BENEDICTION
When, at the bidding of powers supreme,
The Poet in this weary world appears,
His mother, terrified, aghast, blasphemes,
Clenches her fist at God, who soothes her tears.
'Why did I not breed viper's progeny,
Rather than foster this derision?
Accursed the night of pleasure transitory
When I conceived my expiation!
Since of all women you have chosen me
To be my wretched husband's hate and shame,
Since I can not this swart monstrosity,
Like some love-letter, cast into the flames,
Then I shall turn thy overwhelming hate
Upon the cursed sign of thy cruelty,
This miserable tree I'll so contort
That its infected shoots no man shall see!'
She swallows thus the foam of her despair,
And, ignorant of heavenly designs,
In deep Gehenna she herself prepares
The pyres devoted to maternal crimes.
Yet, sheltered by an Angel's wings unseen,
The Child disowned grows merry with the sun;
In all his food, in all his merry wine,
He finds the nectar of Elysium.
He frolics with the wind, talks to the cloud,
And, lyrical, sings of the Holy Cross;
The Spirit which upon the pilgrim broods
Sheds tears to see his carefree happiness.
All those he wants to love watch him with fear
Or else, made bold by his serenity,
See who can hurt him and arouse his tears,
Try out on him all their ferocity.
In bread and wine which he is meant to taste
They mingle ashes and their spittle foul,
And all he touches cast aside, debased,
Declare that knowing him was criminal.
His wife goes crying in the crowded street:
'Since he finds beauty in me to adore,
I'll play the part of idol obsolete,
Like them, I'll have myself gilded once more.
I'll glut myself with incense, myrrh, and nard,
With genuflexions, with meat and wine:
Discover if, in an admiring heart,
I can usurp the priviledge divine!
And when I weary of this heathen farce,
My hands both strong and weak on him I'll lay.
My nails, the nails of the extortioners,
Will to his very heart cut out their way.
And like a new-fledged bird, all quivering,
I'll tear away his red heart from his breast,
And cast it to my dog, an offering
To satisfy the beast that I love best!'
To Heaven, where he sees a splendid throne,
The tranquil Poet gazes piously;
His soul, bright as a constellation,
Conceals the sight of man's hostility.
'Blessed be Thou, my God, Who givest pain
As cure divine for our impurities,
And as the very essence superfine
Which makes us strong for Thy felicities!
I know that You still keep the Poet's place
In the blest rank of sacred Legions,
That You ask him to feast in Paradise
With Thrones and Virtues and Dominions.
I know that grief is the one nobility
That earth and even hell will not withstand,
That if my mystic crown I justify,
All ages and all worlds I must command.
But the lost jewels of Palmyra old,
The unknown metals, pearls deep in the sea,
By Your hand mounted, still would not, all told,
Give this fine diadem its brilliancy.
For it will be made of pure light alone,
Drawn from the sacred source of every light,
And mortal eyes as radiant as noon
Are mournful mirrors of its splendour bright.
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CARRION
Remember, my soul, the thing we saw that lovely summer day?
On a pile of stones where the path turned off, the hideous carrion-
Legs in the air, like a whore - displayed, indifferent to the last,
A belly slick with lethal sweat and swollen with foul gas.
The sun lit up that rottenness as though to roast it through,
Restoring to Nature a hundredfold what she had here made one.
And heaven watched the splendid corpse like a flower open wide-
You nearly fainted dead away at the perfume it gave off.
Flies kept humming over the guts from which a gleaming clot
Of maggots poured to finish off what scraps of flesh remained.
The tide of trembling vermin sank, then bubbled up afresh
As if the carcass, drawing breath, by their lives lived again
And made a curious music there - like running water, or wind,
Or the rattle of chaff the winnower loosens in his fan.
Shapeless - nothing was left but a dream the artist had sketched in,
Forgotten, and only later on finished from memory.
Behind the rocks an anxious bitch eyed us reproachfully,
Waiting for the chance to resume her interrupted feast.
Yet you will come to this offense, this horrible decay,
Wou, the light of my life, the sun and the moon and the stars of my love!
Yes, you will come to this, my queen, after the sacraments,
When you rot underground among the bones already there.
But as their kisses eat you up, my Beauty, tell the worms
I've kept the sacred essence, saved the form of my rotted loves!
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I WORSHIP YOU LIKE NIGHT'S PAVILION
I worship you like night's pavilion,
O vase of sadness, o great silent one,
And love you more since you escape from me,
And since you seem, my night's sublimity,
To mock me and increase the leagues that lie
Between my arms and blue immensity.
I move to attack, beseige, assail,
Like eager worms after a funeral.
I even love, o beast implacable,
The coldness which makes you more beautiful.
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PREFACE TO
THE FLOWERS OF EVIL
Folly and error, sin and avarice
Work on our bodies, occupy our thoughts,
And we ourselves sustain our sweet regrets
As mendicants nourish their worms and lice.
Our wrongs are stubborn, our repentance base;
We lavishly pay for confessions,
And to the muddy path gaily return,
Thinking that vile tears will our sins erase.
Our evil's pillow Satan Trismegist
Our ravished senses at his leisure lulls,
And all the precious metal of our wills
Is vaporized by this arch-scientist.
The Devil holds our strings in puppetry!
In objects vile we find attraction;
Each day we sink nearer perdition,
Unhorrified, through rank obscurity.
As some poor libertine will bite and kiss
The bruised breast of a courtesan,
We catch a passing pleasure clandestine,
Like an old orange squeeze out all its' juice.
And like a million helminths swarming, dense,
A world of Demons tipple in our brains,
And, when we breathe, Death in our lungs remains,
River invisible, with dull complaints.
If rape and dagger, fire and hellebore,
Have not yet prinked out with designs ornate
The common canvas of our wretched fate,
It is, alas, that our faint soul demurs.
And yet among the jackals, panthers, hounds,
The monkeys, serpents, vultures, scorpions,
The beasts which howl and growl and crawl and scream
And in our heinous zoo of sins abound,
There's one more hideous, evil, obscene!
Though it makes no gesture, no great cry,
It would lay waste the earth quite willingly,
And in a yawn, engulf creation.
Boredom! Its eyes with tears unwilling shine,
It dreams of scaffolds, smoking its cheroot.
Reader, you know this monster delicate,
Double-faced reader, -- kinsman, -- brother mine!
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