quite blank with shame…

How could you help wincing at the scope

of all the knowing harm you perpetrate

when Nature, noted for mighty subterfuge,

avails herself of you, My Queen of Sins

– of you, vile animal! – to breed a genius?

O squalid dignity…Sublime disgrace!

SED NON SATIATA

Daughter of darkness, slattern deity

rank with musk and nicotine, the spawn

of filthy covens or a shaman’s rites

ebony fetish, nameless talisman…And yet

to wine, to opium even, I prefer

the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts

itself; and in the wasteland of desire

your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.

Seal them, those sooty holes from which your soul

rains hellfire too, relentless sorceress!

I am no Styx, to cradle you nine times,

alas! and cannot with some Fury’s lust,

to break your spirit and your heart, become

in your bed’s inferno…Persephone!

‘EVEN WHEN SHE WALKS…’

Even when she walks she seems to dance!

Her garments writhe and glisten like long snakes

obedient to the rhythm of the wands

by which a fakir wakens them to grace.

Like both the desert and the desert sky

insensible to human suffering,

and like the ocean’s endless labyrinth

she shows her body with indifference.

Precious minerals form her polished eyes,

and in her strange symbolic nature where

angel and sphinx unite, where diamond,

gold, and steel dissolve into one light,

shines forever, useless as a star,

the sterile woman’s icy majesty.

CARRION

Remember, my soul, the thing we saw

that lovely summer day?

On a pile of stones where the path turned off,

the hideous carrion –

legs in the air, like a whore – displayed,

indifferent to the last,

a belly slick with lethal sweat

and swollen with foul gas.

The sun lit up that rottenness

as though to roast it through,

restoring to Nature a hundredfold

what she had here made one.

And heaven watched the splendid corpse

like a flower open wide –

you nearly fainted dead away

at the perfume it gave off.

Flies kept humming over the guts

from which a gleaming clot

of maggots poured to finish off

what scraps of flesh remained.

The tide of trembling vermin sank,

then bubbled up afresh

as if the carcass, drawing breath,

by their lives lived again

and made a curious music there –

like running water, or wind,

or the rattle of chaff the winnower

loosens in his fan.

Shapeless – nothing was left but a dream

the artist had sketched in,

forgotten, and only later on

finished from memory.

Behind the rocks an anxious bitch

eyed us reproachfully,

waiting for the chance to resume

her interrupted feast.

– Yet you will come to this offence,

this horrible decay,

you, the light of my life, the sun

and moon and stars of my love!

Yes, you will come to this, my queen,

after the sacraments,

when you rot underground among

the bones already there.

But as their kisses eat you up,

my Beauty, tell the worms

I’ve kept the sacred essence, saved

the form of my rotted loves!

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI

I beg Your mercy – You, the One I Love!

Out of the depths my heart has plumbed, I cry –

the skies are lead, and no horizon pales:

I share this night with blasphemy and dread.

A frozen sun hangs overhead six months;

the other six, the earth is in its shroud –

no trees, no water, not one creature here,

a wasteland naked as the polar north!

Of all the abominations none

is half so cruel as that sun of ice

and darkness worthy of old Chaos itself;

I envy the lot of the lowest animal

that can surrender to a stupid sleep –

so slowly does the skein of time unwind!

THE VAMPIRE

Sudden as a knife you thrust

into my sorry heart

and strong as a host of demons came,

gaudy and libertine,

to make in my corrupted mind

your bed and bedlam there;

– Beast, who bind me to you close

as convict to his chains,

as gambler to his winning streak,

as drunkard to his wine,

close as the carrion to its worms –

I curse you! Be accursed!

I begged the sword by one swift stroke

to grant me liberty;

nor did my cowardice disdain

less clear-cut remedies.

Poison and steel, as with one voice,

contemptuously refused:

‘You are not worthy to be free

of your enslavement, fool!

Suppose we saved you, even now,

from her supremacy –

your kisses would resuscitate

your vampire’s waiting corpse!’

LETHE

Sullen, lazy beast! creep close

until you lie upon my heart;

I want to fill my trembling hands

with your impenetrable mane,

to soothe my headache in the reek

of you that permeates your skirts

and relish, like decaying flowers,

the redolence of my late love.

In drowsiness sweet as death itself

let my insistent kisses cloud

the gleaming copper of your skin.

I want to sleep – not live, but sleep!

For nothing silences my sobs

like the abyss that is your bed:

oblivion occupies your mouth

and Lethe runs between your lips…

My destiny is my desire

which I obey as if foredoomed:

innocent martyr, eager prey

whose fervor hones his agony;

hemlock is sweet, nepenthe kind –

I’ll suck enough to drown my spite

at those entrancing pointed breasts

which never have confined a heart.

‘I SPENT THE NIGHT…’

I spent the night with a gruesome Jewish whore,

and lying there, a corpse beside a corpse,

I fell to dreaming, close to that hired flesh,

of the sad beauty desire denies itself.

I conjured up her natural majesty,

the energy and grace that arm her glance,

the perfumed helmet that her hair creates,

whose memory wakens me to love once more…

O to have idolized that noble flesh,

and from your marble feet to your black mane

to have squandered all the kisses I had saved!

If only by a single easy tear

some night you would consent, my cruel queen,

to dim the splendor of those icy eyes.

POSTHUMOUS REGRET

The time will come when your dark loveliness

must sleep alone beneath a marble slab

and keep no couch or canopy but this:

a rainy graveyard and a seeping pit.

And when the tombstone overrides your breast

and thighs that once were lithe with unconcern

– denying your heart its rhythms of desire,

your feet the primrose path they used to race –

the Grave, to which I tell my infinite dream

(for graves will always have the poet’s trust)

on those high nights when sleep is held in scorn

will ask: ‘What help is it to you, vain whore,

not to have known what it is the Dead lament?’

And worms will gnaw your flesh, like a regret.

THE CAT

Come here, kitty – sheathe your claws!

Lie on my loving heart

and let me sink into your eyes

of agate fused with steel.

When my fingers freely caress

your head and supple spine

and my hand thrills to the touch

of your electric fur,

my mistress comes to mind. Her gaze –

cold and deep as yours,

my pet – is like a stab of pain,

and from head to heels

a subtle scent, a dangerous perfume,

rises from her brown flesh.

DUELLUM

Two warriors have engaged in combat: swords

flash and clash together; blood is spilled.

Such passages of arms are the result

of love in its early phase, a loud pursuit.

The blades are broken – like our youth, my dear:

no more than teeth and nails, discreetly filed,

must try where sword and tricky dagger failed.

– O rage of ripened hearts at grips with love!

Our heroes, wickedly entwined, have rolled

into the lynx-infested gulley where

their flesh will fertilize the greedy thorns;

the place is Hell, and crowded with our friends,

so leap right in, my heartless Amazon,

to keep our hatred’s fire perpetual.

THE BALCONY

Mother of memories, absolute mistress,

in you my pleasure is my only task:

not to forget the form of a caress,

the dying fire and the alluring dark –

mother of memories, absolute mistress!

Evenings illustrated by living coals

and evenings on the balcony, pink mist

rising, your soft breast, your gentle heart,

while we rehearsed the imperishable words –

evenings illustrated by living coals.

How brilliant the sunsets, how warm the air,

how huge the sky: the size of our own souls.

Holding you, most loved – no, revered!

I could almost smell the fragrance of your blood –

how brilliant the sunsets, how warm the air!

The night solidified into a wall,

and my eyes had to guess where yours would be

as I drank in your breath: nectar! venom!

and your feet lay still in my harmless hands:

the night solidified into a wall.

I know the art of conjuring up delight,

and I relive my past buried in your lap;

for beauty languorous as yours recurs

only in your loved body, your loving heart:

I know the art of conjuring up delight.

Those endless kisses, promises, perfumes:

is it forbidden to have them back again

out of the dark, like the sun rising new

out of its purgation in the sea?

O endless kisses, promises, perfumes!

POSSESSED

The sun is in mourning. Be like the sun,

moon of my life, swathe yourself in crepe,

sleep, smoke, whatever – be still or glum,

plummet to the depths of boredom’s pit –

I love you there. But if now your whim –

like the moon leaving her eclipse behind –

is to strut in the places where Folly throngs,

so be it! Lovely dagger, leave your sheath!

Light your eyes in the gaslamps’ glow,

light others’ with their lust for you…

Anything goes: sullen or submissive,

be what you will, black night, red dawn –

each nerve of my trembling body cries:

‘Dear Demon, with this I thee worship!’

‘SUPPOSE MY NAME…’

Suppose my name were favored by the winds,

my voyage prospered, and the future read

all that I wrote, and marveled…Love, they’re yours!

I give you poems to make your memory

echo the way archaic legends do,

so that by some incantatory spell,

haunting the reader like a psaltery,

you will be caught within my cadences;

who now, from Pit to Empyrean scorned

by all but me, have simply walked away

and left no trace but shadows as you pass,

staring in mute composure at a world

that stupidly reviles your unconcern,

my jet-eyed statue, angel with brazen brows!

SEMPER EADEM

‘You’re like some rock the sea is swallowing –

what is it that brings on these moods of yours?’

Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain

of being alive. You wouldn’t understand,

though it’s as obvious as that smile of yours:

an open secret. Nothing ever grows,

once the heart is harvested…You ask

too many questions. No more talking now,

my prying ignoramus, no more words,

however sweet your voice. You call it Life,

but Death is what binds us, and by subtler bonds…

Come here. The only lie that comforts me

is the refuge of those lashes – let me sink

into the silent fiction of your eyes!

ALTOGETHER

The Devil it must have been

who came to my room this morning

and, trying to catch me out,

insisted I answered his question:

‘Among the miracles

her spell over you comprises –

among the black or pink

objects composing her body –

which is dearest?’ My soul

responded thus to the Demon:

‘No single part is best,

for each in its way is a solace,

and if the Whole enthralls,

is any detail the seducer?

She dazzles like the dawn

and like the darkness consoles me;

too close the harmony

that governs her lovely body

for reason to divide

one rapture from another;

my senses all are fused

by subtle transformation –

her breathing makes a song,

as her voice emits a fragrance!’

‘WHAT WILL YOU SAY TONIGHT…’

What will you say tonight, forsaken soul,

how will you speak, my long-since-withered heart,

to her, the loveliest and most beloved

whose sudden grace has made you green again?

– Singing her praises will be all our pride,

so peerless is the mercy of her power!

Sacred the fragrance that enrobes her flesh,

and ours, beneath her glance, is clad in light.

Whether we are in darkness and alone

or in the street and one among the crowd,

her spirit dances like a torch held high,

saying: ‘By my beauty I command,

love only beauty for my sake – I am

the Guardian Angel, Madonna, and the Muse.’

THE LIVING TORCH

after Poe’s To Helen

They pass before me, those electric eyes

some abstruse Angel must have magnetized –

celestial twins, yet mine as well, they pass

and share with me their supernatural power;

protecting me from trespasses and snares,

they lead to Beauty, as the poet says:

‘They are my ministers – yet I their slave,’

and all my being serves that living torch.

Enchanting eyes! you glisten with the light

of candles burning in broad day – the sun

challenges but does not change their flame;

they burn for Death, you for the New Life:

you sing my soul’s awakening – bright stars,

‘Venuses unextinguished by the sun.’

AGAINST HER LEVITY

You tilt your head and smile – as if

across the countryside

a breeze had rippled through the grass

out of a brilliant sky.

The sullen stranger you brush past

stops, turns and relishes

the radiant health which aureoles

your shoulders and your arms.

In all that panoply of silks

the colors you parade

awaken in our poets’ minds

a giddy valse des fleurs –

garish gowns which designate

the motley of your mind:

infectious folly! all I loathe

is one with all I love!

Often, when I would drag myself

into some leafy park

and when the sun like a rebuke

would lacerate my breast,

so deeply did the Spring’s new green

humiliate my heart

that I would punish in one rose

all Nature’s insolence…

I’ll come like that to you some night

when lovers ought to come,

creeping in silence till I reach

the treasure of your flesh,

to castigate your body’s joy,

to bruise your envied breasts,

and in your unsuspecting side

to gash a gaping wound

where in a final ecstasy

between those lovelier

new lips, my sister, I’ll inject

my venom into you!

REVERSIBILITY

Blithe as you are, what could you know of shame,

grief, remorse – of midnight’s vague alarms

that treat the heart like a much-crumpled page

to be discarded with the morning’s trash?

Being so blithe, what do you know of shame?

Fond as you are, what could you know of hate,

the secretly clenched fists, the silent tears,

while every heartbeat drums revenge! revenge!

and one by one our talents are enslaved –

being so fond, what do you know of hate?

Hale as you are, what could you know of death

whose fevers worm their way like prisoners

past the high walls of the white infirmary,

seeking a patch of sun – what do they whisper?

Being so hale, what do you know of death?

Fair as you are, what could you know of fear –

the fear of ageing and the unspeakable pain

of finding only half-concealed disgust

in eyes from which we once drank greedily!

Being so fair, what do you know of fear?

Warm as you are, so radiant with life

a dying David would have begged for health

from the enchanting presence of your flesh –

but all I dare to beg for is your prayers,

warm as you are, so radiant with life!

CONFESSION

Once, indulgent lady – only once

you lay your lustrous arm

on mine (against the darkness of my soul

the incident stands out);

as if it had just been coined, a golden moon

rose ostentatiously,

and night’s magnificence, while Paris slept,

streamed like another Seine.

Along the housefronts, out of every door

appeared attentive cats,

following like companionable ghosts

or frozen as we passed.

And even as our intimacy bloomed

in that pale radiance,

there came from you – and from that instrument

of yours, a voice so rich

habitually, exultant as a peal

of trumpets in the dawn –

there came a sound, a sigh, a plaintive note

that faltered on your lips

like a sickly, hideous, misproportioned child,

the family disgrace

long secluded from the world’s regard

in some dark hideaway.

‘Nothing!’ it sobbed, that sudden note of yours,

‘nothing on earth is sure,

and all our human masks cannot disguise

our human selfishness;

Beauty is merely woman’s livelihood,

a well-rehearsed routine –

the flagging dancer’s discipline: to please

with automatic smiles;

hearts are not to be depended on,

they fail – like beauty and love,

until Oblivion gathers up the lot

for good, all over again!’

That magic moon has never left my mind,

that silence, that fatigue,

and that dead secret whispered in despair

at the heart’s confessional.

SPIRITUAL DAWN

Even licentious beds are touched by dawn

and its relentless Absolute – as if

the operation of some vengeful power

wakened an angel in the sleeping beast.

To fallen man, who suffers and dreams on,

the Empyrean’s inaccessible blue

presents the fascination of the Void.

Beloved Goddess, so it is with you –

above the wreck of stupid revelry

your lucid image rises, brighter still,

shimmering yet fixed before my eyes.

The sun has turned the smoking torches black;

so it is with you, resplendent soul –

your phantom triumphs like the immortal sun!

EVENING HARMONY

Now comes the time when swaying on its stem

each flower offers incense to the night;

phrases and fragrances circle in the dark –

languorous waltz that casts a lingering spell!

Each flower offers incense to the night;

the violin trembles like a heart betrayed –

languorous waltz that casts a lingering spell!

A mournful altar ornaments the sky.

The violin trembles like a heart betrayed,

a tender heart unnerved by nothingness!

A mournful altar ornaments the sky;

the sun has smothered in its clotting blood.

A tender heart unnerved by nothingness

hoards every fragment of the radiant past.

The sun has smothered in its clotting blood.

In me your image – like a monstrance – glows.

THE FLASK

Some scents can permeate all substances –

even glass seems porous to their power.

Opening an Oriental chest

once the reluctant locks are pried apart,

or an armoire in some abandoned house

acrid with the dust of time itself,

may yield a musty flask that keeps the faith:

out of it leaps a returning soul – alive!

Like chrysalids, a thousand memories

that slept among the silent shadows now

unfold their wings and soar into the light,

rising azure laced with rose and gold;

among them one intoxicating thought

hovers brightest; eyes close; Vertigo

grips the beaten soul which it impels

to an abyss obscured by human wraiths,

crushing it on the brink of that age-old pit

where, like a fetid Lazarus rending his shroud,

the corpse of an old passion stirs and wakes,

spectral and rancid, charnel and charming still!

So it will be with me when I lie lost

to living memory, a used-up flask

tossed in a grim armoire, tarnished and cracked,

forgotten, filthy, a decrepit thing:

I shall be your coffin, darling doom,

and testify to how your virulence –

the poison angels brewed – became in me

the consummation of a heart consumed!

POISON

Wine can endow the lowest dive

with sudden luxury

and out of a red mist create

enchanted porticoes,

like sunset firing a sodden sky.

Opium can dilate boundless space

and plumb eternity,

emptying out time itself

till a grim ecstasy

burdens the soul past all bearing.

– None of which equals the poison

welling up in your eyes

that show me my poor soul reversed…

My dreams throng to drink

at those green, distorting pools.

– None of which rivals the taste

of your bitter saliva

which like a pestilence infects

my soul until it sinks

unconscious on the shores of death!

OVERCAST

Are they blue, gray, or green? Mysterious eyes

(as if in fact you were looking through a mist)

in alternation tender, dreamy, grim

to match the shiftless pallor of the sky.

That’s what you’re like – these warm white afternoons

which make the ravished heart dissolve in tears,

the nerves, inexplicably overwrought,

outrage the dozing mind. Not always, though –

sometimes you’re like the horizon when the sun

ignites our cloudy autumn – how you glow!

a sodden countryside in sudden rout,

turned incandescent by a changing wind.

Dangerous woman – demoralizing days!

Will I adore your killing frost as much,

and in that implacable winter, when it comes,

discover pleasures sharper than iron and ice?

CAT

As if he owned the place, a cat

meanders through my mind,

sleek and proud, yet so discreet

in making known his will

that I hear music when he mews,

and even when he purrs

a tender timbre in the sound

compels my consciousness –

a secret rhythm penetrates

to unsuspected depths,

obsessive as a line of verse

and potent as a drug:

all woes are spirited away,

I hear ecstatic news –

it seems a telling language has

no need of words at all.

My heart, assenting instrument,

is masterfully played;

no other bow across its strings

can draw such music out

the way this cat’s uncanny voice

– seraphic, alien –

can reconcile discordant strains

into close harmony!

One night his brindled fur gave off

a perfume so intense

I seemed to be embalmed because

(just once!) I fondled him…

Familiar spirit, genius, judge,

the cat presides – inspires

events that he appears to spurn,

half goblin and half god!

and when my spellbound eyes at last

relinquish worship of

this cat they love to contemplate

and look inside myself,

I find to my astonishment

like living opals there

his fiery pupils, embers which

observe me fixedly.

THE FINE SHIP

I want to tell you, soft enchantress, all

the various graces which array your youth;

I want to paint your beauty for you

in which the woman merges with the girl.

Walk, and your wide skirts swirl with every step,

as if a fine ship had put out to sea

under full sail, riding the waves

to a gentle rhythm, indolent and slow.

Above plump shoulders and a pliant throat

your head parades, a preening miracle!

With a look of placid mastery

you pass upon your way, majestic child.

I want to tell you, soft enchantress, all

the various graces which array your youth;

I want to paint your beauty for you

in which the woman merges with the girl.

The swelling silk that cradles your full breasts

makes them – triumphant breasts! – a sleek armoire

whose bright and curving surfaces

reflect the light as if from flashing shields,

provocative shields, armed with rosy points!

Armoire of secrets, crammed with precious things –

perfumes and wines and rare liqueurs

to make our hearts and minds delirious!

Walk, and your wide skirts swirl with every step,

as if a fine ship had put out to sea

under full sail, riding the waves

to a gentle rhythm, indolent and slow.

Your noble thighs, beneath the tossing lace,

arouse obscure desires and vex them like

two witches who between them stir

a black elixir in its seething vat.

Your arms would serve an infant Hercules

against the gleaming serpents they are like,

relentless in their coiled embrace –

as though to print your lover on your heart.

Above plump shoulders and a pliant throat

your head parades, a preening miracle!

With a look of placid mastery

you pass upon your way, majestic child.

INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE

Imagine the magic

of living together

there, with all the time in the world

for loving each other,

for loving and dying

where even the landscape resembles you:

the suns dissolved

in overcast skies

have the same mysterious charm for me

as your wayward eyes

through crystal tears,

my sister, my child!

All is order there, and elegance,

pleasure, peace, and opulence.

Furniture gleaming

with the patina

of time itself in the room we would share;

the rarest flowers

mingling aromas

with amber’s uncertain redolence;

encrusted ceilings

echoed in mirrors

and Eastern splendor on the walls –

here all would whisper

to the soul in secret

her sweet mother tongue.

All is order there, and elegance.

pleasure, peace, and opulence.

On these still canals

the freighters doze

fitfully: their mood is for roving,

and only to flatter

a lover’s fancy

have they put in from the ends of the earth.

By late afternoon

the canals catch fire

as sunset glorifies the town;

the world turns to gold

as it falls asleep

in a fervent light.

All is order there, and elegance,

pleasure, peace, and opulence.

THE IRREPARABLE

Who can destroy this old, this long Remorse

which fastens on our heart

and fattens there like weevils in an oak

or vermin on a corpse?

How shall we kill implacable Remorse?

What drug, what wine is warranted to drown

this ancient enemy

greedier and more wanton than the whores,

more patient than the ants?

Who will brew that potion, draw that wine?

If you know the secret, tell it, lovely witch,

to one who waits in dread,

abandoned like a wounded soldier crushed

by panic-stricken hooves.

Tell all you know, beloved sorceress,

to a dying man the wolves already sniff

and carrion-crows await,

to a fallen warrior! Must he despair

of a cross to mark his grave,

fallen a victim to such predators?

What wind can sweep the ashes from this sky,

what stars can pierce the gloom

that never deepens, never pales – a night

no lightning ever rends?

Ashes fill this sky, and darkness reigns.

Hope’s candle at a window of the inn

glimmers and goes out.

No light, no moon – how will they find their way,

the martyrs of the road?

Satan has snuffed the candle at the inn!

Adorable siren, do you love the damned?

What do you know of Remorse

whose poisoned arrows mercilessly take

our heart for their target?

Adorable siren, do you love the damned?

Nothing can withstand the Irreparable –

its termites undermine

our soul, pathetic citadel, until

the ruined tower falls.

Nothing can withstand the Irreparable!

– More than once, in a wretched theater

ringing with cheap tunes,

I’ve seen a goddess change the livid sky

to a miraculous dawn;

there have been times, in such a theater,

when I’ve beheld a creature made of light

defeat Satan himself;

but only there. On my heart’s stage occurs

no transformation scene.

No creature made of light will come to me!

CONVERSATION (ONE SIDE)

Fresh as an autumn morning you may be,

yet sadness rises in me like the sea

that ebbing leaves a bitter after-taste

of iodine on my still-smarting lips.

No use your groping for my feeble heart –

what you are after is no longer there;

mauled by women’s weapons, fangs and claws,

my heart is gone, the beasts have eaten it.

My heart! that palace ransacked by a mob

of drunken maenads at each other’s throats…

What perfume hovers round your naked throat?

O Beauty, scourge of souls, thy will be done!

With eyes as bright as candles at a feast,

consume these scraps of flesh the beasts have spared!

AUTUMNAL

Soon cold shadows will close over us

and summer’s transitory gold be gone;

I hear them chopping firewood in our court –

the dreary thud of logs on cobblestone.

Winter will come to repossess my soul

with rage and outrage, horror, drudgery,

and like the sun in its polar holocaust

my heart will be a block of blood-red ice.

I listen trembling to that grim tattoo –

build a gallows, it would sound the same.

My mind becomes a tower giving way

under the impact of a battering-ram.

Stunned by the strokes, I seem to hear, somewhere,

a coffin hurriedly hammered shut – for whom?

Summer was yesterday; autumn is here!

Strange how that sound rings out like a farewell.

How sweet the greenish light of your long eyes!

But even that turns bitter now, and nothing

– not love, the boudoir, nor its busy hearth –

can match the summer’s radiance on the sea.

Love me still, my darling! mother me,

ungrateful though I am, your naughty boy.

Sister and mistress! be the fleeting warmth

of a sumptuous autumn or a setting sun.

Your chore will be brief – the grave is covetous!

so let me rest my forehead on your knees

and relish, as I mourn white summer’s lapse,

the yellow favor of the waning year.

SONG FOR LATE IN THE DAY

Although your wicked brows belie

the angel in your eyes,

it is a blessed sorcery

by which I am beguiled:

with all the ineffectual awe

of prostrate votaries

I worship at your trivial

and tantalizing shrine!

Wilderness and desert haunt

the tumult of your hair;

without a word, your lips propose

the riddle of the Sphinx;

and when you move, the shifting scent –

as if a censer swayed –

prepares the advent of your flesh:

the night is warm with you.

Where is the drug that works as well

as your untroubled sloth?

You know the secret: at your touch

the dead return to life;

there is a throbbing intercourse

between your breasts and thighs –

the very cushions are enticed

by your slow attitudes.

Occasionally, to assuage

mysterious appetites,

your lazy kisses alternate

with unexpected bites,

and as you laugh you lacerate

my undefended skin,

then gentle as the rising moon

you raise your eyes to mine…

Beneath your satin slippers, as

beneath your silken feet,

I lay my hopes of happiness,

my genius, and my fate –

light of my life, my soul’s release,

I long for your embrace:

explode in one dissolving blast

this black Siberia!

SISINA

Imagine Diana, followed by her troupe,

beating the bushes in hot pursuit of game,

hair flying, breast bare, revelling in the din,

proudly outdistancing the pride of the hunt!

And have you seen our ‘Fury of the Gironde,’

grimly urging on a barefoot mob,

cheeks and eyes radiant as she climbs

the palace stairs, a saber in her fist?

Sisina’s like that! Except the wild girl

has a soul as loving as it is incensed,

and her courage, roused by cannonfire and drums,

will yet relent to passionate appeal,

and her incandescent heart still keeps,

for the deserving, a reservoir of tears.

TO A CREOLE LADY

The isle is fragrant and the sun is kind;

shadows of palm and poinciana shed

their languor on a lady living there

unknown to men’s acclaim. I know her, though:

warm and white beneath a cloud of hair,

her face is borne with noble elegance –

she walks like Artemis, as tall, as lithe,

and when she smiles, assurance lights her glance…

If you should ever visit glory’s home

along the green Loire or the Seine, Madame,

your loveliness, a match for our chateaux,

would prompt in ‘scholarly retreats’ a flood

of sonnets from our poets’ hearts, enslaved

more humbly than your blacks by those great eyes.

MOESTA ET ERRABUNDA

Lady, do you sometimes long to escape

from the filth of the city, from this black sea

to one whose everlasting splendor glows

blue, bright and deep – a virgin sea!

Lady, do you sometimes long to escape?

The titan sea console us for our toil!

What demon gave that raucous amateur

supported by the organ of the winds

the sacred task of singing lullabies?

The titan sea console us for our toil?

By wheel or sail, just take me anywhere

far from here where mud is made of our tears!

Lady, listen to your heart; doesn’t it say

‘Far from regret, from crime, from suffering,

by wheel or sail, just take me anywhere’?

How far away, that fragrant paradise

where love and pleasure share the same blue sky,

where pure delight can satiate the heart

and all we love is worthy of our love!

How far away, that fragrant paradise!

But that green paradise of puppy love,

of songs and games, of kisses and bouquets –

the jugs of wine at evening in the groves,

the violins that die behind the hills –

but that green paradise of puppy love,

the innocent paradise of timid joys,

is it already farther than Cathay?

What silvery voice can waken it again,

what plaintive cries can ever call it back,

the innocent paradise of timid joys?

INCUBUS

Eyes glowing like an angel’s

I’ll come back to your bed

and reach for you from the shadows:

you won’t hear a thing.

On your dark skin my kisses

will be colder than moonlight:

caresses of a snake crawling

round an open grave.

When the morning whitens

you find no one beside you:

the place cold all day.

Others by fondness prevail

over your life, your youth:

I leave it to fear.

AUTUMN SONNET

I read the question in your crystal eyes:

‘Why do you love me, my strange lover?’ Stay

lovely and keep still! Outraged by all

except the innocence of beasts, my heart

will not reveal its secret pact with Hell,

the livid legend written out in flames,

to you whose arms would cradle me in sleep.

Passion offends me, and my mind is pain!

Hold me. Say nothing.

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Poems Read Online

CONTENTS

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

LES FLEURS DU MAL

TO THE READER

CONSECRATION

THE ALBATROSS

ELEVATION

CORRESPONDENCES

‘I PRIZE THE MEMORY…’

GUIDING LIGHTS

THE SICK MUSE

THE MUSE FOR HIRE

THE BAD MONK

THE ENEMY

ARTIST UNKNOWN

GYPSIES ON THE ROAD

IMPENITENT

THE PUNISHMENT OF PRIDE

BEAUTY

THE IDEAL

GIANTESS

JEWELS

HYMN TO BEAUTY

BY ASSOCIATION

THE HEAD OF HAIR

‘URN OF STILLED SORROWS…’

‘YOU’D SLEEP WITH ANYONE…’

SED NON SATIATA

‘EVEN WHEN SHE WALKS…’

CARRION

DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI

THE VAMPIRE

LETHE

‘I SPENT THE NIGHT…’

POSTHUMOUS REGRET

THE CAT

DUELLUM

THE BALCONY

POSSESSED

‘SUPPOSE MY NAME…’

SEMPER EADEM

ALTOGETHER

‘WHAT WILL YOU SAY TONIGHT…’

THE LIVING TORCH

AGAINST HER LEVITY

REVERSIBILITY

CONFESSION

SPIRITUAL DAWN

EVENING HARMONY

THE FLASK

POISON

OVERCAST

CAT

THE FINE SHIP

INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE

THE IRREPARABLE

CONVERSATION (ONE SIDE)

AUTUMNAL

SONG FOR LATE IN THE DAY

SISINA

TO A CREOLE LADY

MOESTA ET ERRABUNDA

INCUBUS

AUTUMN SONNET

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