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

1

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.

2

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. Hidden somewhere near,

Love in ambush bends his fatal bow –

I know the weapons of that old armory:

madness, horror, crime…You pale and stare

like an autumn daisy, flower of the fall,

white as your wintry Faust, cold Marguerite.

SORROWS OF THE MOON

Tonight the moon dreams still more languidly:

as if some beauty on her pillowed couch

were brushing with a half-unconscious hand

the contour of her breasts before she fell

asleep. On a silken avalanche of clouds

the moon, expiring, falls into a trance,

impassive as the great white visions file

past in procession like unfolding flowers.

And when she happens, in her somnolence,

to shed a secret tear that falls to earth,

some eager poet, sleep’s sworn enemy,

cups his hand and catches that pale tear

which shimmers like a shard of opal there,

and hides it from the sun’s eye in his heart.

CATS

Lovers, scholars – the fervent, the austere –

grow equally fond of cats, their household pride.

As sensitive as either to the cold,

as sedentary, though so strong and sleek,

your cat, a friend to learning and to love,

seeks out both silence and the awesome dark…

Hell would have made the cat its courier

could it have controverted feline pride!

Dozing, all cats assume the svelte design

of desert sphinxes sprawled in solitude,

apparently transfixed by endless dreams;

their teeming loins are rich in magic sparks,

and golden specks like infinitesimal sand

glisten in those enigmatic eyes.

OWLS

Under black yews that protect them

    the owls perch in a row

like alien gods whose red eyes

    glitter. They meditate.

Petrified, they will perch there till

    the melancholy hour

when the slanting sun is ousted,

    and darkness settles down.

    From their posture, the wise

learn to shun, in this world at least,

    motion and commotion;

impassioned by passing shadows,

    man will always be scourged

for trying to change his place.

THE PIPE

I am a writer’s pipe. One look at me,

and the coffee color of my Kaffir face

will tell you I am not the only slave:

my master is addicted to his vice.

Every so often he is overcome

by some despair or other, whereupon

tobacco clouds pour out of me as if

the stove were kindled and the pot put on.

I wrap his soul in mine and cradle it

within a blue and fluctuating thread

that rises out of my rekindled lips

from the glowing coal that brews a secret spell.

He smokes his pipe, allaying heart and mind,

and for tonight all injuries are healed.

MUSIC

BEETHOVEN

Music often takes me like a sea

    and I set out

under mist or a transparent sky

    for my pale star;

I run before the wind as if I had

    laid on full sail,

climbing the mountainous backs of the waves,

    plummeting down

in darkness, eardrums throbbing as I feel

    the coming wreck;

fair winds or foul – a raging storm

    on the great deep

my cradle, and dead calm the looking-glass

    of my despair!

BURIAL

Surely some night will be dark enough

    for a kindly Christian soul

to dump your gorgeous body, now deceased,

    where the other garbage goes;

decent planets, at a time like this,

    renounce their vigilance –

the spider has her web to tidy up,

    the viper’s brood must hatch;

and over your unconsecrated head

    you’ll hear the howling wolves

lament their fate and yours the livelong year;

the coven gathers – famished hags excite

    old men to do their worst,

while killers dice for victims on your grave.

A FANTASTIC ENGRAVING

Uncanny apparition – all it wears,

grotesquely canted on that grinning skull,

is a garland woven out of worms! No spurs,

no whip, and still this ghostly cavalier

urges his apocalyptic nag

onward till her flaring nostrils bleed,

horse and horseman mad in pursuit of Space,

trampling Infinity with reckless hooves!

The rider brandishes a flaming sword

above the nameless hordes he gallops down,

and like a prince inspecting his domain

quarters that unending graveyard where

a bleak white sun exposes, mile on mile,

history’s hecatombs, ancient and modern both.

THE HAPPY CORPSE

Wherever the soil is rich and full of snails

I want to dig myself a nice deep grave –

deep enough to stretch out these old bones

and sleep in peace, like a shark in the cradling wave.

Testaments and tombstones always lie!

Before collecting such official grief,

I’d rather ask the crows, while I’m alive,

to pick my carcass clean from end to end.

They may be deaf and blind, my friends the worms,

yet surely they will welcome a happy corpse;

feasting philosophers, scions of decay,

eat your way through me without a second thought

and let me know if one last twinge is left

for a soulless body deader than the dead!

THE CASK OF HATE

Hate is the Cask of the Danaïdes;

even Vengeance, frenzied and red-armed,

cannot replenish those depths fast enough

with bucketfuls of blood and dead men’s tears –

Hell thirsts on, mysterious holes appear

and through them seep a thousand years of toil,

despite the victims desperately slain

and brought to life to suffer once again.

Or Hate is a drunk at the dark end of the bar

whose liquor only makes him thirstier –

a Hydra multiplies in every drop;

happy the man who drinks to meet his fate,

but Hate is fettered to a fiercer doom

and cannot even drink himself to death.

THE CRACKED BELL

Bitter, but sweet as well! on winter nights

when embers whiten on the hearth, to hear

faraway memories slowly surfacing,

summoned by carillons chiming through the mist.

Blessèd be the rugged-throated bell,

alert and tough for all its years, which tolls

religiously the watches of the night

like some old trooper standing sentinel!

My soul is cracked, and when in its distress

it tries to sing the chilly nights away,

how often its enfeebled voice suggests

the gasping of a wounded soldier left

beside a lake of blood, who, pinned beneath

a pile of dead men, struggles, stares and dies.

SPLEEN (I)

February, peeved at Paris, pours

a gloomy torrent on the pale lessees

of the graveyard next door and a mortal chill

on tenants of the foggy suburbs too.

The tiles afford no comfort to my cat

that cannot keep its mangy body still;

the soul of some old poet haunts the drains

and howls as if a ghost could hate the cold.

A churchbell grieves, a log in the fireplace smokes

and hums falsetto to the clock’s catarrh,

while in a filthy reeking deck of cards

inherited from a dropsical old maid,

the dapper Knave of Hearts and the Queen of Spades

grimly disinter their love affairs.

SPLEEN (II)

Souvenirs?

More than if I had lived a thousand years!

No chest of drawers crammed with documents,

love-letters, wedding-invitations, wills,

a lock of someone’s hair rolled up in a deed,

hides so many secrets as my brain.

This branching catacombs, this pyramid

contains more corpses than the potter’s field:

I am a graveyard that the moon abhors,

where long worms like regrets come out to feed

most ravenously on my dearest dead.

I am an old boudoir where a rack of gowns,

perfumed by withered roses, rots to dust;

where only faint pastels and pale Bouchers

inhale the scent of long-unstoppered flasks.

Nothing is slower than the limping days

when under the heavy weather of the years

Boredom, the fruit of glum indifference,

gains the dimension of eternity…

Hereafter, mortal clay, you are no more

than a rock encircled by a nameless dread,

an ancient sphinx omitted from the map,

forgotten by the world, and whose fierce moods

sing only to the rays of setting suns.

SPLEEN (III)

I’m like the king of a rainy country, rich

but helpless, decrepit though still a young man

who scorns his fawning tutors, wastes his time

on dogs and other animals, and has no fun;

nothing distracts him, neither hawk nor hound

nor subjects starving at the palace gate.

His favorite fool’s obscenities fall flat

– the royal invalid is not amused –

and ladies in waiting for a princely nod

no longer dress indecently enough

to win a smile from this young skeleton.

The bed of state becomes a stately tomb.

The alchemist who brews him gold has failed

to purge the impure substance from his soul,

and baths of blood, Rome’s legacy recalled

by certain barons in their failing days,

are useless to revive this sickly flesh

through which no blood but brackish Lethe seeps.

SPLEEN (IV)

When skies are low and heavy as a lid

over the mind tormented by disgust,

and hidden in the gloom the sun pours down

on us a daylight dingier than the dark;

when earth becomes a trickling dungeon where

Trust like a bat keeps lunging through the air,

beating tentative wings along the walls

and bumping its head against the rotten beams;

when rain falls straight from unrelenting clouds,

forging the bars of some enormous jail,

and silent hordes of obscene spiders spin

their webs across the basements of our brains;

then all at once the raging bells break loose,

hurling to heaven their awful caterwaul,

like homeless ghosts with no one left to haunt

whimpering their endless grievances.

– And giant hearses, without dirge or drums,

parade at half-step in my soul, where Hope,

defeated, weeps, and the oppressor Dread

plants his black flag on my assenting skull.

OBSESSION

Forest, I fear you! in my ruined heart

your roaring wakens the same agony

as in cathedrals when the organ moans

and from the depths I hear that I am damned.

Ocean, I hate you! for I recognize

the sobs and insults of my own despair,

the bitter laughter of a beaten man

repeated in the sea’s huge gaiety.

Night! you’d please me more without these stars

which speak a language I know all too well –

I long for darkness, silence, nothing there…

Yet even shadows have their shapes which live

where I imagine them to be, the hordes

of vanished souls whose eyes acknowledge mine.

CRAVING FOR OBLIVION

Once you were hot for battle, weary mind!

Now Hope, whose spur awakened all your zeal,

no longer even mounts. No shame in that –

lie down, old horse! You stumble at each step.

Abandon Hope, and sleep the sleep of the beasts.

Defeated mind, old plunderer! For you

love has no more seduction than your sword.

Farewell to lutes and trumpet-calls alike –

such pleasures cannot tempt a sullen heart,

and even Spring has lost its sweet allure.

Moment by moment, Time envelops me

like a stiffening body buried in the snow…

I contemplate the infinitesimal globe,

and I no longer seek asylum there.

Avalanche, entomb me in your fall!

ALCHEMY OF SUFFERING

Nature glows with this man’s joy,

    dims with another’s grief;

what signifies the grave to one

    is glory to the next.

Trismegistus intercedes:

    this ever-daunting guide

makes me a Midas in reverse,

    saddest of alchemists –

gold turns iron at my touch,

    heaven darkens to hell;

clouds become a winding-sheet

    to shroud my cherished dead,

and on celestial shores I build

    enormous sepulchres.

SYMPATHETIC HORROR

When the sky appears in pain

and sunset no more than a wound,

what are the thoughts that occur

to a libertine soul like yours?

– Nothing can slake my thirst

for the nameless and the obscure:

you’ll never hear me complain

like Ovid whining for Rome.

The canyons of bloody cloud

accommodate my pride,

their nebulous shapes become

a splendid hearse for my dreams,

their red glow the reflection

of the Hell where my heart’s at home.

HEAUTON TIMOROUMENOS*

No rage, no rancor: I shall beat you

    as butchers fell an ox,

as Moses smote the rock in Horeb –

    I shall make you weep,

and by the waters of affliction

    my desert will be slaked.

My desire, that hope has made monstrous,

    will frolic in your tears

as a ship tosses on the ocean –

    in my besotted heart

your adorable sobs will echo

    like an ecstatic drum.

For I – am I not a dissonance

    in the divine accord,

because of the greedy Irony

    which infiltrates my soul?

I hear it in my voice – that shrillness,

    that poison in my blood!

I am the sinister glass in which

    the Fury sees herself!

I am the knife and the wound it deals,

    I am the slap and the cheek,

I am the wheel and the broken limbs,

    hangman and victim both!

I am the vampire at my own veins,

    one of the great lost horde

doomed for the rest of time, and beyond,

    ‘to laugh – but smile no more.’

* Self-Tormentor, title of a play by Terence. Baudelaire took his last line from Poe’s ‘Haunted Palace.’

THE IRREMEDIABLE

1

A Form, an Idea, a Being

    out of the Blue – and fallen

into a Stygian morass

    far from the eye of heaven…

Lured by the love of chaos,

    an Angel, unwary pilgrim

caught in Nightmare’s current,

    struggling like a swimmer

pitted in deadly panic

    against the howling vortex,

whirling and faster whirled

    down, down and under…

Groping for key or candle,

    a wretch in some witch’s thrall

rots in her snaky den

    with no hope of escaping…

A soul in torment descending

    endless rickety stairs

into an echoing cavern

    out of which rises the stench

of vigilant slimy monsters

    whose luminous eyes enforce

the gloom, disclosing nothing

    except their own existence…

A schooner caught in the ice-floes

    as in a crystal quicksand,

pursuing the fatal channel

    which led to this prison…

Apt emblems, properties

    of irremediable Fate,

proving how consummately

    Satan consumes his own!

2

Distinct the heart’s exchange

    with its own dark mirror,

for deep in that Well of Truth

    trembles one pale star,

ironic, infernal beacon,

    graceful torch of the Devil,

our solace and sole glory –

    consciousness in Evil!

THE CLOCK

Impassive god! whose minatory hands

repeat their sinister and single charge:

Remember! Pain is the unfailing bow,

as arrow after arrow finds your heart.

Pleasure fades and dances out of sight –

one pirouette, the theater goes dark;

each instant snatches from you what you had,

the crumb of happiness within your grasp.

Thirty-six hundred times in every hour

the Second whispers: Remember! and Now replies

in its maddening mosquito hum: I am Past,

who passing lit and sucked your life and left!

Remember! Souviens-toi! Esto memor!

(My metal throat is polyglot.) The ore

of mortal minutes crumbles, unrefined,

from which your golden nuggets must be panned.

Remember! Time, that tireless gambler, wins

on every turn of the wheel: that is the law.

The daylight fades…Remember! Night comes on:

the pit is thirsty and the sands run out…

Soon it will sound, the tocsin of your Fate –

from noble Virtue, your still-virgin bride,

or from Repentance, last resort…from all

the message comes: ‘Too late, old coward! Die!’

PARISIAN LANDSCAPE

To make my eclogues proper, I must sleep

hard by heaven – like the astrologers –

and being the belfries’ neighbor, hear in my dreams

their solemn anthems fading on the wind.

My garret view, perused attentively,

reveals the workshops and their singing slaves,

the city’s masts – steeples and chimneypots –

and above that fleet, a blue eternity…

How sweet to see the first star in the sky,

the first lamp at the window through the mist,

the coalsmoke streaming upward, and the moon

shedding a pale enchantment on it all!

From there I’ll watch the easy seasons pass

and when the tedious winter snows me in,

I’ll close my shutters, draw the curtains snug,

and build my Spanish castles in the dark,

dreaming of alluring distances,

of sobbing fountains and of birds that sing

endless obbligatos to my trysts –

of everything in Idylls that’s inane!

A revolution down in the street will not

distract me from my desk, for I shall be

committed to that almost carnal joy

of fastening the springtime to my will,

drawing the sun from my heart, and by my zeal

persuading Paris to become a South.

THE SUN

Late in this cruel season when the sun

scourges alike the city and the fields,

parching the stubble and sinking into slums

where shuttered hovels hide vile appetites,

I venture out alone to drill myself

in what must seem an eerie fencing-match,

duelling in dark corners for a rhyme

and stumbling over words like cobblestones

where now and then realities collide

with lines I dreamed of writing long ago.

What greensickness could stand up to the sun,

that towering foster-father who dissolves

anxieties into air like morning mist,

ripening here a verse and there a rose

with honey on the tongue as in the hive?

Who but the sun persuades the lame to dance

as if their canes were maypoles, governing

the resurrection of the harrowed fields,

and for the secret harvest of the heart

commands immortal wheat to grow again!

When, with a poet’s will, the sun descends

into the cities like a king incognito,

impartially visiting palace and hospital,

the fate of all things vile is glorified.

TO A RED-HAIRED BEGGAR GIRL

Gaping tatters in each garment prove

your calling is not only beggary

    but beauty as well,

and to a poet equally ‘reduced,’

the frail and freckled body you display

    makes its own appeal –

queens in velvet buskins take the stage

less regally than you wade through the mud

    on your wooden clogs.

What if, instead of these indecent rags,

the splendid train of a brocaded gown

    rustled at your heels,

and rather than town stockings, just suppose

curious glances sliding up your thigh

    met with a gold dirk!

And then if, for our sins, those flimsy knots

released two perfect little breasts that shine

    brighter than your eyes,

and your own arms consented to reveal

the rest, though archly feigning to fend off

    hands that go too far…

Strands of pearls and strophes by Belleau

arriving in – imagine! – endless streams

    ‘from an admirer’;

riffraff – talented and otherwise –

offering tributes to the slippered feet

    glimpsed from below stairs;

gentlemen sending flunkeys to find out

who owns the carriage always told to ‘wait’

    at your smart address

where, in the boudoir, kisses count for more

than quarterings, although the cast includes

    a Bourbon or two!

– Meanwhile, here you are, begging scraps

doled out by the local table d’hôte

    at the kitchen door

and scavenging discarded finery

worth forty sous, a price which (pardon me!)

    I cannot afford…

Go, then, my Beauty, with no ornament

– patchouli or pearl choker – but your own

    starveling nakedness!

THE SWAN

to Victor Hugo

1

Andromache, I think of you! That stream,

the sometime witness to your widowhood’s

enormous majesty of mourning – that

mimic Simoïs salted by your tears

suddenly inundates my memory

as I cross the new Place du Carrousel.

Old Paris is gone (no human heart

changes half so fast as a city’s face)

and only in my mind’s eye can I see

the junk laid out to glitter in the booths

among the weeds and splintered capitals,

blocks of marble blackened by the mud;

there used to be a poultry-market here,

and one cold morning – with the sky swept clean,

the ground, too, swept by garbage-men who raised

clouds of soot in the icy air – I saw

a swan that had broken out of its cage,

webbed feet clumsy on the cobblestones,

white feathers dragging in the uneven ruts,

and obstinately pecking at the drains,

drenching its enormous wings in the filth

as if in its own lovely lake, crying

‘Where is the thunder, when will it rain?’

I see it still, inevitable myth,

like Daedalus dead-set against the sky –

the sky quite blue and blank and unconcerned –

that straining neck and that voracious beak,

as if the swan were castigating God!

2

Paris changes…But in sadness like mine

nothing stirs – new buildings, old

neighborhoods turn to allegory,

and memories weigh more than stone.

One image, near the Louvre, will not dissolve:

I think of that great swan in its torment,

silly, like all exiles, and sublime,

endlessly longing…And again I think

of you, Andromache, dragged off

to be the booty of Achilles’ son,

Hector’s widow now the wife of Helenus,

crouching blindly over an empty grave!

I think of some black women, starving

and consumptive in the muddy streets,

peering through a wall of fog for those

missing palms of splendid Africa;

I think of orphans withering like flowers;

of those who lose what never can be found

again – never! swallowing their tears

and nursing at the she-wolf Sorrow’s dugs;

and in the forest of my mind’s exile

a merciless memory winds its horn:

I hear it and I think of prisoners,

of the shipwrecked, the beaten – and so many more!

THE SEVEN OLD MEN

to Victor Hugo

Swarming city – city gorged with dreams,

where ghosts by day accost the passer-by,

where secrets run in these defiled canals

like blood that gushes through a giant’s veins!

One morning when the rain in these mean streets

made houses grimmer than the docks that line

the two banks of a filthy river, and

a yellow fog engulfed the space between –

a stage-effect to match the actor’s mood –

I roamed as if in search of stern resolve

and arguments to steel my flagging soul

through backstreets shaken by each heavy van.

And out of nowhere came a wretch in rags

the very color of the dripping sky –

surely this deserved some charity!

But then I saw the malice in his eyes

and seemed to feel the cold because of them –

as if their pupils had been soaked in bile.

His beard stuck out as stiff as any sword

(Judas must have had a beard like that).

He wasn’t bent, he was broken, and his spine

formed so sharp an angle with his legs

that his stick, as if to add a finishing touch,

gave him the carriage and the clumsy gait

of some lame animal or a three-legged Jew!

He pounded past in the mud and slush as if

his shabby boots were crushing dead men’s bone

hostile, rather than indifferent…

Then from the same hell came another, the same

eyes and beard and backbone, stick and rags –

nothing distinguished these centenarian twins

clumping identically toward an unknown goal.

Was it some vile conspiracy, or just

coincidence that made a fool of me?

To the seventh power – I counted every one –

this sinister ancient reproduced himself!

Doubtless to you my dread seems ludicrous,

unless a brotherly shudder lets you see:

for all their imminent decrepitude,

these seven monsters had eternal life!

I doubt if I could have survived an eighth

such apparition, father and son of himself,

inexorable Phoenix, loathsome avatar!

– I turned my back on the whole damned parade.

Indignant as a drunk who sees the world

double, I staggered home and locked my door,

scared and sick at heart and scandalized

that so much mystery could be absurd!

Vainly my reason sought to take the helm –

the gale made light of purpose, and my soul

went dancing on, an old and mastless scow

dancing across a black and shoreless sea.

THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN

to Victor Hugo

1

In murky corners of old cities where

everything – horror too – is magical,

I study, servile to my moods, the odd

and charming refuse of humanity.

These travesties were women once – Laïs

or Eponine! Love them, pathetic freaks,

hunchbacked and crippled – for they still have souls!

In ragged skirts and threadbare finery

they creep, tormented by the wicked gusts,

cowering each time an omnibus

thunders past, and clutching a reticule

as if it were a relic sewn with spells.

Whether they mince like marionettes or drag

themselves along like wounded animals,

they dance – against their will, the creatures dance –

sad bells on which a merciless Devil tugs.

They waver, but their eyes are gimlet-sharp

and gleam like holes where water sleeps at night –

the eyes of a child, a little girl who laughs

in sacred wonder at whatever shines!

– The coffins of old women are often the size

of a child’s, have you ever noticed? Erudite

Death, by making the caskets match, suggests

a tidy symbol, if in dubious taste,

and when I glimpse one of these feeble ghosts

at grips with Paris and its murderous swarm,

it always seems to me the poor old thing

is slowly crawling toward a second crib;

or else those ill-assorted limbs propose

a problem in geometry: to fit

so many crooked corpses, how many times

must the workman alter a coffin’s shape?

Those eyes are cisterns fed by a million tears,

or crucibles cracked by an ore that has gone cold:

irresistible their sovereignty

to one who suckled at disaster’s dugs!

2

A Vestal at defunct Frascati’s shrine;

a priestess of Thalia whose memory survives

only in one long-dead prompter’s mind;

the profligate of Tivoli in her prime;

this one a martyr to her fatherland,

that one her husband’s victim, and one more

doomed by her son to a Madonna’s grief –

all could make a river of their tears.

And all beguile me, but especially

those who, honeying their pain, implore

Addiction that had once lent them its wings:

‘Mighty Hippogriff, let me fly again!’

3

Little old women! I remember one

I had trailed for hours, until the sky

went scarlet as a wound, and she sat down

lost in thought on a public-garden bench,

listening to the tunes our soldiers play –

brazen music for daylight’s waning gold

(and yet such martial measures stir the soul,

granting a kind of glory to the crowd)…

Upright and proud she sat, and greedily

drank in the military airs, her eyes

like some old eagle’s brightening beneath

the absent laurel on her marble brow!

4

And so you wander, stoic and inured

to all the uproar of the heedless town:

broken-hearted mothers, trollops, saints,

whose names were once the order of the day,

embodiments of glory and of grace!

Who knows you now? From doorways, derelicts

murmur obscene endearments as you pass,

and mocking children caper at your heels…

Poor wizened spooks, ashamed to be alive,

you hug the walls, sickly and timorous,

and no one greets you, no one says goodbye

to rubbish ready for eternity!

But I who at a distance follow you

and anxiously attend your failing steps

as if I had become your father – mine

are secret pleasures you cannot suspect!

I see first love in bloom upon your flesh,

dark or luminous I see your vanished days –

my teeming heart exults in all your sins

and all your virtues magnify my soul!

Flotsam, my family – ruins, my race!

Each night I offer you a last farewell!

Where will you be tomorrow, ancient Eves

under God’s undeviating paw?

IN PASSING

The traffic roared around me, deafening!

Tall, slender, in mourning – noble grief –

a woman passed, and with a jeweled hand

gathered up her black embroidered hem;

stately yet lithe, as if a statue walked…

And trembling like a fool, I drank from eyes

as ashen as the clouds before a gale

the grace that beckons and the joy that kills.

Lightning…then darkness! Lovely fugitive

whose glance has brought me back to life! But where

is life – not this side of eternity?

Elsewhere! Too far, too late, or never at all!

Of me you know nothing, I nothing of you – you

whom I might have loved and who knew that too!

TWILIGHT: EVENING

It comes as an accomplice, stealthily,

the lovely hour that is the felon’s friend;

the sky, like curtains round a bed, draws close,

and man prepares to become a beast of prey.

Longed for by those whose aching arms confess:

we earned our daily bread, at last it comes,

evening and the anodyne it brings

to workmen free to sleep and dream of sleep,

to stubborn scholars puzzling over texts,

to minds consumed by one tormenting pain…

Meantime, foul demons in the atmosphere

dutifully waken – they have work to do –

rattling shutters as they take the sky.

Under the gaslamps shaken by that wind

whoredom invades and everywhere at once

debouches on invisible thoroughfares,

as if the enemy had launched a raid;

it fidgets like a worm in the city’s filth,

filching its portion of Man’s daily bread.

Listen! Now you can hear the kitchens hiss,

the stages yelp, the music drown it all!

The dens that specialize in gambling fill

with trollops and their vague confederates,

and thieves untroubled by a second thought

will soon be hard at work (they also serve)

softly forcing doors and secret drawers

to dress their sluts and live a few days more.

This is the hour to compose yourself, my soul;

ignore the noise they make; avert your eyes.

Now comes the time when invalids grow worse

and darkness takes them by the throat; they end

their fate in the usual way, and all their sighs

turn hospitals into a cave of the winds.

More than one will not come back for broth

warmed at the fireside by devoted hands.

Most of them, in fact, have never known

a hearth to come to, and have never lived.

GAMBLERS

They sit in shabby armchairs, ancient whores

with eyebrows painted over pitiless eyes,

simpering so that the garish gems they wear

jiggle at their withered powdered ears.

Around the green felt, lipless faces loom

or colorless lips and toothless jaws, above

feverish fingers that cannot lie still

but fumble in empty pockets, trembling breasts;

under the dirty ceilings and a row

of dusty chandeliers, the low-hung lamps

sway over famous poets’ shadowed brows,

the sweat of which they come to squander here;

this hideous pageant passed before my eyes

as if a nightmare picked out each detail:

I saw myself in a corner of that hushed den

watching it all, cold, mute – and envious!

envying the stubborn passion of such men,

the deadly gaiety of those old whores –

all blithely trafficking, as I looked on,

in honor or beauty – whatever they could sell!

Horrible, that I should envy these

who rush so recklessly into the pit,

each in his frenzy ravenous to prefer

pain to death, and hell to nothingness!

DANCE OF DEATH

Proud of her height as if she were alive,

she manages her props – her huge bouquet,

her scarf, her gloves – with all the unconcern –

or is it the disdain? – of a practiced flirt.

Who ever saw a wasp with a waist like that!

Or so many yards of gown so readily

gathered up to show a wizened foot

crammed into its crimson satin shoe?

The frill that runs along her clavicle

as if a stream caressed the stones in its bed

demurely screens from idle scrutiny

the deadly charms she will keep in the dark.

Those shadows are the making of her eyes,

and the braid of buds around her nodding brow

is not so neatly plaited as her spine –

O lure of Nothingness so well tricked out!

Drunk on flesh, young lovers libel you

a caricature – they cannot understand

the beauty of your true embodiment:

Skeleton, you suit me down to the ground,

as grinning from ear to absent ear you come

to spoil the Feast, or cannot keep away

because some hunger in the marrow of your bones

compels you to our human carnival…

Will music and the flaring lights beguile

a mocking nightmare you cannot escape?

Is it the torrent of orgies you require

to douse the hellfire kindled in your heart?

Inexhaustible pit of folly and sin!

Eternal alembic of the ancient pain!

Threading the twisted trellis of your ribs

the insatiable worm, I see, is still at work!

To tell the truth, I fear your coquetry

will fail to find the victims it deserves:

which of these mortal hearts can take your jokes?

The charms of Dread are not for everyone.

What visions cloud the chasm of your eyes?

Even the bravest partner joins the dance

with a twinge of terror as he contemplates

the eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth!

Yet who has not embraced a skeleton,

not eaten what the grave claims for its own?

What does the costume matter, or the scent?

‘Disgusted’? All you show is your conceit!

Noseless camp-follower, irresistible drab,

disabuse these dancers of their airs:

‘For all your skill with powder and with musk

each of you stinks to heaven – or hell – of death!

A withered Antinous here, his Emperor there,

equally worm-eaten, hoary belles and beaux –

the universal throb of the Dance of Death

drags you down to Whereabouts Unknown!

From Senegal to the cold quays of the Seine

the mortal swarm jigs on, ecstatic, blind

to the Angel’s trumpet somewhere overhead,

gaping like a blackened blunderbuss…

Death in every latitude dotes on you

and your contortions, ludicrous Mankind,

and often, like you, daubing herself with myrrh,

mixes her scorn with your delirium!’

LOVE OF DECEIT

As you dance by, beloved indolence

– the music fading, though it fills the room –

you seem to hover in your listlessness,

and boredom glistens in your heavy glance;

while midnight’s sconces imitate the dawn,

the gaslight touches up your chalky face

with an appalling lustre of its own –

your eyes, as in a portrait, follow me,

and I muse: how lovely! how grotesquely young!

burdened as she is with memory’s crown

and a heart that, bruised like a peach, must be

ripe as her body for the feast of love.

Are you the sovereign harvest of the fall?

Are you the savor of the Happy Isles?

– ultimate urn that bides its time for tears,

caressing pillow, or narcotic rose?

I know there are eyes, the saddest eyes of all,

that have no precious secrets to conceal,

spurious reliquaries proudly shown,

deeper, and emptier, than the skies themselves!

Save the appearances! Is it not enough

to thrill a heart that cannot bear the truth?

What if you are stupid or indifferent?

Mask or sham, your beauty I adore.

‘I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN…’

I have not forgotten the house we lived in then,

it was just outside of town, a little white house

in a skimpy grove that hid the naked limbs

of plaster goddesses – the Venus was chipped!

Nor those seemingly endless evenings when the sun

(whose rays ignited every windowpane)

seemed, like a wide eye in the wondering sky,

to contemplate our long silent meals,

kindling more richly than any candlelight

the cheap curtains and the much-laundered cloth.

‘YOU USED TO BE JEALOUS…’

You used to be jealous of our old nurse

who sleeps, warm heart and all, beneath the sod.

We ought to bring her flowers, even so.

The dead, poor things, have sorrows of their own,

and when October comes and strips the trees

and hums its dismal tune among the graves,

how thankless we the living must appear,

sleeping as we do in our own beds

while they, subsiding into black despair,

without a bedmate or a joke to share,

worm-eaten skeletons, old and cold, endure

the constant seeping of the winter snows,

the passage of the years, and not one soul

to change the withered wreaths on rusty grilles…

When the log I put on the fire hisses and sings,

if I should see her sitting there, quite still,

or if on some cold blue December night

I found her hovering in a corner of my room,

somehow escaping her eternal bed

to cast a motherly eye on her grownup child,

what could I find to say to this pious soul

as I watched the tears filling her hollow eyes?

MISTS AND RAINS

Waning autumn, winter, mudbound spring –

I thank these somnolent seasons which I love

for offering to both my heart and mind

so vaporous a shroud, so vague a tomb.

Here on this huge plain where the wind perfects

a will of its own and the weathervane cries all night,

now and not in the tepid days to come

my soul prefers to spread her raven wings.

Filled with dead and dying things, the heart

itself is frozen fast, and best of all

– O queen of our climate, ashen time of year! –

your livid shadows never seem to change

except on moonless nights when two by two

we rock our pain to sleep on a reckless bed.

TWILIGHT: DAYBREAK

The morning wind rattles the windowpanes

and over the barracks reveille rings out.

Dreams come now, bad dreams, and teen-age boys

burrow into their pillows. Now the lamp

that glowed at midnight seems, like a bloodshot eye,

to throb and throw a red stain on the room;

balked by the stubborn body’s weight, the soul

mimics the lamplight’s struggles with the dawn.

Like a face in tears – the tears effaced by wind –

the air is tremulous with escaping things,

and Man is tired of writing, Woman of love.

Here and there, chimneys begin to smoke.

Whores, mouths gaping, eyelids gray as ash,

sleep on their feet, leaning against the walls,

and beggar-women, hunched over sagging breasts,

blow on burning sticks, then on their hands.

Now, the hungry feel the cold the worst,

and women in labor suffer the sharpest pains;

now, like a sob cut short by a clot of blood,

a rooster crows somewhere; a sea of mist

swirls around the buildings; in the Hôtel-Dieu

the dying breathe their last, while the debauched,

spent by their exertions, sleep alone.

Shivering dawn, in a wisp of pink and green,

totters slowly across the empty Seine,

and dingy Paris – old drudge rubbing its eyes –

picks up its tools to begin another day.

THE SOUL OF THE WINE

sang by night in its bottles: ‘Dear mankind –

dear and disinherited! Break the seal

of scarlet wax that darkens my glass jail,

and I shall bring you light and brotherhood!

How long you labored on the fiery hills

among the needful vines! I know it cost

fanatic toil to make me what I am,

and I shall not be thankless or malign:

I take a potent pleasure when I pour

down the gullet of a workingman,

and how much more I relish burial

in his hot belly than in my cold vaults!

Listen to my music after hours,

the hope that quickens in my throbbing heart;

lean on the table with your sleeves rolled up

and honor me: you will know happiness,

for I shall bring a gleam to your wife’s eyes,

a glow of power to your son’s wan cheeks

and for this athlete flagging in the race

shall be the oil that strengthens wrestlers’ limbs.

Into you I shall flow, ambrosia brewed

from precious seed the eternal Sower cast,

so that the poetry born of our love will grow

and blossom like a flower in God’s sight!’

RAGPICKERS’ WINE

Look – there! in the streetlamp’s dingy glow

– wind rattling the glass, lashing the flame –

out of the muddy labyrinth of streets

teeming with unruly, sordid types,

a ragpicker stumbles past, wagging his head

and bumping into walls with a poet’s grace,

pouring out his heartfelt schemes to one

and all, including spies of the police.

He swears to wonders, lays down noble laws,

reforms the wicked, raises up their prey,

and under the lowering canopy of heaven

intoxicates himself on his own boasts.

More such creatures – who knows where they live? –

wracked by drudgery, ruined by the years,

staggering under enormous sacks of junk

– the vomit of surfeited Paris – now appear,

whole armies of them, reeking of sour wine,

comrades in arms, whitened by their wars,

whiskers drooping like surrendered flags…

Before them wave the banners and the palms –

as if by magic, arches of triumph rise

and in the chaos of exploding flares,

bugle-calls and battle-cries and drums,

they march in glory past a cheering mob!

So it is, through frivolous mankind,

that wine like a bright Pactolus pours its gold;

with human tongues it glorifies its deeds

and rules by what it gives, as true kings do.

To drown the spleen and pacify the sloth

of these old wrecks who die without a word,

God, taking pity, created Sleep; to which

Man added Wine, the sun’s anointed son!

THE MURDERER’S WINE

My wife is dead, so now I’m free

    to drink until I drop.

No more nagging when I’m broke –

    I put a stop to that.

Today I’m happy. What a day –

    not a cloud in the sky!

The summer must have been this hot

    when I was courting her.

Thirsty – I’m thirsty all the time!

    A drink is what I need,

wine enough to fill her grave…

    which means a lot of wine.

You see, I threw her down a well

    and afterwards pushed in

the flagstones piled around the edge –

    that ought to keep her still.

‘Meet me after dark,’ I begged,

    ‘where we can be alone’ –

the right words came all by themselves,

    you don’t forget such tunes.

I told her we could patch things up

    the way they used to be,

and she…believed me! Women are

    crazy. Men are too.

Even though her face was lined

    she hadn’t lost her looks,

and I still – I loved her too much;

    that’s why she had to die.

Nobody understands. Name one

    of the numskull drunks I know

who ever dreamed when nights went bad

    that wine could make a shroud.

That bunch! They feel about as much

    as plowshares breaking ground –

plow or harrow! which of them

    has ever known True Love

with all its cavalcade of tears

    and fears and broken hearts

and poison darts and rattling chains…

    and now the rattling bones?

I’m free of that – free and alone!

    Tonight I’ll be dead drunk

and lay myself out on the ground

    without a second thought;

I’ll sleep like a dog and never know

    or care when the skidding wheels

of a wagon loaded down with rocks

    crushes my guilty head

or cuts my heedless guts in half –

    what happens, after that,

is no concern of mine: to Hell

    with Hell! Good riddance, God!

THE SOLITARY’S WINE

The unexampled ogle of a whore

glinting toward you like the silver ray

the wavering moon releases on the lake

when she would bathe her listless beauty there;

the final bag of coins in a gambler’s fist;

the cavernous kisses you get from Adeline;

the maddening tune that will not let you go,

as if it echoed faintly all of human pain –

none of that, my Bottle, can compare

with the remedy your long green curves supply

to the worshipful poet’s ever-thirsting heart;

for him you pour out hope and youth and life –

and pride, the beggars’ treasure! give us pride

that makes us winners – we shall be as gods!

LOVERS’ WINE

Today the air is splendid!

no need for bridle or spurs –

mount the wine and set off

for a sky that is magic – divine!

Like a pair of angels driven

by some implacable fever,

up into morning’s blue crystal

to follow the far mirage!

Cradled gently on the wing

of the conniving whirlwind,

rapt in a parallel transport,

my sister, we shall flee

side by side, unflagging,

to the Paradise of my dreams!

DESTRUCTION

I come and go – the Demon tags along,

hanging around me like the air I breathe;

each time I swallow he fills my burning lungs

with sinful cravings never satisfied.

Sometimes (for he knows my love of Art)

he visits in a seductive woman’s form

and with the specious alibis of despair

inures my lips to squalid appetites.

Thereby he leads me out of God’s regard,

spent and gasping – out to where the vast

barrens of Boredom stretch infinitely,

and here he hurls into my startled face

the open wounds, the rags they have soaked through,

and all Destruction’s bloody bag of tricks!

A MARTYR

DRAWING BY AN UNKNOWN MASTER

Among decanters, ivories and gems,

    sumptuous divans

with gold-brocaded silks and fragrant gowns

    trailing languid folds,

where lilies sorrowing in crystal urns

    exhale their final sigh

and where, as if the room were under glass,

    the air is pestilent,

a headless corpse emits a stream of blood

    the sopping pillows shed

onto thirsty sheets which drink it up

    as greedily as sand.

Pale as the visions which our captive eyes

    discover in the dark,

the head, enveloped in its sombre mane,

    emeralds still in its ears,

watches from a stool, a thing apart,

    and from the eyes rolled back

to whiteness blank as daybreak emanates

    an alabaster stare.

The carcass sprawling naked on the bed

    displays without a qualm

the splendid cynosure which prodigal

    Nature bestowed – betrayed;

pink with gold clocks, one stocking clings –

    a souvenir, it seems;

the garter, gleaming like a secret eye,

    darts a jewelled glance.

Doubled by a full-length portrait drawn

    in the same provocative pose,

the strange demeanor of this solitude

    reveals love’s darker side –

profligate practices and guilty joys,

    embraces bound to please

the swarm of naughty angels frolicking

    in the curtains overhead;

yet judging from the narrow elegance

    of her shoulders sloping down

past the serpentine curve of her waist

    to the almost bony hips,

she still is young! – What torment in her soul,

    what tedium that stung

her senses gave this body to the throng

    of wandering, lost desires?

In spite of so much love, did the vengeful man

    she could not, living, sate

assuage on her inert and docile flesh

    the measure of his lust?

And did he, gripping her blood-stiffened hair

    lift up that dripping head

and press on her cold teeth one final kiss?

    The sullied corpse is still.

– Far from a scornful world of jeering crowds

    and peering magistrates,

sleep in peace, lovely enigma, sleep

    in your mysterious tomb:

your bridegroom roves, and your immortal form

    keeps vigil when he sleeps;

like you, no doubt, he will be constant too,

    and faithful unto death.

LESBOS

Mother of Latin games and Greek delights,

Lesbos! where the kisses, languid or rapt,

cool as melons, burning as the sun,

adorn the dark and gild the shining days

given to Latin games and Greek delights;

Lesbos, where the kisses, like cascades,

teeming and turbulent yet secret, deep,

plunge undaunted into unplumbed gulfs

and gather there, gurgling and sobbing till

they overflow in ever-new cascades!

Where Phryne’s breasts are judged by her own kind

and every sigh is answered by a kiss;

where Aphrodite envies Sappho’s rite

at shrines as favored as the Cyprian’s own,

and Phryne’s judges never are unkind;

Lesbos, where on suffocating nights

before their mirrors, girls with hollow eyes

caress their ripened limbs in sterile joy

and taste the fruit of their nubility

on Lesbos during suffocating nights!

What if old Plato’s scowling eyes condemn?

Kisses absolve you by their sweet excess

whose subtleties are inexhaustible!

Queen of the tender Archipelago,

pursue what Plato’s scowling eyes condemn

and win your pardon for the martyrdom

forever inflicted on ambitious hearts

that yearn, far from us, for a radiant smile

they dimly glimpse on the rim of other skies –

you win your pardon for that martyrdom!

Which of the Gods will dare to disapprove

and chide the pallor of your studious brow?

Until Olympian scales have weighed the flood

of tears your rivers pour into the sea,

which of the Gods will dare to disapprove?

What use to us are laws of right and wrong?

High-hearted virgins, honor of the Isles,

your altars are august as any: love

will laugh at Heaven as it laughs at Hell!

What use to us are laws of right and wrong?

For Lesbos has chosen me among all men

to sing the secrets of her budding grove;

from childhood I have shared the mystery

of frenzied laughter laced with sullen tears,

and therefore am I chosen among men

to keep my lookout high on Sappho’s Cliff,

vigilant as a sleepless sentinel

gazing night and day for the bark or brig

whose distant outline shimmers on the blue;

I keep my lookout high on Sappho’s Cliff

to discover if the sea is merciful

and if, out of the sobbing breakers’ surge,

there will return to Lesbos, which forgives,

the cherished corpse of Sappho who left us

to discover if the sea is merciful –

of virile Sappho, the lover and the poet,

fairer than Aphrodite whose blue gaze

surrenders to the sombre radiance

of ash-encircled burning eyes – the eyes

of virile Sappho, the lover and the poet!

Fairer than the Anadyómene

scattering her bright serenity

and all the treasures of her golden youth

upon old Ocean dazzled by his child –

fairer than the Anadyómene

was Sappho on the day she broke her vow

and died apostate to her own command,

her lovely body forfeit to a brute

whose arrogance avenged the sacrilege

of Sappho, lost the day she broke her vow…

And from that time to this, Lesbos laments.

Heedless of the homage of the world,

she drugs herself each night with cries of pain

that rend the skies above her empty shores,

and from that time to this Lesbos laments!

DAMNED WOMEN

DELPHINE AND HIPPOLYTA

Disclosed, though dimly, by the faltering lamps,

Hippolyta rested on a soft and scented couch

reliving those caresses which had raised

the curtains of her inexperience.

Wild-eyed after the storm, she conjured up

already-distant skies of innocence,

just as a traveler might turn back to glimpse

blue horizons lost with the morning’s light.

The sluggish tears of her unfocussed gaze,

her eager arms flung down as in defeat –

every trace of voluptuous apathy

served and set off her fragile loveliness.

Reclining at her feet, elated yet calm,

Delphine stared up at her with shining eyes

the way a lioness will watch her prey

once her fangs have marked it for her own.

In all her pride the potent beauty knelt

before the pitiable one, complacently

savoring the wine of her triumph, reaching up

as though to garner fond acknowledgment.

She searched her victim’s eyes for evidence

of the silent canticle which pleasure sings

and that sublime and infinite gratitude

which glistens under the eyelids like a sigh.

‘Hippolyta, my angel, how do you feel now?

Surely you realize you must not grant

the holy sacrifice of your first bloom

to cruel gales that would disfigure it…

My kisses are as light as those May-flies

which graze the great transparent lakes at sunset;

his would trace their furrows on your flesh

like the tongue of some lacerating plow –

as if you had been trampled by a team

of oxen with inexorable hooves…

Hippolyta, sister! turn your face to me,

my heart and soul, my other half, my all!

Let me see your eyes, my heaven, my stars!

For one of their healing glances I shall trade

as yet untasted pleasures: you will drift

to sleep in my arms dreaming an endless dream!’

But then Hippolyta looked up: ‘Delphine,

I am grateful to you, I have no regrets,

yet I am troubled and my nerves are tense,

as if a dreadful feast had fouled the night…

Pangs of dread oppress me – I see ghosts

in black battalions beckoning me down

uncertain roads where each horizon ends

abruptly in a sky the color of blood.

What have we done – is it some wicked thing?

Must I endure this turmoil and this fear?

I cringe each time you call me “angel,” yet

I feel my mouth long for you. No, Delphine –

don’t look at me like that! I love you now

and I shall love you always: I choose you,

even if my choice becomes a trap

laid for me, and the onset of my doom.’

With adamant eyes and a despotic voice,

Delphine replied, shaking her tragic mane

as if she stirred on the priestess’ tripod:

‘Who in love’s name dares to speak of Hell?

My curse forever on the dreaming fool

who entered first that endless labyrinth

and tried for all his folly to enlist

love in the service of morality!

Whoever hopes to force into accord

day and darkness, shadow and radiance,

will never warm his vacillating flesh

in that red sun our bodies know as love!

Go now – go find yourself some stupid boy

and give his lust your virgin heart to maul;

then, filled with horror, livid with disgust,

bring back to me your mutilated breasts…

You cannot please two masters in this world!’

But then the girl, in a paroxysm of grief,

suddenly cried out: ‘There is emptiness

inside me – and that emptiness is my heart!

Searing as lava, deeper than the Void!

Nothing will satiate this monster’s greed,

nothing appease the Fury who puts out

her flaming torch within my very blood…

O draw the curtains – leave the world outside!

There must be rest for all this weariness.

Let me annihilate myself upon

your breast and find the solace of a grave!’

Downward, wretched victims! ever down

the path you follow: make your way to hell,

into the pit where crime arouses crime,

seething together in the thunder’s maw

and scourged by winds that never knew the sky

Down, frantic shades, and fall to your desires

where passion never slakes its raging thirst,

and from your pleasure stems your punishment.

Crack by crevice, into your sunless caves

feverish miasmas seep and gather strength

until they catch on fire like spirit-lamps,

imbuing your bodies with their vile perfume.

The harsh sterility of your delight

scalds your throat and desiccates your skin –

and the eyeless cyclone of concupiscence

rattles your flesh like an abandoned flag.

Wandering far from all mankind, condemned

to forage in the wilderness like wolves,

pursue your fate, chaotic souls, and flee

the infinite you bear within yourselves!

DAMNED WOMEN

Pensive as cattle resting on the beach,

they are staring out to sea; their hands and feet

creep toward each other imperceptibly

and touch at last, hesitant then fierce.

How eagerly some, beguiled by secrets shared,

follow a talkative stream among the trees,

spelling out their timid childhood’s love

and carving initials in the tender wood;

others pace as slow and grave as nuns

among the rocks where Anthony beheld

the purple breasts of his temptations rise

like lava from the visionary earth;

some by torchlight in the silent caves

consecrated once to pagan rites

invoke – to quench their fever’s holocaust –

Bacchus, healer of the old regrets;

others still, beneath their scapulars,

conceal a whip that in the solitude

and darkness of the forest reconciles

tears of pleasure with the tears of pain.

Virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs, all

great spirits scornful of reality,

saints and satyrs in search of the infinite,

racked with sobs or loud in ecstasy,

you whom my soul has followed to your hell,

Sisters! I love you as I pity you

for your bleak sorrows, for your unslaked thirsts,

and for the love that gorges your great hearts!

THE TWO KIND SISTERS

Death and Debauch, two friendly girls, bestow

lavish kisses, being in lusty health;

in years of labor, their still-virgin wombs,

covered with rags, have never given birth!

Notably for the poet – hell’s own pet,

ominous enemy of the household gods –

whorehouse and charnel-house alike reserve

a bed Remorse has never visited.

Alcove and Coffin, rich in blasphemies,

with sisterly solicitude propose

terrible pleasures and appalling treats…

When will you bury me, Debauch? O Death,

whose pleasures rival hers, when will you come

to graft your cypress on her gruesome rose?

ALLEGORY

It is a lovely woman, richly dressed,

who shares her wineglass with her own long hair;

the brothel’s rotgut and the brawls of love

have left the marble of her skin unmarred.

She flouts Debauchery and flirts with Death,

monsters who maim what they do not mow down,

and yet their talons have not dared molest

the simple majesty of this proud flesh.

Artemis walking, a sultana prone,

she worships pleasure with a Moslem’s faith

and summons to her breasts with open arms

the race of men enslaved by her warm eyes.

Sterile this virgin, yet imperative

to the world and its workings what she knows:

the body’s beauty is a noble gift

which wrests a pardon for all infamy.

What is Purgatory, what is Hell

to her? When she must go into the Night,

her eyes will gaze upon the face of Death

without hate, without remorse – as one newborn.

METAMORPHOSES OF THE VAMPIRE

The woman, meanwhile, writhing like a snake

across hot coals and hiking up her breasts

over her corset-stays, began to speak

as if her mouth had steeped each word in musk:

‘My lips are smooth, and with them I know how

to smother conscience somewhere in these sheets.

I make the old men laugh like little boys,

and on my triumphant bosom all tears dry.

Look at me naked, and I will replace

sun and moon and every star in the sky.

So apt am I, dear scholar, in my lore

that once I fold a man in these fatal arms

or forfeit to his teeth my breasts which are

timid and teasing, tender and tyrannous,

upon these cushions swooning with delight

the impotent angels would be damned for me!’

When she had sucked the marrow from my bones,

and I leaned toward her listlessly

to return her loving kisses, all I saw

was a kind of slimy wineskin brimming with pus!

I closed my eyes in a spasm of cold fear,

and when I opened them to the light of day,

beside me, instead of that potent mannequin

who seemed to have drunk so deeply of my blood,

there trembled the wreckage of a skeleton

which grated with the cry of a weathervane

or a rusty signboard hanging from a pole,

battered by the wind on winter nights.

A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA

My heart flew up like a bird before the mast,

circled the shrouds and mounted free and clear;

the ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky

like an angel drunk on the glory of the sun.

What is that dreary island – the black one there?

Cythera, someone says, the one in the song

insipid Eldorado of good old boys:

it isn’t much of a place, as you can see.

Island of feasting hearts and secret joys!

Like a fragrance, the voluptuary ghost

of Aphrodite floats above your shores,

inflaming minds with languor and with love.

Island green with myrtle, rich with bloom,

revered forever by all mortal men

from whose adoring hearts wells up a sigh

soft as the fallen petals of a rose

or the relentless moan of doves…Cythera now

was nothing more than a thistled promontory

vexed by the wheeling gulls’ unruly cries.

Yet there was something…I could see it now;

no temple sheltered by its sacred grove,

no priestess gathering blossoms, her loose robe

half-opened to the breezes as they passed,

her flesh ignited by a secret fire;

but as we cleared the coastline – close enough

to scare the shorebirds with our flapping sails –

we saw what it was: black against the sky,

no cypress but a branching gallows-tree.

Perched on their provender, ferocious birds

were ravaging the ripe corpse hanging there,

driving their filthy beaks like cruel drills

into each cranny of its rotten flesh;

the eyes were holes, and from the ruined groin

a coil of heavy guts had tumbled out –

the greedy creatures, gorged on hideous sweets,

had peck by vicious peck castrated him.

Below his feet, among a whining pack

that waited, muzzles lifted for their share,

some bigger beast was prowling back and forth

like a hangman huge among his underlings.

Inhabitant of Cythera, rapture’s child,

how silently you suffered these affronts

in expiation of your shameful rites

and sins that have proscribed your burial.

Ludicrous carcass! I hung there with you,

and at the sight of your insulted limbs

I tasted, like a vomit in my mouth,

the bitter tide of age-old sufferings.

Knowing what you were and what you are,

I felt each saber-tooth and jabbing beak

of jet-black panthers and of carrion-crows

that once so loved to lacerate my flesh.

…The sky was suave, the sea serene; for me

from now on everything was bloody and black

– the worse for me – and as if in a shroud

my heart lay buried in this allegory.

On Aphrodite’s island all I found

was a token gallows where my image hung…

Lord give me strength and courage to behold

my body and my heart without disgust!

EROS AND THE SKULL

AN OLD COLOPHON

Insolent Eros,

    seated on the skull

    of Humanity

    as if on a throne,

gaily blows bubbles:

    they rise, one after

    another, as if

    to rejoin the worlds

in the stratosphere.

    Frail and luminous,

    each globe as it mounts

    explodes, spattering

its tenuous soul

    like a golden dream.

    I hear the skull moan

    as each one shatters:

‘When will this callous,

    ridiculous game

    of yours be over?

    What your cruel breath

scatters into air,

    Monster Murderer,

    is my very flesh

    and blood – gray matters!’

SAINT PETER’S DENIAL

The tide of curses day by day ascends

unto His hosts – and God, what does He do?

Like a tyrant gorged on meat and wine, He sleeps –

the sound of our blasphemies sweet in His Ears.

The martyrs’ sobs, the screaming at the stake

compose, no doubt, a heady symphony;

indeed, for all the blood their pleasure costs,

the Heavens have not yet had half enough!

Remember the Mount of Olives, Jesus? When

you fell on your knees and humbly prayed to Him

Who laughed on high at the sound of hammering

as the butchers drove the nails into your flesh?

And when they spat on your divinity,

the jeering scullions and the conscript scum –

that moment when you felt the thorns impale

the skull which housed Humanity itself;

when the intolerable weight of your tormented flesh

hung from your distended arms; when blood

and sweat cascaded from your whitening brow;

when you were made a target for all eyes –

did you dream then of the wonder-working days

when you came to keep eternal promises,

riding an ass, and everywhere the ways

strewn with palms and flowers – those were the days!

when, your heart on fire with valor and with hope,

you whipped the moneylenders out of that place –

you were master then! But now, has not remorse

pierced your side even deeper than the spear?

Myself, I shall be satisfied to quit

a world where action is no kin to dreams;

would I had used – and perished by – the sword!

Peter denied his Master…He did well!

THE DEATH OF LOVERS

We shall have richly scented beds –

couches deep as graves, and rare

flowers on the shelves will bloom

for us beneath a lovelier sky.

Emulously spending their last

warmth, our hearts will be as two

torches reflecting their double fires

in the twin mirrors of our minds.

One evening, rose and mystic blue,

we shall exchange a single glance,

a long sigh heavy with farewells;

and then an Angel, unlocking doors,

will come, loyal and gay, to bring

the tarnished mirrors back to life.

THE DEATH OF THE POOR

What else consoles? It is the remedy

and the preventive too, the one escape

that like a stupefying draught of wine

gives us the heart to get through one more day;

sure on the dim horizon shines one light

that never fails, in spite of storm and cold –

the famous inn all guidebooks recommend

where we can count on lodging for the Night.

Angel of Death, in your transforming hands

the straw we lie on turns to softest down,

our sleep is sound, our dreams are ecstasy!

Here is the mystic granary of heaven,

purse of the poor and our inheritance,

the open gateway to the unknown God!

THE DEATH OF ARTISTS

How often, grim Caricature, must I

jingle my bells and kiss your bestial brow?

Until my aim is true – the circle squared –

how many arrows forfeit to the Void?

We rack our brains with subtle stratagems

and ruin many massive armatures

before the splendid Creature may be seen

for whom our fatal longing makes us sob!

To some their idol will not be revealed,

and these doomed sculptors, branded with disgrace,

upbraid themselves and lacerate their breasts,

nursing one hope, sepulchral Capitol! –

that Death as it fills the sky like another sun

will make the flowers of their devising bloom!

A STRANGE MAN’S DREAM

to Nadar

Have you felt – I have – a pain that you enjoyed?

Do they say about you, too: ‘How strange he is!’

– I was dying, and a special agony

filled my eager soul: dread and desire,

anguish and expectation – no sense of revolt.

The closer I came to what would be the end,

the sharper was my torment and the more welcome;

my heart was wrenching free from the usual world.

I was like a child in front of a stage,

hating the curtain as if it were in the way…

Finally the cold truth was revealed:

I had simply died, and the terrible dawn

enveloped me. Could this be all there is?

The curtain was up, and I was waiting still.

TRAVELERS

to Maxime Du Camp

1

The child enthralled by lithographs and maps

can satisfy his hunger for the world:

how limitless it is beneath the lamp,

and how it shrinks in the eyes of memory!

One morning we set out. Our heart is full,

our mind ablaze with rancor and disgust –

we yield it all to the rhythm of the waves,

our infinite self awash on the finite sea:

some are escaping from their country’s shame,

some from the horror of life at home, and some

– astrologers blinded by a woman’s stare –

are fugitives from Circe’s tyranny;

rather than be turned to swine they drug

themselves on wind and sea and glowing skies;

rain and snow and incinerating suns

gradually erase her kisses’ scars.

But only those who leave for leaving’s sake

are travelers; hearts tugging like balloons,

they never balk at what they call their fate

and, not knowing why, keep muttering ‘away!’…

those whose longings have the shape of clouds,

who dream – as conscripts dream of guns – of huge

and fluctuating and obscure delights,

none of which has ever had a name.

2

As if we wanted to be a ball or a top!

bouncing and twirling – even in our sleep

we look for something, driven round and round

like a sun some cruel Angel spins in space.

Preposterous quest! whose goal cannot be known

but, being nowhere, can be anywhere;

only our hope is inexhaustible,

and Man pursues repose until he drops!

Our soul is a schooner seeking a free port,

and when the question rises from the deck,

a voice from the topmost eagerly replies:

‘Happiness!… Glory!… Love!…’ Another reef.

The lookout hails each island, after dark,

as Eldorado and the Promised Land;

imagination readies for its feast –

and sights a sandbar by the morning light.

Irons or overboard with the drunken tar,

pathetic lover of chimerical coasts

who dreams Atlantis and then finds the sea

emptier for one more fond mirage!

One more old sailor in the muddy slums

who meditates, half blind, on Happy Isles

and thinks he sees the beacons of Dakar

each time a candle gutters in the dark.

3

Awesome travelers! What noble chronicles

we read in your unfathomable eyes!

Open the sea-chests of your memories

and show us jewels made of storms and stars.

We long to journey without steam or sail!

Help us forget the prison of our days

and on the canvas of our minds unfurl

your visions framed by the horizon’s gold.

Tell us what you’ve seen!

4

                                        ‘We’ve seen the stars,

the waves, and shoals we failed to see – we saw;

and though destruction came in many forms,

we were too often bored, the same as here.

The glory of the sun on Tyrian seas,

the glow of cities when the sun goes down,

awakened in our hearts a restless urge

to plunge into a still more distant sky.

None of the famous landscapes that we saw

equalled the mysterious allure

of those that Chance arranges in the clouds…

And our desire would let us have no peace!

Enjoyment breeds desire tenfold…Desire!

Old tree manured by pleasure, all the while

your bark will coarsen, growing thick and hard,

your branches seek the sun at closer range!

Great tree, will you grow forever, hardier

than the cypress? All the same, we’ve brought

these images for your albums, stay-at-homes

who prize whatever comes from far away:

idols we saw, hideous gods whose thrones

were set with emeralds the size of plums;

and palaces of marble lace whose cost

would ruin your most reckless millionaires;

robes embroidered by a thousand slaves;

women who filed their lacquered teeth to points;

jugglers sinuous as the snakes they charmed…’

5

Yes, and what else?

6

                                        ‘You talk just like a child!

Chief among all the wonders that we glimpsed

in every hole and corner, forced on our sight

at every turn of Fortune’s fatal wheel –

the boring pageant of immortal sin:

Woman a slave and yet vainglorious,

stupid and unashamed in her self-love;

Man a greedy tyrant, slave of his slaves,

swelling the sewer to a stinking flood;

victims in tears, the hangman glorified;

the banquet seasoned and festooned with blood:

the poison of power clogs the despot’s veins,

and the people kiss the knout that scourges them;

several religions similar to ours,

besieging heaven – the holy everywhere

like sybarites on rose-beds (only on

beds of nails) in hot pursuit of bliss;

Humanity enslaved by rhetoric

and mad today as it has ever been,

screaming to God in a tantrum of despair:

“I curse You in my Image – Father, be damned!”

And the least stupid, Ecstasy’s elect,

fleeing the herd where Fate has penned them fast,

take refuge in the wards of Opium!

– So much for what is news around the world!’

7

It is a bitter truth our travels teach!

Tiny and monotonous, the world

has shown – will always show us – what we are:

oases of fear in the wasteland of ennui!

Choose your desolation – stay if you can,

stir if you must. One man chooses sloth

to cheat a tireless adversary, Time,

out of his triumph in the funeral games.

Another journeys, like the Wandering Jew,

forever, but no roving can evade

the merciless net; still others seem to know

how to kill Time before they’re even weaned!

Yet we are his in the end. One hope remains:

to venture forth, with ‘Onward!’ as our cry…

Just as once we set sail for Cathay,

wind in our hair, eyes on the open sea,

we shall embark upon the Sea of Shades

with all the elation of a boy’s first cruise…

Do you hear those lovely voices? They have death

in their appeal: ‘Come with us, come and eat

the fragrant Lotus! Here is where we reap

the magic harvest that you hunger for!

Come and revel in the sweet delight

of days where it is always afternoon!’

Pylades is there, his arms held out;

we know the sound by heart, we guess the ghost!

It is her voice – we used to kiss her knees –

‘Orestes, come – Electra waits for you…’

8

Death, old admiral, up anchor now,

this country wearies us. Put out to sea!

What if the waves and winds are black as ink,

our hearts are filled with light. You know our hearts!

Pour us your poison, let us be comforted!

Once we have burned our brains out, we can plunge

to Hell or Heaven – any abyss will do –

deep in the Unknown to find the new!

THE FOUNTAIN

Your eyes are tired, poor lover – close them, then;

lie still, just as you are, in that casual pose

where pleasure found you, took you, let you go!

Down in the courtyard the fountain whispers on,

never falling silent, day or night –

an echo of the ecstasy that was

this evening’s overwhelming gift of love.

    The wisp of water rises,

               wavers, reappears:

                         a white bouquet

                         whose flowers sway

    until the moon releases

               showers of bright tears.

So it is with your soul that, set aglow

and glorified by the flash of pleasure shared,

surges swift and valiant to the skies

that hale it to their vast enchanted height,

then sinks back, dying in a slow descent

of languor which by melancholy ways

ebbs to the inmost center of my heart.

    The wisp of water rises,

               wavers, reappears:

                         a white bouquet

                         where flowers sway

    until the moon releases

               showers of bright tears.

Lover, whom the darkness so becomes

that I rejoice to lie upon your breast

and listen to the never-ending plaint

which murmurs to itself in marble pools

among the trees disheveled by the wind:

moon, melodious water, marvelous night –

your sorrow is the mirror of my love!

    The wisp of water rises,

               wavers, reappears:

                         a white bouquet

                         whose flowers sway

    until the moon releases

               showers of bright tears.

BERTHE: HER EYES

No other eyes can bear comparison!

Something of Night is in your glance, my child;

a gentle darkness falls and fills and flees –

O world of charming shadows, fall on me!

Great eyes of my child, beloved shrines,

you make me think of those enchanted caves

where out of the lethargic mysteries

neglected treasures tenuously shine.

The eyes of my child are secret and immense

as you are, boundless Night – lit up like you

with stars that are the dreams of Love and Faith,

whose depths are luminous, alluring, chaste…

HYMN

To Love in all her loveliness

    filling my heart with light,

to the Angel, the Idol, the Muse,

    homage and endless praise!

Who like a salt-wind from the sea

    suffuses life with joy

and pours into my unslaked heart

    eternity’s bouquet!

What is your substance, flawless Love?

    Who can pronounce your name,

invisible grain of musk at the core

    of my immortal soul?

Sachet forever fresh that scents

    this intimate retreat,

forgotten censer smoking still

    in secret through the dark!

To Love who by her favor grants

    my health and happiness,

to the Angel, the Idol, the Muse,

    homage and endless praise!

THE PROMISES OF A FACE

I love, pale Beauty, how the shadows mass

    beneath the arches of your brow;

black as they are, those eyes of yours inspire

    anything but funereal thoughts –

eyes which languishingly show the way

    out of that labyrinth of hair,

eyes which intimate: ‘If you desire,

    lover of the modeled muse,

to realize the hopes that we arouse

    and sate the tastes that you profess,

rely on what you see: descend, explore

    a matching nether opulence;

you’ll find at the tip of each imposing breast

    a medal cast in massy bronze,

and where the belly’s sulfur silk is seamed

    with saffron velvet, flourishes

a sinuous fleece which is in fact the twin

    of that enormous head of hair –

and which in darkness rivals you, O Night,

    deep and spreading starless Night!’

THE VOICE

Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where

Latin ashes and the dust of Greece

mingled with novels, history, and verse

in one dark Babel. I was folio-high

when I first heard the voices. ‘All the world,’

said one, insidious but sure, ‘is cake –

let me make you an appetite to match,

and then your happiness need have no end.’

And the other: ‘Come, O come with me in dreams

beyond the possible, beyond the known!’

That second voice sang like the wind in the reeds,

a wandering phantom out of nowhere, sweet

to hear yet somehow horrifying too.

‘Now and forever!’ I answered, whereupon

my wound was with me – ever since, my Fate:

behind the scenes, the frivolous decors

of all existence, deep in the abyss,

I see distinctly other, brighter worlds;

yet victimized by what I know I see,

I sense the serpent coiling at my heels;

and therefore, like the prophets, from that hour

I’ve loved the wilderness, I’ve loved the sea;

no ordinary sadness touches me

though I find savor in the bitterest wine;

how many truths I trade away for lies,

and musing on heaven, stumble over trash…

Even so, the voice consoles me: ‘Keep your dreams,

the wise have none so lovely as the mad.’

THE UNFORESEEN

A miser watches while his father dies

and speculates, before the corpse is cold:

‘There must be some old boards out in the shed –

    good enough for such a thing!’

A coquette coos to herself: ‘My heart is kind,

and naturally God gave me looks to match.’

Her heart! that organ shriveled like a ham

    cured in Hell’s eternal fire!

A fuming scribbler – ask him: he’s a torch! –

taunts his readers drowned in a sea of ink:

‘Where has He gone, this loving God of yours,

    where is the Savior you profess?’

Better still, I know one libertine

who wrings his hands and snivels night and day,

repeating helplessly: ‘I will be good –

    starting first thing tomorrow!’

The clock in the tower whispers: ‘It is time.

Useless to warn them – flesh is deaf and blind,

and fragile as a termite-ridden wall

    the grubs have eaten from within.’

Whereupon appears One they had all denied –

their gloating accuser: ‘I trust that you enjoyed

taking communion from my chamber-pot

    at our charming little Black Mass?

Each of you in his heart has worshipped me,

in secret kissed my filthy ass – behold!

Hear my laugh and welcome Satan home,

    huge and ugly as the earth itself!

Red-handed hypocrites, how could you hope

to diddle your Master out of his reward?

As if two prizes were given: being rich

    and reaching Heaven besides!

His prey must make it worth the hunter’s while

to stalk such game so long out in the cold.

Now you will learn just how much misery

    loves company – come down!

down with me through layers of mud and dust,

down through the rubble of your rotting graves

into my palace carved from a single rock

    without one soft spot in its heart,

made as it is of universal Sin:

it holds my pain, my glory and my pride!’

– Meanwhile perched above the universe

    an Angel trumpets the victory

of those whose hearts exclaim: ‘O Lord, my God!

I bless Thy rod, I thank Thee for this pain!

My soul in Thy hands is more than a futile toy,

    and Thy wisdom is infinite.’

That trumpet’s sound is so magnificent

on solemn eves of Heavenly harvesting,

that like an ecstasy it gladdens those

    whose praises it proclaims.

TO A MALABAR GIRL

Your feet are agile as your hands; your hips

make well-endowed white women envious;

your velvet eyes are blacker than your flesh,

and for the artist pondering his theme

your body is a blessing undisguised.

Livening hot blue landscapes where you live,

you fill the water-jugs and perfume jars,

you light your master’s pipe and wave away

mosquitoes from his bed – such are your tasks,

and when the plane-trees rustle in the dawn

you buy bananas ripe from the bazaar.

The day is filled with the sound of your bare feet

and snatches of incomprehensible songs;

when evening’s scarlet mantle falls, you stretch

your limbs out on the matting, and you dream –

what do you dream? There must be hummingbirds

and bright hibiscus lovely as yourself…

Poor happy child! You want to visit France,

that crowded country where no one is well?

Make your farewells to swaying tamarinds

and trust your life to sailors and the sea?

Dressed in nothing but those muslin rags

you’d shiver out your days beneath the snow –

how you would weep for carefree nakedness,

your supple body cruelly corseted

as you hustled supper in the city’s mud,

selling the fragrance of your foreign charms,

sad-eyed and yearning through our filthy fogs

for the scattered ghosts of absent coco palms!

A LONG WAY FROM HERE

This is the place – the holy hut

where, always in her Sunday best

and elbow-deep in cushions, she

waits for us – or anyone – to call,

listening to the fountains sob

and fanning her unbridled breast;

we are in Dorothea’s room –

nearby, the wind and water sing

a tearful sort of cradle-song

to pacify this pampered child.

Dedicated downward strokes

massage her skin to burnished teak

with oil of musk and benjamin

– and all our tribute flowers swoon.

ROMANTIC SUNSET

The sun is all very well when it rises – then

who minds returning its abrupt salute?

But fortunate the man who still can find

room in his heart for its high-flown farewell!

Take my case. I have seen all nature swoon

under that gaze, like an over-driven heart.

Late as it is, who can resist the West

and the hope of entertaining one last ray…

No use following! The god withdraws,

and darkness comes into its own. The world

is cold and wet and full of mysteries;

a mortuary odor fouls the marsh

where my uncertain footsteps try to keep

from squashing frogs or snakes or something worse…

SCRUTINY AT MIDNIGHT

The clock ironically summons us

to account for what we did with this day past,

Friday the thirteenth, ominous date! and yet,

knowing the risks, we have defiled our life –

blasphemed the most incontestable of Gods

and (worthy slave of Hell) like a parasite

at Croesus’ feast, to please our monstrous host,

mocked what we love and what we loathe acclaimed!

oppressed the weak we wrongfully despise

and (servile bully) cringed to stupid Power,

genuflected before the throne of Things

and blessed the phosphorescence of decay!

Last, to cheat our moods with madness, we

whose Muse’s priesthood serves a world of death

have drunk without thirst and eaten without hunger!

– Let darkness hide us: quick, blow out the lamp!

SAD MADRIGAL

1

What does it matter to me that you are wise?

    Be lovely – and be sad!

Tears are an advantage to the face,

as streams enhance the meadow’s mystery

    and rains refresh the rose.

I love you best of all when happiness

    fades from your downcast brow;

when horror overflows your heart; and when

your days are darkened by a spreading cloud:

    the shadow of the past.

I love you when your brimming eyes release

    teardrops hot as blood;

when all my consolations fail, and pain

is more than your tormented life can bear:

    a deathbed agony.

I drink up every tear you weep – they are

    the holiest joy I know,

the truest hymn, the most delicious draught:

deep in your heart I see them shining still,

    the pearls shed by your eyes!

2

I know your heart, that crowded solitude

    where old uprooted loves

are crammed into a roaring forge: you nurse

beneath your breast a semblance of the pride

    that purifies the damned;

yet not until your dreams, my dear, reflect

    the fires of Hell itself,

the nightmares you can never waken from

for all your faith in poison and the noose,

    in powder, shot, and steel;

not until you cower at each knock

    and dread the air you breathe,

shuddering each time you hear the clock,

will you have known the merciless embrace

    of absolute Disgust –

then, only then, my slave, my queen,

    whose love for me is fear,

your soul half-stifled by the tainted night,

will you turn to me and sob the words: ‘I am

    your equal, O my king!’

THE REBEL

An angry Angel plunges out of the sky,

grips the sinner’s hair and shakes him hard,

shouting: ‘Hear and obey, it is the law!

I am your Guardian Angel. Do my will!

Learn that you must love, with all your heart,

the poor in body and spirit, the low, the lost,

so that your charity may spread for Christ

a proper carpet when He walks the earth.

Such is true love! Before your heart goes numb,

let the glory of God awaken it to joy,

for that alone among your pleasures lasts!’

And the Angel, punishing to prove his love,

torments his victim with his giant fists;

but still the damned soul answers: ‘I will not!’

MEDITATION

Behave, my Sorrow! let’s have no more scenes.

Evening’s what you wanted – Evening’s here:

a gradual darkness overtakes the town,

bringing peace to some, to others pain.

Now, while humanity racks up remorse

in low distractions under Pleasure’s lash,

groveling for a ruthless master – come

away, my Sorrow, leave them! Give me your hand…

See how the dear departed dowdy years

crowd the balconies of heaven, leaning down,

while smiling out of the sea appears Regret;

the Sun will die in its sleep beneath a bridge,

and trailing westward like a winding-sheet –

listen, my dear – how softly Night arrives.

THE ABYSS

Pascal had his abyss, it followed him.

But the abyss is All – action and dream,

language, desire! – and who could count the times

the wind of Fear has made my blood run cold!

Each way I turn, above me and below,

tempting and terrible too the silence, the space…

By night God traces with a knowing hand

unending nightmares on unending dark.

I balk at sleep as if it were a hole

filled up with horrors, leading God knows where;

my windows open on Infinity,

and haunted by its vertigo my mind

envies the indifference of the void:

will Numbers and Beings never set me free!

ICARUS LAMENTS

Happy men who fornicate with whores

    are satisfied and fit,

while my exhausted arms are impotent

    from clasping only clouds;

nights of staring at the peerless stars

    which ornament the dark

have seared my eyes until they see no more

    than memories of suns;

I have not followed out the heart of space

    nor touched its boundaries:

beneath a fiery gaze I cannot meet

    I feel my pinions fail;

I burn for beauty, but I shall not have

    the highest accolade –

my name will not be given to the abyss

    which waits to be my grave.

THE LID

Wherever he goes – on land or out to sea,

under a flaming sun or a frozen sky –

servant of Jesus, Aphrodite’s slave,

Midas in splendor, mendicant in rags,

city-mouse, country-mouse, anchored or adrift,

whether his wits are vacuous or keen,

man lives in terror of the Mystery

and casts a trembling glance above his head

to heaven – Heavens! the vault that walls him in,

illuminated ceiling of a music-hall

where every walk-on treads a bloody board;

the hermit’s hope, the libertine’s despair –

the Sky! black lid of that enormous pot

in which innumerable generations boil.

THE OFFENDED MOON

Worshipped once, discreetly, by our sires

as Cynthia, the lamp of secret haunts,

and still attended through blue landscapes by

a blameless harem of the stars, O moon!

do you see the lovers on their prosperous beds,

teeth gleaming where they sleep open-mouthed?

Do you see the poet struggling with his lines?

Or the vipers coupling in the new-mown hay?

Creeping on high in your yellow domino,

do you still, from darkness until dawn,

search out Endymion’s outdated charms?

– ‘What I see is your mother, child of this ruined age,

bent to her looking-glass by the weight of years

and skillfully painting the breast that suckled you!’

EPIGRAPH FOR A BANNED BOOK

Gentle reader, being – as you are –

a cautious man of uncorrupted tastes,

lay aside this disobliging work,

as orgiastic as it is abject.

Unless you’ve graduated from the school

of Satan (devil of a pedagogue!)

the poems will be Greek to you, or else

you’ll set me down for one more raving fool.

If, however, your impassive eye

can plunge into the chasms on each page,

read on, my friend: you’ll learn to love me yet.

Inquiring spirit, fellow-sufferer

in search, even here, of your own Paradise,

pity me…If not, to Hell with you!

PROSE POEMS

translated by Michael Hamburger

THE OLD WOMAN’S DESPAIR

The little, shriveled old woman felt quite overjoyed when she saw the pretty child whom everyone wished to amuse, whom everyone tried to please; that pretty creature, so fragile, like herself, the little old woman, and, like her also, without teeth and without hair.

And she approached the child, wishing to smile at it and make faces pleasantly.

But the terrified child struggled against the caresses of the good, decrepit woman, and filled the house with its yelping.

Then the kind old woman retired into her eternal solitude, and cried in a corner, saying to herself: ‘Oh! for us wretched old females, the age when we could please, if only the innocent, is past; and we fill with horror the little children whom we wish to love!’

THE FOOL AND THE VENUS

What an admirable day! The vast park abandons itself to the scorching eye of the sun, like youth to the domination of love.

The universal ecstasy of created things does not express itself in any sound; the flowing streams, even, are as though asleep. Quite unlike human festivities, this is a silent orgy.

It seems as though an ever-growing radiance were making the objects sparkle more and more; as though the excited flowers were burning with the desire to rival the azure of the sky in the intensity of their colors, and that the heat, rendering all perfumes visible, were causing them to rise towards the luminary like flying fireworks.

However, amongst this universal rejoicing, I have discovered an afflicted creature.

At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those artificial fools, one of those willful clowns whose duty it is to make kings laugh when Remorse or Boredom obsesses them, dressed up in a garish and ridiculous costume, crowned with cap and bells, huddled up close to the pedestal, raises his eyes filled with tears to the immortal Goddess.

And his eyes say: ‘I am the lowest and most solitary of men, deprived of love and friendship, and, in this respect, greatly inferior to the most imperfect of animals. Yet I, even I, was made to understand and feel immortal Beauty! O Goddess, have pity on my sadness and on my frenzy!’

But the implacable Venus gazes far into the distance at some object or other with her marble eyes.

CROWDS

It is not given to everyone to take a bath in the multitude; to enjoy the crowd is an art; and only that man can gorge himself with vitality, at the expense of the human race, whom, in his cradle, a fairy has inspired with love of disguise and of the mask, with hatred of the home and a passion for voyaging.

Multitude, solitude: terms that, to the active and fruitful poet, are synonymous and interchangeable. A man who cannot people his solitude is no less incapable of being alone in a busy crowd.

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege that he can, at will, be either himself or another. Like those wandering spirits that seek a body, he enters, when he likes, into the person of any man. For him alone all is vacant; and if certain places seem to be closed to him, it is that, to his eyes, they are not worth the trouble of being visited.

The solitary and pensive pedestrian derives a singular exhilaration from this universal communion.