or by any one,
these inure, have inured, shall inure,
to the identities from which
they sprang, or shall spring.
Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?
The world does not so exist,
no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,
no consummation exists
without being from some long previous consummation,
and that from some other,
without the farthest conceivable one
coming a bit nearer the beginning than any.
Whatever satisfies souls is true;
prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls,
itself only finally satisfies the soul,
the soul has that measureless pride
which revolts from every lesson
but its own.
Now I breathe the word of the prudence
that walks abreast with time,
space, reality,
that answers the pride
which refuses every lesson but its own.
What is prudence is indivisible,
declines to separate one part of life from every part,
divides not the righteous from the unrighteous
or the living from the dead,
matches every thought or act by its correlative,
knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,
knows that the young man
who composedly periled his life and lost it
has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,
that he who never periled his life,
but retains it to old age in riches and ease,
has probably achieved
nothing for himself worth mentioning,
knows that only that person has really learned
who has learned to prefer results,
who favors body and soul the same,
who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,
who in his spirit in any emergency whatever
neither hurries nor avoids death.
This Compost1
1
Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body
to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth
as to other flesh to renew me.
O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health
you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distempered corpses
within you?
Is not every continent worked over and over
with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you today,
or perhaps I am deceived,
I will run a furrow with my plough,
I will press my spade through the sod
and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
2
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once formed
part of a sick person—yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
the bean bursts noiselessly
through the mould in the garden,
the delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
the apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
the resurrection of the wheat appears
with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree
and the mulberry-tree,
the he-birds carol mornings and evenings while
the she-birds sit on their nests,
the young of poultry break through the hatched eggs,
the new-born of animals appear,
the calf is dropt from the cow,
the colt from the mare,
out of its little hill faithfully rise
the potato’s dark green leaves,
out of its hill rises
the yellow maize-stalk,
the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,
the summer growth is innocent and disdainful
above all those strata of sour dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
that this is no cheat,
this transparent green-wash of the sea
which is so amorous after me,
that it is safe
to allow it to lick my naked body all over
with its tongues,
that it will not endanger me with the fevers
that have deposited themselves in it,
that all is clean forever and forever,
that the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
that blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
that the fruits of the apple-orchard
and the orange-orchard,
that melons, grapes, peaches, plums,
will none of them poison me,
that when I recline on the grass
I do not catch any disease,
though probably every spear of grass
rises out of what was once catching disease.
Now I am terrified at the Earth,
it is that calm and patient,
it grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
it turns harmless and stainless on its axis,
with such endless successions of diseased corpses,
it distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
it renews with such unwitting looks
its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
it gives such divine materials to men,
and accepts such leavings from them at last.
When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer1
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
when the proofs, the figures,
were ranged in columns before me;
when I was shown the charts and the diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them;
when I, sitting, heard the astronomer,
where he lectured with much applause
in the lecture-room,
how soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself,
in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
looked up in perfect silence at the stars.
Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)
A Carrion1
Translated by Sir John SQuire
Rememberest thou, my sweet, that summer’s day,
how in the sun outspread
at a path’s bend a filthy carcass lay
upon a pebbly bed?
Like a lewd woman, with its legs in air,
burned, oozed the poisonous mass;
its gaping belly, calm and debonair,
was full of noisome gas.
And steadily upon this rottenness,
as though to cook it brown
and render Nature hundredfold excess,
the sun shone down.
The blue sky thought the carrion marvelous,
a flower most fair to see;
and as we gazed it almost poisoned us—
it stank so horribly.
The flies buzzed on this putrid belly, whence
black hosts of maggots came,
which streamed in thick and shining rivers thence
along that ragged frame.
Pulsating like a wave, spurting about
bright jets, it seemed to liv
e;
as though it were by some vague wind blown out,
some breath procreative.
And all this life was strangely musical
like wind or bubbling spring,
or corn which moves with rhythmic rise and fall
in time of winnowing.
The lines became indefinite and faint
as a thin dream that dies,
a half-forgotten scene the hand can paint
only from memories …
Behind the rocks there lurked a hungry hound
with melancholy eye,
longing to nose the morsel he had found
and gnaw it greedily.
Yet thou shalt be as vile a carrion
as this infection dire,
O bright star of my eyes, my nature’s sun,
my angel, my desire!
Yea, such, O queen of the graces, shalt thou be
after the last soft breath,
beneath the grass and the lush greenery
a-moldering in death!
When they sweet flesh the worms devour with kisses,
tell them, O beauty mine,
of rotting loves I keep the bodily blisses
and essence all-divine!
from Fuses I – on Love1
Translated from the French by Norman Cameron
Love may arise from a generous sentiment—namely,
the liking for prostitution;
but it soon becomes corrupted
by the liking for ownership.
Love seeks to escape from itself,
to mingle itself with its victim,
as a victor nation with the vanquished—
and yet at the same time
to retain the privileges of a conqueror.
The sensual pleasures of a man who keeps a mistress
have in them something both of the angel
and of the proprietor.
Charity and ferocity.
from Fuses I — on Art1
Translated from the French by Norman Cameron
At a theater or ball,
each person is being pleasured by everybody else.
What is art?
Prostitution.
The pleasure of being in a crowd
is a mysterious expression of delight
in the multiplication of number.
Number is all, and in all,
number is within the individual.
Intoxication is a number.
from Fuses I — on God2
Translated from the French by Norman Cameron
Even if God did not exist,
religion would still be holy and divine.
God is the only being who, in order to rule,
does not need even to exist.
Creations of the mind are more alive than matter.
Heautontimoroumenos3
Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
I’ll strike thee without enmity
nor wrath,—like butchers at the block!
As Moses smote the living rock,
—till from thine eyelids’ agony
the springs of suffering shall flow
to slake the desert of my thirst;
and on that flood, my lust accurst
with Hope to fill its sails, shall go
as on the waves, a pitching barge,
and in my bosom quickening,
thy sobs and tears I love shall ring
loud as a drum that beats a charge!
For am I not a clashing note
in God’s eternal symphony,
thanks to this vulture, Irony,
whose talons rend my heart and throat?
She’s in my voice, the screaming elf!
My poisoned blood came all from her!
I am the mirror sinister
wherein the vixen sees herself!
I am the wound and I the knife!
I am the blow I give, and feel!
I am the broken limbs, the wheel,
the hangman and the strangled life!
I am my heart’s own vampire, for
I walk alone, condemned, forlorn,
by laughter everlasting torn,
yet doomed to smile, —ah, nevermore!
Metamorphoses of the Vampire1
Translated by George Dillon
Meanwhile from her red mouth the woman,
in husky tones,
twisting her body like a serpent upon hot stones
and straining her white breasts
from their imprisonment,
let fall these words, as potent as a heavy scent:
“My lips are moist and yielding, and I know the way
to keep the antique demon of remorse at bay.
All sorrows die upon my bosom. I can make
old men laugh happily as children for my sake.
For him who sees me naked in my tresses, I
replace the sun, the moon, and all the stars of the sky!
Believe me, learned sir, I am so deeply skilled
that when I wind a lover in my soft arms, and yield
my breasts like two ripe fruits for his devouring—both
shy and voluptuous, insatiable and loath—
upon this bed that groans and sighs luxuriously
even the impotent angels would be damned for me!”
When she had drained me of my very marrow, and cold
and weak, I turned to give her one more kiss—behold,
there at my side was nothing but a hideous
putrescent thing, all faceless and exuding pus.
I closed my eyes and mercifully swooned till day:
and when I looked at morning for that beast of prey
who seemed to have replenished her arteries
from my own,
the wan, disjointed fragments of a skeleton
wagged up and down
in a lewd posture where she had lain,
rattling with each convulsion like a weathervane
or an old sign that creaks upon its bracket, right
mournfully in the wind upon a winter’s night.
Spleen1
Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
November, angry at the capital,
whelms in a death-chill from her gloomy urn
the pallid dead beneath the graveyard wall,
the death-doomed who in dripping houses yearn.
Grimalkin prowls, a gaunt and scurvy ghoul,
seeking a softer spot for her sojourn;
under the eaves an ancient poet’s soul
shivers and flees and wails at each return.
The grieving church-bell and the sputtering log
repeat the rusty clock’s harsh epilogue;
while in a pack of cards, scent-filled and vile,
grim relic of a spinster dropsical,
the knave of hearts and queen of spades recall
their loves, defunct, and sinistrously smile.
The Flask1
Translated by James Huneker
There are some powerful odors that can pass
out of the stoppered flagon; even glass
to them is porous. Oft when some old box
brought from the East is opened and the locks
and hinges creak and cry; or in a press
in some deserted house, where the sharp stress
of odors old and dusty fills the brain;
an ancient flask is brought to light again,
and forth the ghosts of long-dead odors creep.
There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep
a thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides,
phantoms of old the folding darkness hides,
who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold,
rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold.
A memory that brings languor flutters here:
the fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear
thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit
where, like a Laz
arus from his winding-sheet,
arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost
of an old passion, long since loved and lost.
So I, when vanished from man’s memory
deep in some dark and somber chest I lie,
an empty flagon they have cast aside,
broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride,
will be your shroud, beloved pestilence!
The witness of your might and virulence,
sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup
of life and death my heart has drunken up!
The Ghostly Visitant1
Translated by Sir John SQuire
Like the mild-eyed angels sweet
I will come to thy retreat,
stealing in without a sound
when the shades of night close round.
I will give thee manifold
kisses soft and moony-cold,
gliding, sliding o’er thee like
a serpent crawling round a dike.
When the livid morn creeps on
you will wake and find me gone
till the evening come again.
As by tenderness and truth
others rule thy life and youth,
I by terror choose to reign.
The Murderer’s Wine2
Translated by Sir John SQuire
My wife is dead and I am free,
now I may drink to my content;
when I came back without a cent
her piteous outcries tortured me.
Now I am happy as a king,
the air is pure, the sky is clear;
just such a summer as that year,
when first I went a-sweethearting.
A horrible thirst is tearing me,
to quench it I should have to swill
just as much cool wine as would fill
her tomb—that’s no small quantity.
I threw her down and then began
to pile upon her where she fell
all the great stones around the well—
I shall forget it if I can.
By all the soft vows of our prime,
by those eternal oaths we swore,
and that our love might be once more
as ‘twas in our old passionate time,
The Giant Book of Poetry Page 17