AI-Generated Graded Readers Masaru Uchida, Gifu University Publication webpage: https://www1.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/a1/ai-generated_graded_readers.html Publication date: April 11, 2026 About This Edition This book is a simplified English adaptation created for extensive reading practice. The text was translated from French into English and simplified using ChatGPT for intermediate English learners as part of an educational project. Target reading level: CEFR A2-B1 This edition aims to support fluency development through accessible vocabulary, expanded narration, and improved readability while preserving the original story structure. Source Text Original work: Les Fleurs du Mal Author: Charles Baudelaire Language: French Source: Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ Full text available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6099/pg6099.txt The original text is in the public domain. Copyright and Use This simplified edition is intended for educational and non-commercial use only. The source text is provided by Project Gutenberg under its public domain policy. Users should refer to the Project Gutenberg License for full terms: https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html This adaptation was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and edited for readability and educational purposes. Disclaimer This edition is an educational adaptation and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Project Gutenberg.

 
Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil [Les Fleurs du Mal] (Simplified Edition, Adapted and Simplified from French by ChatGPT)


To the Reader

Foolishness, error, sin, and greed
fill our minds and wear down our bodies,
and we feed our sweet regrets
as beggars feed their lice.

Our sins are stubborn, and our repentance is weak.
We want a good reward for our confessions,
then we gladly go back into the muddy road,
thinking that cheap tears can wash us clean.

On the pillow of evil, Satan, the dark master,
rocks our enchanted spirit to sleep,
and the rich metal of our will
turns into smoke in his clever hands.

It is the Devil who pulls the strings that move us.
We find charm in ugly things.
Each day we take one more step toward Hell,
without horror, through filthy darkness.

Like a poor man of pleasure who kisses and bites
the wounded breast of an old prostitute,
we steal a secret pleasure as we pass
and squeeze it hard like an old orange.

Packed together, crawling like a million worms,
a crowd of Demons celebrates in our brains,
and when we breathe, Death enters our lungs
like an unseen river, with low sad sounds.

If rape, poison, the knife, and fire
have not yet sewn their bright patterns
on the common cloth of our poor fate,
it is because our soul is not bold enough.

But among the jackals, panthers, dogs,
monkeys, scorpions, vultures, snakes,
all the screaming, howling, crawling monsters
in the filthy zoo of our vices,

there is one more ugly, more evil, more unclean than all.
It makes no great cry and no wild movement,
yet it would gladly turn the world to dust
and swallow the earth in one yawn.

It is Boredom. With a tear in its eye,
it dreams of scaffolds while it smokes.
You know this delicate monster, reader—
false reader—my equal—my brother.



Spleen and Ideal


Blessing

When, by a law of the highest powers,
the Poet appears in this tired world,
his frightened mother, full of angry words,
shakes her fists at God, who pities her.

“Why did I not give birth to a nest of snakes,
instead of feeding this cruel joke?
Cursed be the night of passing pleasure
when my body conceived my punishment!

“Since you chose me among all women
to be the shame of my sad husband,
and since I cannot throw this shriveled monster
into the flames like a love letter,

“I will pour back on him all the hate
that crushes me from every side.
I will twist this miserable tree so hard
that its poisoned buds will never open.”

So she swallows the foam of her hate,
and, not understanding eternal plans,
she prepares, deep in hell,
the fires for a mother’s crime.

Yet under the unseen care of an Angel,
the poor child grows drunk on sunlight,
and in all he drinks and all he eats
he finds sweet food from heaven.

He plays with the wind, he speaks with the cloud,
and sings as he walks his road of pain.
The Spirit that follows him on his journey
weeps to see him happy like a bird in the woods.

All those whom he wants to love watch him with fear,
or, growing bold because he is so calm,
try to see who can make him cry
and test their cruelty on him.

Into the bread and wine meant for his mouth
they mix ashes and dirty spit.
In false piety they throw away what he touches
and blame themselves for following his steps.

His wife cries out in the public squares:
“Since he thinks I am beautiful enough to worship,
I will work like the idols of old,
and like them I will have gold laid over me.

“I will make myself drunk with nard, incense, and myrrh,
with bowed knees, rich food, and wine,
to see whether I can steal, laughing,
the holy praise from the heart that loves me.

“And when I grow tired of these wicked games,
I will put my thin but strong hand on him.
My nails, like the nails of the harpies,
will know how to cut a path into his heart.

“Like a very young bird, trembling and beating,
I will tear that red heart from his breast,
and to feed my favorite beast,
I will throw it on the ground with scorn.”

Toward Heaven, where his eye sees a shining throne,
the calm Poet lifts his faithful arms,
and the bright lightning of his clear mind
hides from him the sight of the furious crowd.

“Blessed are You, my God, who give suffering
as a holy cure for our unclean hearts,
and as the best and purest gift
that prepares the strong for sacred joy.

“I know that You keep a place for the Poet
among the blessed ranks of the holy ones,
and that You invite him to the eternal feast
of Thrones, Virtues, and Dominations.

“I know that pain is the only true nobility
which neither earth nor hell can wound,
and that to make my mystic crown
all times and all worlds must pay a price.

“But the lost jewels of ancient Palmyra,
unknown metals, pearls from the sea,
gathered by Your hand, would still not be enough
for that bright and shining crown.

“For it will be made only of pure light,
drawn from the holy fire of the first rays,
and mortal eyes, in all their brightness,
are only dark and grieving mirrors of it.”


The Albatross

Often, just for fun, the sailors
catch albatrosses, great birds of the sea,
lazy companions of the voyage
that follow the ship above the bitter deep.

But when they put them down on the deck,
these kings of the sky, ashamed and awkward,
let their great white wings
drag beside them like oars.

How weak and clumsy this winged traveler seems.
He was so beautiful a moment ago,
and now he is comic and ugly.
One man touches his beak with a pipe,
another limps in mockery
of the bird that once flew.

The Poet is like that prince of the clouds
who lives in the storm and laughs at the archer.
Exiled on the ground, among insults and laughter,
his giant wings keep him from walking.


Rising

Above ponds, above valleys,
above mountains, forests, clouds, and seas,
beyond the sun, beyond the upper air,
beyond the far edges of the stars,

my spirit, you move with ease,
and like a strong swimmer happy in the water,
you cut through the deep endless space
with a joy that cannot be spoken.

Fly far away from these sickening vapors.
Go wash yourself in the higher air,
and drink, like some pure and holy wine,
the clear fire that fills the shining sky.

Beyond troubles and heavy sorrow
that weigh down our cloudy life,
happy is the one who can rise
on strong wings to bright and peaceful fields.

Happy is the one whose thoughts, like larks,
take free flight into the morning sky,
who moves above life
and easily understands
the language of flowers and silent things.


The Beacons

Rubens, river of forgetting, garden of ease,
a pillow of fresh flesh where love cannot stay,
yet where life flows and never stops moving,
like air in the sky and sea in the sea.

Leonardo da Vinci, deep and dark mirror,
where charming angels, with gentle smiles
full of mystery, appear in the shadow
of glaciers and pines that close their land.

Rembrandt, sad hospital full of whispers,
decorated only by a great crucifix,
where prayer rises in tears from dirt
and a winter ray suddenly cuts through.

Michelangelo, strange place where Hercules
stand beside Christ,
and powerful ghosts rise upright in the dusk,
tearing open their shrouds with stretching fingers.

Puget, boxer’s anger, shameless faun,
you who gathered the beauty of rough men,
great heart swollen with pride, weak yellow man,
sad emperor of prisoners.

Watteau, carnival where many noble hearts
move like burning butterflies,
light fresh scenes under bright lamps
that pour madness into the turning dance.

Goya, nightmare full of unknown things,
of unborn children cooked at witches’ feasts,
of old women before mirrors and naked girls
while Demons pull up their stockings.

Delacroix, lake of blood haunted by evil angels,
shadowed by a forest of evergreen firs,
where, under a sorrowful sky, strange fanfares pass
like a choked sigh from Weber.

These curses, these blasphemies, these cries,
these ecstasies, these tears, these sacred songs,
are an echo repeated by a thousand winding paths.
For mortal hearts, they are a holy opium.

It is a cry repeated by a thousand guards,
an order passed on by a thousand voices.
It is a beacon lit on a thousand fortresses,
a call from hunters lost in the deep woods.

For truly, Lord, the best proof
we can give of our human worth
is this burning sob rolling through the ages
and dying at the edge of Your eternity.


The Muse for Sale

O Muse of my heart, lover of palaces,
when January lets loose its cold winds,
in the dark sadness of snowy evenings,
will you have a coal to warm your purple feet?

Will you warm your marble shoulders
in the night light coming through the shutters?
When your purse is empty and your room is cold,
will you gather gold from the blue sky?

To earn your bread each night,
you must, like a choir boy, swing the incense
and sing sacred songs you hardly believe,

or, like a hungry street performer, show your charms
and your laughter mixed with hidden tears
to make the common crowd laugh.


The Enemy

My youth was only a dark storm,
crossed now and then by bright suns.
Thunder and rain did such damage
that very few red fruits remain in my garden.

Now I have reached the autumn of my thoughts,
and I must use shovel and rake
to gather again the flooded ground
where the water has dug holes like graves.

And who knows whether the new flowers I dream of
will find, in this soil washed bare like a shore,
the secret food that could make them strong?

O pain, O pain. Time eats life,
and the dark Enemy that gnaws at our hearts
grows stronger on the blood we lose.


A Former Life

I lived for a long time under great arches
that the sea suns colored with a thousand fires,
and in the evening their tall and noble pillars
looked like caves of dark stone.

The waves, carrying the image of the sky,
mixed in a solemn and holy way
the strong sounds of their rich music
with the colors of sunset in my eyes.

There I lived in calm pleasure,
among blue sky, waves, and shining light,
with naked servants, full of sweet smells,

who cooled my forehead with palm leaves,
and whose only care was to understand
the secret pain that made me weak with longing.


Traveling Gypsies

Yesterday the tribe with burning eyes
set out on the road, carrying their children
on their backs, or giving them, for their proud hunger,
the treasure of their hanging breasts.

The men walk on foot under shining weapons,
beside the wagons where their families lie,
lifting to the sky eyes made heavy
by sad regret for lost dreams.

From the bottom of its sandy hole, the cricket,
watching them pass, sings louder.
Cybele, who loves them, makes the green world grow,

makes water run from rock and flowers rise in the desert
before these travelers, for whom
the familiar kingdom of future darkness stands open.


Man and the Sea

Free man, you will always love the sea.
The sea is your mirror. You look at your soul
in the endless rolling of its waves,
and your spirit is no less bitter than that deep water.

You love to go down into your own image.
You hold it with your eyes and arms,
and sometimes your heart forgets its own noise
in the sound of that wild and untamed cry.

You are both dark and secret.
Man, no one has measured the bottom of your depths.
Sea, no one knows your hidden riches.
You both guard your secrets with jealous care.

And yet for countless centuries
you have fought each other without pity or regret,
because you both love killing and death,
eternal fighters, hard and merciless brothers.


Don Juan in Hell

When Don Juan went down to the dark river below,
and after he had paid his coin to Charon,
a dark beggar, proud-eyed like an old wise man,
took each oar in his strong and angry hand.

Women, with open dresses and hanging breasts,
twisted under the black sky,
and behind him, like a great herd of offered victims,
they dragged out one long cry.

Sganarelle, laughing, asked for his wages,
while Don Luis, with a shaking finger,
showed to all the dead wandering on the shore
the bold son who mocked his white hair.

Thin and pure Elvire, trembling in her grief,
near the faithless husband who had run from her love,
seemed to ask him for one last smile
where the sweetness of his first promise might still shine.

Straight in his armor, a great man of stone
stood at the helm and cut through the black water.
But the calm hero, bent over his sword,
looked only at the wake and would see nothing else.


The Punishment of Pride

In those wonderful times when Theology
grew in its fullest strength and power,
people say that one day a great doctor of the Church,
after he had forced open cold hearts
and shaken them in their deepest darkness,
after he had climbed toward heavenly glory
by strange roads unknown even to himself,
roads where perhaps only pure Spirits had gone,
cried out, like a man who has climbed too high
and is seized by fear, with a Satan-like pride:

“Jesus, little Jesus, I lifted you very high.
But if I had wanted to strike the weak place
in your armor, your shame would equal your glory,
and you would be only a laughing unborn thing.”

At once his reason left him.
The light of that sun was covered with black cloth.
All chaos rolled into that mind,
that temple once alive, rich, and full of order,
under whose high roof so much greatness had shone.
Silence and night moved into him,
like into a tomb whose key is lost.

From then on he was like the beasts in the street,
and when he walked across the fields without seeing,
unable to tell summer from winter,
dirty, useless, ugly, like a worn-out thing,
he became the joy and laughter of children.


Beauty

I am beautiful, mortals, like a dream made of stone,
and my breast, where each person has been hurt in turn,
is made to give the poet a love
that is eternal and silent like matter itself.

I sit in the blue sky like a sphinx no one understands.
I join a heart of snow
to the whiteness of swans.
I hate movement that changes lines,
and I never cry and never laugh.

Before my great poses,
which seem borrowed from the proudest monuments,
poets will spend their days in hard study,

because I have, to hold these obedient lovers,
pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
my eyes, my wide eyes with their endless light.


The Ideal

Those pretty little beauties in pictures,
spoiled children of a spoiled age,
those feet in small boots, those fingers with castanets,
will never satisfy a heart like mine.

I leave to Gavarni, poet of pale girls,
his singing crowd of weak and sickly beauties,
for among those faded roses
I cannot find a flower like my red ideal.

What this heart needs, deep as an abyss,
is you, Lady Macbeth, soul strong in crime,
a dream from Aeschylus born in violent winds;

or you, great Night, child of Michelangelo,
who twist calmly in a strange pose
your beauty shaped for the mouths of Titans.


The Mask

An Allegorical Statue in the Style of the Renaissance

To Ernest Christophe, Sculptor

Let us look at this treasure of Florentine grace.
In the movement of this strong body,
Elegance and Strength, two divine sisters, are rich and full.
This woman, truly a miracle,
wonderfully strong, wonderfully slim,
was made to sit on rich beds
and delight the free hours of a prince or a church lord.

And see that fine and sensual smile
where pride walks in delight,
that long sly look, soft and mocking,
that pretty face, framed in light cloth,
where every line seems to say in triumph,
“Pleasure calls me and Love crowns me.”

In a being of such majesty,
see how charm grows still stronger through sweetness.
Let us come closer and walk around her beauty.

O insult to art, O fatal surprise.
This woman with a divine body, promising happiness,
ends above in a two-headed monster.

But no. It is only a mask, a false front.
This face, bright with an exquisite expression, lies.
Look here instead, twisted in terrible pain:
the true head, the honest face,
turned backward and hidden behind the lying face.

Poor great beauty. The great river of your tears
flows into my troubled heart.
Your lie makes me drunk, and my soul drinks deeply
from the waves that Pain pours from your eyes.

But why does she cry? She, perfect beauty,
who could place all humankind at her feet—
what hidden pain eats at her athlete’s side?

She cries, foolish man, because she has lived,
and because she still lives. But what she mourns most,
what makes her shake down to her knees,
is that tomorrow, sadly, she must live again—
tomorrow, the day after, and forever—like us.


Hymn to Beauty

Do you come from deep heaven or rise from the abyss,
O Beauty? Your look, both hellish and divine,
pours out good and crime together,
and for that reason you can be compared to wine.

In your eye are both sunrise and sunset.
You spread perfume like a stormy evening.
Your kisses are a drink, your mouth a jar
that can make the hero weak
and the child brave.
Do you rise from the black pit or come down from the stars?

Fate, delighted, follows your skirt like a dog.
You scatter joy and disaster at random.
You rule everything
and answer for nothing.

You walk on the dead, Beauty, and laugh at them.
Among your jewels, Horror
is one of the most charming,
and Murder, among your dearest ornaments,
dances lovingly on your proud body.

The bright insect flies to you, candle-like light,
crackles, burns, and says, “Let us bless this flame.”
The shaking lover leaning over his beautiful woman
looks like a dying man touching his own grave.

Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter,
O Beauty, huge, frightening, innocent monster,
if your eye, your smile, your foot
open the door to an endless world
that I love and have never known?

From Satan or from God, what does it matter?
Angel or Siren, what does it matter,
if you make the world less ugly
and the moments less heavy,
O fairy with velvet eyes,
rhythm, perfume, light, my only queen?


Hair

O fleece falling thick over the neck,
O curls, O perfume full of slow ease.
Joy. To fill the dark room tonight
with the sleeping memories inside this hair,
I want to shake it in the air like a handkerchief.

Soft Asia and burning Africa,
a whole far world, absent and almost dead,
lives in your depths, aromatic forest.
As other spirits sail upon music,
mine, my love, swims upon your perfume.

I will go there where tree and man, full of life,
grow weak under the heat of the air.
Strong braids, be the waves that carry me away.
You hold, black sea, a shining dream
of sails, rowers, fire, and masts.

A loud harbor where my soul can drink
great waves of perfume, sound, and color,
where ships, moving through gold and rich cloth,
open their wide arms to embrace
the glory of a pure sky full of endless heat.

I will sink my head, drunk with love,
into this dark ocean where another world is closed,
and my fine spirit, touched by the rolling motion,
will find again, O fruitful softness,
the endless rocking of sweet and scented rest.

Blue hair, flag of stretched darkness,
you give me back the wide round blue of the sky.
On the soft edges of your twisted locks
I drink deeply the mixed smells
of coconut oil, musk, and tar.

For a long time, always, my hand in your heavy mane
will scatter ruby, pearl, and sapphire there,
so that you will never be deaf to my desire.
Are you not the oasis where I dream,
the flask from which I drink the wine of memory?


Never Satisfied

Strange goddess, dark as night,
with a smell of musk and tobacco,
work of some dark magic, wild Faust of the savannah,
sorceress with an ebony side, child of black midnight,

I prefer to wine, to opium, to all nights,
the drink of your mouth where love walks proudly.
When my desires travel toward you like a caravan,
your eyes are the deep well where my sorrows drink.

By those two great black eyes, windows of your soul,
O merciless demon, pour into me less fire.
I am not the river Styx, to hold you nine times,
and I cannot, wild Megara of pleasure,
to break your courage and make you cry out,
become Proserpine in the hell of your bed.


The Dancing Snake

How I love to see, dear lazy one,
the skin of your beautiful body
shine and tremble
like an unsteady star.

On your deep hair
with its sharp perfume,
a wandering scented sea
with blue and brown waves,

my dreaming soul sets sail
like a ship waking
in the morning wind
for a far sky.

Your eyes, where nothing appears
that is sweet or bitter,
are two cold jewels
where gold mixes with iron.

When I see you walk in rhythm,
beautiful in your careless way,
you seem like a snake
dancing on the end of a stick.

Under the weight of your laziness,
your childlike head
sways with the softness
of a young elephant,

and your body bends and stretches
like a fine ship
rolling from side to side
and lowering its yards into the water.

Like a wave made bigger
by the melting of loud glaciers,
when the water of your mouth rises
to the edge of your teeth,

I think I drink a wine of Bohemia,
bitter and victorious,
a liquid sky
that scatters stars in my heart.


A Carcass

Remember the thing we saw, my soul,
on that sweet beautiful summer morning.
At the turn of a path there lay
a horrible dead body on a bed of stones.

Its legs were in the air, like a shameless woman,
burning and sweating poison.
In a lazy and mocking way
it opened its belly full of foul breath.

The sun shone on that rotting flesh
as if to cook it well
and give back, a hundred times over,
all that great Nature had joined together.

And the sky looked at that proud body
as if it were opening like a flower.
The smell was so strong
that you almost fainted on the grass.

Flies buzzed over the rotten belly.
From it came black armies
of larvae that ran like a thick liquid
down those living rags.

All of it went down and up like a wave,
jumping and shining,
and one might have said that the body,
swollen by some faint breath, was living by growing more.

And that whole world made a strange music,
like running water and wind,
or grain that a farmer, with steady movement,
shakes and turns in his basket.

The forms were fading and were only a dream now,
a slow sketch still to come
on a forgotten canvas, finished only later
by the artist through memory.

Behind the rocks a worried dog
looked at us with angry eyes,
watching for the moment to take back
from the skeleton the piece she had left there.

And yet you too will be like this dirt,
like this horrible infection,
star of my eyes, sun of my life,
you, my angel and my passion.

Yes, you will be like this, queen of graces,
after the last holy rites,
when you go under the grass and thick flowers
to rot among the bones.

Then, my beauty, say to the worms
that will eat you with kisses
that I have kept the form and the holy essence
of my love, though it has decayed.


From the Depths I Cry

I beg for your pity, you, the only one I love,
from the dark pit into which my heart has fallen.
It is a sad universe under a lead-colored sky,
where horror and blasphemy swim in the night.

A sun without warmth hangs above it for six months,
and for the other six months night covers the earth.
It is a land more bare than the polar world,
with no beasts, no streams, no green, no woods.

And there is no horror in the world
greater than the cold cruelty of that ice sun
and that endless night like old Chaos.
I envy even the lowest animals
that can fall into a dull sleep,
so slowly does the thread of time unwind.


The Vampire

You who entered my grieving heart
like a knife stroke,
you who came, wild and dressed with beauty,
strong as a crowd of demons,

to make your bed and your kingdom
inside my humiliated mind—
shameful woman to whom I am tied
like a prisoner to his chain,

like the gambler to his game,
like the drunk to his bottle,
like rotting flesh to worms—
cursed woman, cursed be you.

I asked the quick sword
to win my freedom,
and I asked false poison
to help my cowardice.

But poison and sword
looked at me with contempt and said,
“You are not worthy to be taken
from your cursed slavery.

“Fool. If our work
freed you from her power,
your kisses would bring back to life
the corpse of your vampire.”


One Night When I Lay Beside a Terrible Jewish Woman

One night, when I lay beside a terrible Jewish woman,
like one dead body beside another dead body,
I began to think, near that body for sale,
of the sad beauty from whom my desire is kept.

I imagined again her natural majesty,
her look armed with strength and grace,
her hair that makes for her a sweet-smelling helmet,
and whose memory wakes love in me again.

For I would gladly have kissed your noble body,
and from your cool feet up to your black hair
I would have opened the treasure of deep caresses,

if, some evening, with one tear won without effort,
you could only, queen of cruel women,
darken the brightness of your cold eyes.


After-Death Remorse

When you sleep, my dark beautiful one,
deep in a monument built of black marble,
and when your room and your house
are only a wet vault and a hollow grave;

when the stone, pressing on your fearful breast
and your sides once softened by lovely ease,
stops your heart from beating and wishing,
and your feet from running their adventurous road,

the tomb, friend of my endless dream—
for the tomb will always understand the poet—
during those long nights where sleep is gone,

will say to you, “What use was it, imperfect woman,
not to have known what the dead weep for?”
And the worm will bite your skin like remorse.


The Cat

Come, my beautiful cat, onto my loving heart.
Hold back the claws of your paw,
and let me sink into your lovely eyes,
mixed with metal and agate.

When my fingers slowly touch
your head and your soft shining back,
and my hand grows drunk with pleasure
from feeling your electric body,

I see my woman in my mind. Her look,
like yours, dear animal,
deep and cold, cuts and pierces like a dart.

And from her feet up to her head
a fine air, a dangerous perfume,
moves around her dark body.


The Balcony

Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,
you who are all my pleasures, you who are all my duties,
you will remember the beauty of our caresses,
the sweetness of the fire, the charm of evening,
mother of memories, mistress of mistresses.

The evenings bright with burning coal,
and the evenings on the balcony, covered in pink mist—
how sweet your breast was to me, how kind your heart.
We often spoke words that cannot die
on evenings bright with burning coal.

How beautiful the suns are in warm evenings.
How deep space is, how strong the heart.
As I leaned toward you, queen of the adored,
I thought I could breathe in the smell of your blood.
How beautiful the suns are in warm evenings.

Night grew thick like a wall,
and in the dark my eyes guessed your pupils,
and I drank your breath, O sweetness, O poison,
and your feet slept in my brotherly hands.
Night grew thick like a wall.

I know the art of bringing back happy moments,
and I see my past again, hidden in your knees.
Why should I look for your soft beauty anywhere else
but in your dear body and your gentle heart?
I know the art of bringing back happy moments.

Will those promises, those perfumes, those endless kisses
rise again from a depth our eyes cannot measure,
as young suns rise into the sky
after they have washed themselves in the deep sea?
O promises, O perfumes, O endless kisses.


The Possessed Woman

The sun has covered itself with black cloth. Like it,
O moon of my life, wrap yourself in shadow.
Sleep or smoke as you wish. Be silent, be dark,
and sink completely into the pit of Boredom.

I love you like that. Yet if you wish today,
like an eclipsed star leaving half-darkness,
to show yourself proudly in places full of madness,
very well. Lovely knife, leap from your case.

Light your eyes in the fire of the lamps.
Light desire in the eyes of rough men.
Everything in you gives me pleasure, wild or sick.

Be what you want, black night or red dawn.
There is not one nerve in my trembling body
that does not cry, “O my dear Beelzebub, I adore you.”



A Ghost


I. The Darkness

In the cellars of unfathomable sadness
where Fate has already shut me away,
where no pink and joyful light
ever comes in,
where I live alone with Night, my gloomy hostess,

I am like a painter whom a mocking God
has condemned to paint, sadly, upon darkness,
or like a cook with funeral hunger
who boils and eats his own heart.

At times there shines, stretches, and opens
a ghost made of grace and splendor.
By her dreamlike eastern movement,
when she reaches her full height,
I know my beautiful visitor again.
It is she—dark and yet full of light.


II. The Perfume

Reader, have you ever breathed in,
with drunken joy and slow delight,
that grain of incense which fills a church,
or the old musk of a perfumed bag?

Deep magic charm, by which the past,
restored, makes us drunk in the present.
So the lover, on the body he once adored,
gathers the perfect flower of memory.

From her heavy and springing hair,
living perfume bag, incense burner of the room,
there rose a smell, wild and fierce.

And from her clothes, muslin or velvet,
all filled with her pure young life,
there came a smell like fur.


III. The Frame

As a beautiful frame adds to a painting,
though the hand that made it is already praised,
something strange and charming
by separating it from all the rest of nature,

so jewels, furniture, metals, and gold
suited her rare beauty exactly.
Nothing dimmed her perfect brightness,
and everything seemed made to frame her.

At times one might even think she believed
that everything wanted to love her.
She drowned, in the kisses of satin and linen,
her beautiful naked body full of shivers,

and whether slow or sudden in all her movements,
she showed the childlike grace
of a monkey.


IV. The Portrait

Illness and Death turn into ashes
all the fire that once burned for us.
Of those great eyes, so eager and so tender,
of that mouth in which my heart was drowned,

of those kisses strong as healing herbs,
of those transports quicker than light,
what is left? It is terrible, O my soul.
Nothing but a very pale drawing in three colors,

which, like me, dies in loneliness,
and which Time, that insulting old man,
rubs each day with his rough wing.

Black killer of Life and Art,
you will never kill in my memory
the woman who was my pleasure and my glory.

I give you these verses so that, if my name
happily reaches times far away
and one evening makes human minds dream,
like a ship favored by a great wind,

your memory, like uncertain old stories,
may trouble the reader like a drum,
and by a brotherly and holy chain
remain hanging from my proud poems;

you, cursed being, to whom from the deepest abyss
up to the highest heaven nothing answers except me;
you, who like a shadow with a passing trace
walk with light foot and calm eye

over the foolish mortals who judged you bitter—
statue with black eyes,
great angel
with a forehead of bronze.


Always the Same

“Where does this strange sadness come from,”
you said, “rising like the sea
against a black and naked rock?”
When the heart has once made its harvest,
to live is an evil. Everyone knows this secret.

It is a very simple pain, not a mystery,
and, like your joy,
it is clear for all to see.
So stop searching, beautiful curious one,
and though your voice is sweet, be silent.

Be silent, innocent soul, always delighted,
mouth with a child’s laughter.
Even more than Life,
Death often holds us
with fine and hidden ties.

Let my heart drink itself drunk on a lie,
sink into your lovely eyes
as into a beautiful dream,
and sleep for a long time
in the shadow of your eyelashes.


Entirely

The Demon came to my high room
this morning to see me,
and trying to catch me in a mistake,
he said, “I would like to know,

“among all the beautiful things
that make up her charm,
among all the dark or rosy parts
that form her lovely body,

“which is the sweetest.” O my soul,
you answered the hateful one,
“Since in her everything is healing sweetness,
nothing can be preferred.

“When everything in her delights me,
I do not know whether one thing
pleases me more than another.
She shines like Dawn
and comforts like Night.

“And the harmony is too perfect
that rules her whole beautiful body
for weak analysis
to mark down
its many notes.

“O mystical change
of all my senses melted into one.
Her breath becomes music,
just as her voice
becomes perfume.”


What Will You Say Tonight, Poor Lonely Soul

What will you say tonight, poor lonely soul?
What will you say, my heart, once worn and bitter,
to the most beautiful, the best, the dearest one
whose divine look has suddenly made you bloom again?

We will take proud joy in singing her praise.
Nothing is sweeter than her gentle rule.
Her spiritual flesh has the perfume of angels,
and her eyes dress us in clothes of light.

Whether it is in the night and loneliness,
or in the street and the crowd,
her ghost dances in the air like a torch.
Sometimes it speaks and says,
“I am beautiful, and I command
that, for love of me, you love only Beauty.
I am the guardian angel, the Muse, and the Madonna.”


Confession

Once, only once, kind and gentle woman,
your smooth arm rested on my arm.
That memory has never faded
from the dark bottom of my soul.

It was late. Like a new medal,
the full moon spread its light,
and the solemn greatness of night, like a river,
flowed over sleeping Paris.

And along the houses, under the great gates,
cats moved secretly,
their ears alert, or, like dear shadows,
they slowly walked beside us.

Then suddenly, in the free closeness
born in that pale light,
from you, rich and sounding instrument
where only bright joy seems to sing,

from you, clear and cheerful like a trumpet
in the shining morning,
there escaped a note of sadness,
a strange note, shaking as it came.

Like a weak child, horrible, dark, unclean,
of whom her family would be ashamed,
and whom they would have hidden for a long time
in a cellar, far from the world.

Poor angel, that sharp note sang,
“Nothing on earth is certain,
and selfishness always betrays itself,
however carefully it paints its face.

“It is hard work to be a beautiful woman,
and it is only the common task
of a cold mad dancer
who faints inside a practiced smile.

“To build on hearts is foolish.
Everything breaks—love and beauty—
until Forgetfulness throws them into its basket
and gives them back to Eternity.”

I have often called back that enchanted moon,
that silence and that softness,
and that terrible confession whispered
in the confessional of the heart.


The Flask

There are strong perfumes for which all matter
seems full of openings.
One feels that they enter even glass.
When one opens a box from the East
whose lock cries out with a rough sound,

or some cupboard in a deserted house,
full of the bitter smell of old black dust,
one sometimes finds an old flask that remembers,
and from it leaps, still living,
a soul that returns.

A thousand thoughts slept there,
funeral butterflies in their dark cocoons,
gently trembling in your heavy darkness,
until they open their wings and rise,
tinted with blue, touched with pink, striped with gold.

That is the intoxicating memory
that flies in the troubled air.
The eyes close. Dizziness seizes
the defeated soul and pushes it
with both hands toward a dark gulf of human poison.

It throws the soul down at the edge
of an ancient pit,
where, like a sweet-smelling Lazarus
tearing open his burial cloth,
the ghostly body of an old love rises,
charming, stale, and grave-like.

So when I am lost
in the memory of men,
when I am thrown away
into the corner of a dark cupboard,
an old lonely flask, broken down,

dusty, dirty, ugly, cracked,
I will be your coffin, lovable poison,
the witness of your force and your power,
dear poison prepared by angels,
liquid that eats me away,
O life and death of my heart.


Poison

Wine knows how to dress
the poorest dirty room
with miraculous richness,
and makes more than one magical porch rise
in the gold of its red steam,
like a setting sun in a cloudy sky.

Opium makes larger
what has no limits,
stretches the endless,
deepens time, digs deeper pleasure,
and fills the soul, beyond what it can hold,
with dark and heavy joys.

But all that is worth less
than the poison that flows
from your eyes, from your green eyes,
lakes where my soul trembles
and sees itself upside down.
My dreams come in crowds
to drink from those bitter depths.

All that is worth less
than the terrible wonder
of your biting saliva,
which throws my soul into forgetting without regret
and, carrying dizziness with it,
rolls that weak soul
to the shores of death.


The Cat I

In my brain there walks,
as if in its own room,
a beautiful cat, strong, sweet, and charming.
When it meows, one hardly hears it,
so soft and quiet is its voice.

But whether that voice becomes calm or angry,
it is always rich and deep.
That is its charm and its secret.
That voice, dropping and flowing
into my darkest depths,
fills me like a many-voiced poem
and delights me like a magic drink.

It quiets the cruelest pains
and holds all ecstasies inside itself.
To say the longest thoughts,
it has no need of words.
No bow on any string
can make my heart, that perfect instrument,
sing its deepest string more royally
than your voice, mysterious cat.

Seraphic cat, strange cat,
in whom everything is, like an angel,
as fine
as it is harmonious.


The Beautiful Ship

I want to tell you, soft enchantress,
about the different beauties that dress your youth.
I want to paint your beauty for you,
where childhood joins hands with maturity.

When you walk, sweeping the air with your wide skirt,
you look like a beautiful ship putting out to sea,
full of sails, moving and rolling
in a rhythm that is soft, slow, and lazy.

On your wide round neck, on your full shoulders,
your head carries itself with a strange grace.
With a calm and conquering air,
you go on your way, majestic child.

Your breast, rising and pushing the shining cloth,
your proud breast is like a fine cupboard,
whose round bright doors
catch flashes of light like shields.

Provoking shields, armed with pink points.
Cupboard of sweet secrets, full of good things,
of wines, perfumes, and strong drinks
that could make brains and hearts lose their senses.

When you walk, sweeping the air with your wide skirt,
you look like a beautiful ship putting out to sea,
full of sails, moving and rolling
in a rhythm that is soft, slow, and lazy.

Your noble legs, and the flying cloth they drive aside,
trouble dark desires and tease them
like two witches stirring
a black magic drink in a deep bowl.

Your arms, which could play with young Hercules himself,
are shining boas, strong like him,
made to hold your lover stubbornly,
as if to press him into your heart.

On your wide round neck, on your full shoulders,
your head carries itself with a strange grace.
With a calm and conquering air,
you go on your way, majestic child.


The Irreparable

Can we choke the old, long Remorse,
that lives, moves, and twists itself,
and feeds on us like the worm on the dead,
like the caterpillar on the oak?
Can we choke merciless Remorse?

In what drink, in what wine, in what bitter tea
shall we drown this old enemy,
destroying and greedy like a prostitute,
patient like an ant?
In what drink, in what wine, in what bitter tea?

Tell me, beautiful sorceress, if you know,
tell this spirit full of pain,
like a dying man crushed by the wounded,
trampled under a horse’s hoof,
tell me, beautiful sorceress, if you know.

Tell that dying man, already smelled by the wolf
and watched by the crow,
tell that broken soldier
whether he must give up hope
of his cross and his grave.
Tell that poor dying man.

Can one light up a muddy black sky?
Can one tear open darkness
thicker than pitch, with no morning and no evening,
no stars and no funeral lightning?
Can one light up a muddy black sky?

Hope, which once shone in the inn windows,
is stained and dead forever.
Without moon and without rays,
where can one find shelter
for the martyrs of an evil road?
The Devil has put out every light in the inn windows.

Lovely sorceress, do you love the damned?
Tell me, do you know the unforgivable?
Do you know Remorse, with its poisoned face,
for which our heart is the chosen mark?
Lovely sorceress, do you love the damned?

The irreparable eats our soul
with its cursed tooth,
our soul, poor and broken monument,
and often, like a termite,
it attacks the building at its base.
The irreparable eats our soul with its cursed tooth.

Sometimes, deep in some common theater
made bright by the loud orchestra,
I have seen a fairy light
a miraculous dawn
in an infernal sky.

Sometimes, deep in such a common theater,
I have seen a being made only of light, gold, and thin cloth
throw down the huge Satan.
But my heart, where ecstasy never comes,
is a theater where people wait,
always, always in vain,
for the Being with wings of shining cloth.


Conversation

You are a beautiful autumn sky, clear and pink.
But sadness rises in me like the sea,
and when it falls back, it leaves on my bitter lip
the burning memory of its muddy taste.

Your hand slips in vain across my fainting chest.
What it seeks, my friend, is a place laid waste
by the claw and the fierce tooth of woman.
Do not search for my heart anymore. The beasts have eaten it.

My heart is a palace made ugly by the crowd.
There men get drunk, kill each other, and fight by the hair.
A perfume floats around your naked throat.

O Beauty, hard whip of souls, this is your will.
With your eyes of fire, bright as festivals,
burn to ashes these torn pieces the beasts have left.


Autumn Song

Soon we will fall into the cold darkness.
Goodbye, bright light of our too-short summers.
I already hear the wood falling
with funeral blows onto the stones of the yard.

All winter will return into my being: anger,
hate, shivering, horror, hard forced labor,
and like the sun in its polar hell,
my heart will become only a red block of ice.

I listen, trembling, to each log that falls.
Even a scaffold being built gives no duller sound.
My spirit is like a tower collapsing
under the blows of a tireless heavy ram.

Rocked by that endless beating,
I seem to hear a coffin being nailed shut somewhere.
For whom? Yesterday it was summer. Now it is autumn.
That mysterious sound is like the sound of departure.

I love the greenish light of your long eyes,
sweet beauty, but today everything is bitter to me,
and nothing, not your love, not the room, not the fire,
is worth to me the sun shining over the sea.

And yet love me, tender heart. Be a mother
even to an ungrateful man, even to a cruel one.
As lover or sister, be the passing sweetness
of a glorious autumn or a setting sun.

A short task. The grave is waiting, hungry.
Ah, let me, with my head resting on your knees,
taste, while regretting the white burning summer,
the yellow gentle ray of the late season.


Afternoon Song

Though your cruel eyebrows
give you a strange look
that is not the look of an angel,
sorceress with tempting eyes,

I adore you, light woman,
my terrible passion,
with the devotion
of a priest before his idol.

The desert and the forest
give perfume to your rough hair.
Your head has the pose
of mystery and secret things.

Perfume moves over your flesh
like smoke around a censer.
You charm like evening,
dark and warm nymph.

Even the strongest magic drinks
are worth less than your laziness,
and you know the caress
that can bring the dead back to life.

Your hips are in love
with your back and your breasts,
and your slow rich poses
make even the cushions surrender.

Sometimes, to calm
your mysterious rage,
you seriously give out
both the bite and the kiss.

You tear me, dark one,
with a mocking laugh,
and then you place upon my heart
your eye, soft as the moon.

Under your satin shoes,
under your charming silk feet,
I place my great joy,
my genius, and my fate,

my soul healed by you,
by you, light and color,
explosion of heat
in my black Siberia.


Sisina

Imagine Diana in her proud hunting dress,
riding through the forests or beating the bushes,
with hair and breast in the wind, drunk on noise,
beautiful and challenging the best riders.

Have you seen Théroigne, lover of bloodshed,
driving a barefoot people into attack,
with cheek and eye on fire, playing her part,
going up royal stairs with a sword in her hand?

Such is Sisina. But this gentle warrior
has a soul as kind as it is deadly.
Her courage, made wild by gunpowder and drums,
knows how to lay down its arms before those who beg.

And her heart, burned and torn by flame,
still keeps, for anyone worthy of it,
a deep store of tears.


To a Creole Lady

In the perfumed land that the sun caresses,
I knew, under a roof of trees all red with bloom
and palm trees from which laziness falls on the eyes,
a Creole lady with little-known charms.

Her skin is pale and warm. The dark enchantress
has noble grace in the way she holds her neck.
Tall and slender as she walks, like a huntress,
her smile is calm and her eyes are sure.

If you came, Madame, to the true land of glory,
to the banks of the Seine or the green Loire,
beautiful enough to grace old noble houses,

you would make a thousand sonnets grow
in the hearts of poets hidden in cool shadows,
and your great eyes would master them more than your dark ones.


The Ghostly Return

Like angels with fierce eyes,
I will come back into your room
and slip toward you without a sound
with the shadows of the night.

And I will give you, my dark one,
kisses cold as the moon
and caresses like a serpent
crawling around a grave.

When pale morning comes,
you will find my place empty,
and until evening that place
will stay cold.

As others rule by tenderness,
over your life and over your youth,
I want to rule
by fear.


Autumn Sonnet

Your eyes, clear as crystal, say to me,
“For you, strange lover, what am I worth?”
Be charming and be silent. My heart, which hates almost all things
except the innocence of old simple creatures,

does not want to show you its hellish secret,
nor its black story written with fire,
you whose hand invites me into long sleep.
I hate passion, and thought hurts me.

Let us love each other softly. Love in its dark hut,
hidden in shadow, bends its fatal bow.
I know the weapons in its old storehouse:

crime, horror, and madness. O pale daisy,
are you not, like me, an autumn sun,
my so white, my so cold Marguerite?


The Moon’s Sadness

Tonight the moon dreams more lazily,
like a beautiful woman on many cushions
who with a light and wandering hand
touches the shape of her breasts before sleep.

On the satin back of soft white clouds,
half-dying, she gives herself to long sweet weakness,
and lets her eyes wander over the white visions
that rise in the blue sky like flowers.

When sometimes, in her idle sadness,
she lets fall a secret tear upon this world,
a faithful poet, enemy of sleep,

takes that pale tear into the hollow of his hand,
with rainbow light like a piece of opal,
and hides it in his heart far from the eyes of the sun.


The Cats

Fervent lovers and severe scholars
both love, in their mature years,
cats, strong and gentle, pride of the house,
who like them are sensitive to cold and stay at home.

Friends of learning and of pleasure,
they seek silence and the horror of darkness.
Erebus would have taken them for his funeral horses
if they could bend their pride to slavery.

While dreaming, they take on the noble pose
of great sphinxes stretched out in lonely places,
who seem to sleep inside an endless dream.

Their fertile loins are full of magical sparks,
and grains of gold, like fine sand,
dimly fill their mysterious eyes with stars.


The Pipe

I am the pipe of a writer.
One can see, by looking at my face,
Abyssinian or African in shape,
that my master is a great smoker.

When he is full of sorrow,
I smoke like a poor cottage
where supper is being prepared
for the farmer coming home.

I wrap and rock his soul
in the moving blue net
that rises from my burning mouth,

and I roll a strong healing leaf
that charms his heart
and cures his tired mind.


Music

Music often takes hold of me like the sea.
Toward my pale star,
under a ceiling of mist or in a wide sky,
I set sail.

With chest forward and lungs filled
like cloth in the wind,
I climb the backs of piled-up waves
that night hides from me.

I feel within me all the passions
of a suffering ship.
The good wind, the storm, and all its shaking

rock me over the great gulf.
At other times there is calm, flat water,
great mirror of my despair.


Burial of a Cursed Poet

If on some heavy dark night
a good Christian, out of pity,
buries your praised body
behind some old broken wall,

then, at the hour when chaste stars
close their sleepy eyes,
the spider will weave its web there,
and the snake will raise its young.

All year long you will hear above your condemned head
the cries of wolves,
the games of hungry witches,

the play of old lustful men,
and the secret plans
of dark thieves.


The Happy Dead Man

In rich earth full of snails,
I want to dig for myself a deep grave,
where I can spread out my old bones at ease
and sleep in forgetfulness like a shark in the sea.

I hate wills, and I hate tombs.
Rather than beg one tear from the world,
while still alive I would rather invite the crows
to tear the last pieces from my filthy body.

O worms, black companions with no ears and no eyes,
see a dead man come to you, free and happy,
philosophers who love life, children of decay.

Go through my ruin without regret,
and tell me whether there is still some torture left
for this old body without a soul, dead among the dead.


The Cracked Bell

It is bitter and sweet, in winter nights,
to listen near the fire that shakes and smokes
while far memories slowly rise
to the sound of bells singing in the fog.

Happy is the bell with a strong throat
that, though old, still stays quick and healthy,
and faithfully sends out its religious cry
like an old soldier standing watch under a tent.

But my soul is cracked, and when in its sadness
it wants to fill the cold night air with song,
its weak voice often seems

like the thick last breath of a wounded man
left beside a lake of blood under a great pile of dead,
dying without moving, in terrible effort.


Spleen I

The month of rain, angry with all life,
pours from its urn in great streams
cold darkness on the pale people
of the nearby graveyard and death on the foggy edge of the town.

My cat on the floor, looking for a bed,
moves without rest its thin sick body.
The soul of an old poet wanders in the drain
with the sad voice of a freezing ghost.

The deep bell complains, and the smoky log
sings out of tune with the coughing clock,
while in a card game full of dirty perfume,

the handsome jack of hearts and the queen of spades,
sad gift from some old sick woman,
talk darkly of their dead loves.


Spleen II

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.
A great chest with drawers, full of bills,
verses, love letters, lawsuits, songs,
and heavy hair tied up in receipts,

hides fewer secrets than my sad brain.
It is a pyramid, an immense tomb,
which holds more dead than the common grave.
I am a graveyard hated by the moon,

where, like remorse, long worms drag themselves
and always attack my dearest dead.
I am an old room full of faded roses,
where a whole pile of old fashions lies mixed together,

where sad pastel pictures and pale painted ladies
alone still breathe the smell of an opened bottle.
Nothing is longer than crippled days
when, under the heavy snow of snowy years,

boredom, fruit of sad lack of wonder,
grows to the size of immortality.
Now you are no longer living matter,
but only stone surrounded by a vague fear,

sleeping in the depth of a foggy desert,
an old sphinx unknown to the careless world,
forgotten on the map, whose savage humor
sings only in the light of the setting sun.


Spleen III

I am like the king of a rainy country,
rich but powerless, young and yet very old,
who, laughing at the bows of his teachers,
is bored with his dogs as with all other beasts.

Nothing can cheer him, not hunting, not falcons,
not his dying people under his balcony,
not the foolish song of his favorite clown.
His flowered bed turns into a tomb,

and the ladies of the court, for whom every prince is handsome,
can no longer find shameless clothes
to pull one smile from that young skeleton.
The learned man who makes gold for him

has never been able to pull out
the spoiled thing inside his being,
and even those baths of blood from old Rome,
remembered by the powerful in their late years,

have not been able to warm that dull dead body
where, instead of blood,
the green water of Lethe flows.


Spleen IV

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
on the groaning spirit caught in long boredom,
and from the horizon, holding the whole circle,
it pours down on us a black day sadder than night;

when the earth is changed into a wet prison,
where Hope, like a bat,
beats against the walls with its timid wing
and strikes its head on rotten ceilings;

when the rain, spreading its endless lines,
copies the bars of a huge prison,
and a silent people of ugly spiders
comes to stretch its webs inside our brains;

then the bells suddenly leap up in fury
and throw toward heaven a terrible scream,
like wandering spirits without a country
who begin to cry without stopping.

And long funeral cars, with no drums and no music,
pass slowly through my soul. Hope, defeated, weeps,
and cruel terrible Anguish, ruling like a tyrant,
plants its black flag on my bent skull.


The Taste of Nothingness

Sad spirit, once in love with struggle,
Hope, whose spur once drove your fire,
does not want to ride you anymore. Lie down without shame,
old horse whose foot strikes every stone.

Give in, my heart. Sleep your animal sleep.
Beaten spirit, tired old robber,
love has no taste for you now, no more than fighting.
So goodbye to brass songs and the sighs of the flute.

Pleasures, tempt no more this dark and sullen heart.
Lovely Spring has lost its smell.
And Time swallows me minute by minute,
like endless snow swallowing a stiff frozen body.

I no longer look there for the shelter of a hut.
I look down from above on the round earth.
Avalanche, will you carry me away
in your fall?


Alchemy of Pain

One thing lights you with its fire.
Another covers you with mourning.
What says to one, “Burial,”
says to the other, “Life and splendor.”

Unknown Hermes who helps me
and who has always filled me with fear,
you make me equal to Midas,
the saddest of all alchemists.

Through you I turn gold into iron
and paradise into hell.
In the shroud of clouds
I find the body of someone dear,

and on the shores of heaven
I build
great tombs.


A Pagan’s Prayer

Ah, do not let your fire die.
Warm my numb heart again,
Pleasure, torture of souls.
Goddess, hear the one who begs you.

Goddess spread through the air,
flame in our dark place below,
answer a soul that is fading
and offers you a song of bronze.

Pleasure, always be my queen.
Take the face of a siren
made of flesh and velvet,

or pour your heavy sleep
into the shapeless and holy wine,
Pleasure, soft and changing ghost.


The Lid

Wherever he may go, on sea or land,
under a burning sky or a white sun,
servant of Jesus, lover of pleasure,
dark beggar or shining Croesus,

city man, country man, wanderer, one who stays,
whether his small brain is quick or slow,
man everywhere suffers the fear of mystery
and looks upward only with a trembling eye.

Above, the Sky—that wall of a vault that chokes him,
a bright ceiling for a foolish opera
where every actor walks on blood-stained ground,

terror of the man of pleasure, hope of the mad hermit—
the Sky, black lid of the great pot
where the vast unseen Human Race boils.


The Unexpected

Harpagon, watching over his dying father,
said to himself, dreaming before those already white lips,
“I think we have enough old boards
up in the attic, do we not?”

Célimène coos and says, “My heart is good,
and of course God made me very beautiful.”
Her heart. A hard dried heart, smoked like a ham,
cooked again in eternal fire.

A cloudy writer, who thinks he is a torch,
says to the poor man he has drowned in darkness,
“Where do you see him, that maker of Beauty,
that Restorer you praise?”

Better than all of them, I know certain lovers of pleasure
who yawn night and day, complain, and cry,
repeating, weak and vain, “Yes, I want
to become virtuous—in an hour.”

The clock, in its turn, says softly, “He is ready,
the damned one. I warn the rotten flesh in vain.
Man is blind, deaf, and fragile, like a wall
where an insect lives and bites.”

And then Someone appears, whom they all denied,
and says to them, mocking and proud,
“I think you have taken enough communion
in my joyful Black Mass.

“Each of you has made me a temple in his heart.
In secret, you have kissed my filthy back.
Know Satan by his victorious laugh,
huge and ugly like the world.

“Could you really believe, surprised hypocrites,
that one can mock the master and cheat him,
and that it is natural to receive two rewards,
to go to Heaven and also be rich?

“The hunted animal must pay the old hunter
who waits a long time for his prey.
I will carry you away through the thick darkness,
companions of my sad joy,

through the thickness of earth and rock,
through the confused piles of your ashes,
into a palace as great as I am, made in one block,
and not of soft stone,

for it is made with universal Sin,
and it contains my pride, my pain, and my glory.”

Yet high above, at the top of the universe,
an Angel sounds the victory

of those whose heart says, “Blessed be your whip,
Lord. Blessed be pain, O Father.
My soul in your hands is not a useless toy,
and your wisdom has no end.”

The sound of the trumpet is so sweet
in those solemn evenings of heavenly harvest
that it enters like ecstasy into all
whose praise it sings.


Midnight Examination

The clock, striking midnight,
ironically tells us
to remember what use
we made of the day that is leaving.

Today, fatal date,
Friday the thirteenth, we have,
in spite of all that we know,
lived like heretics.

We have insulted Jesus,
the clearest of all gods.
Like a parasite at the table
of some monstrous rich man,

we have, to please the brute,
worthy servant of Demons,
insulted what we love
and praised what disgusts us.

We have saddened, like a slave executioner,
the weak man whom people wrongly despise.
We have greeted huge Stupidity,
Stupidity with the forehead of a bull.

We have kissed stupid Matter
with great devotion,
and blessed the pale light
of rotting flesh.

At last, to drown dizziness in madness,
we, proud priests of the Lyre,
whose glory is to open wide
the drunkenness of funeral things,

have drunk without thirst
and eaten without hunger.
Quick, let us blow out the lamp
so that we may hide in darkness.


Sad Madrigal

What does it matter to me whether you are wise?
Be beautiful, and be sad. Tears
add charm to the face,
as a river does to a landscape.
A storm makes flowers young again.

I love you most when joy
runs away from your defeated forehead,
when your heart sinks into horror,
when over your present there spreads
the terrible cloud of the past.

I love you when your great eye pours out
a warm water like blood,
when, in spite of my hand rocking you,
your pain, too heavy to hide, breaks through
like the last breath of someone dying.

I drink in, divine pleasure,
deep and delicious hymn,
all the sobs of your breast,
and I think your heart grows bright
from the pearls your eyes pour out.

I know that your heart, full
of old uprooted loves,
still burns like a furnace,
and that under your breast
you still hide some of the pride of the damned.

But, my dear, until your dreams
have reflected Hell,
and in a nightmare without rest,
dreaming of poison and knives,
in love with powder and iron,

opening yourself to everyone only with fear,
reading sorrow everywhere,
shaking when the hour strikes,
you have not yet felt the grip
of irresistible Disgust.

Then you will not be able, slave queen,
you who love me only with fear,
in the horror of unhealthy night,
to say to me, your soul full of cries,
“I am your equal, O my King.”


The Warner

Every man worthy of the name
has in his heart a yellow Serpent,
set there as if on a throne,
which, if he says, “I want,” answers, “No.”

Sink your eyes into the fixed eyes
of wild women or water spirits.
The Fang says, “Think of your duty.”

Make children, plant trees,
polish verses, carve marble—
the Fang says, “Will you live tonight?”

Whatever he begins or hopes for,
man does not live for one moment
without suffering the warning
of that unbearable Snake.


To a Malabar Girl

Your feet are as fine as your hands, and your hips
are wide enough to make the fairest white woman jealous.
To the thoughtful artist your body is sweet and dear.
Your great velvet eyes are darker than your skin.

In those hot blue lands where your god made you,
your work is to light your master’s pipe,
to fill the bottles with cool water and sweet smells,
and to chase the wandering mosquitoes from the bed.

And as soon as morning makes the trees sing,
you go to the market for pineapples and bananas.
All day, wherever you wish, you walk with bare feet
and softly sing old unknown songs.

And when evening comes in its red coat,
you gently lay your body on a mat,
where your floating dreams are full of hummingbirds,
always graceful and bright like you.

Why, happy child, do you want to see our France,
that crowded land cut down by suffering,
and trust your life to the strong arms of sailors
to say a great goodbye to your dear tamarind trees?

You, half dressed in thin light cloth,
shivering here under snow and hail,
how you would weep for your free and gentle days
if a hard corset shut in your sides,

if you had to search in our mud for your supper
and sell the perfume of your strange beauty,
your thoughtful eye following, through our dirty fogs,
the ghostly shapes of lost palm trees.


The Voice

My cradle stood next to the library,
a dark Babel where novels, science, and old tales,
Latin dust and Greek dust,
all were mixed together. I was as tall as a great book.

Two voices spoke to me. One, sly and firm,
said, “The Earth is a cake full of sweetness.
I can, and then your pleasure would never end,
give you an appetite just as large as it.”

And the other said, “Come, oh come travel in dreams,
beyond what is possible, beyond what is known.”
And that voice sang like the wind on the shore,
a crying ghost, from no one knows where,

which touches the ear and still fills it with fear.
I answered, “Yes, sweet voice.” From that moment
comes what one may, sadly, call my wound
and my fate.

Behind the scenes of this great life,
in the darkest part of the abyss,
I clearly see strange worlds,
and, victim of my own clear vision,

I drag with me serpents
that bite my shoes.
And since that time, like the prophets,
I have loved the desert and the sea with tenderness.

I laugh in times of grief
and cry in times of celebration.
I find a sweet taste in the bitterest wine.
I often take facts for lies,
and with my eyes on the sky
I fall into holes.

But the Voice comforts me and says,
“Keep your dreams.
The wise do not have
such beautiful ones as fools do.”


Hymn

To the dearest one, to the most beautiful one,
who fills my heart with light,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
greetings in immortality.

She spreads through my life
like air full of salt,
and into my never-filled soul
she pours the taste of the eternal.

Always fresh little bag of perfume
that sweetens the air of a dear room,
forgotten incense burner that still sends up smoke
secretly through the night,

how can I speak truly of you,
love that cannot be spoiled?
Grain of musk lying unseen
in the depth of my eternity.

To the angel, to the immortal idol,
to the very good one, to the very beautiful one
who is my joy and my health,
greetings in immortality.


The Rebel

A furious Angel falls from heaven like an eagle,
grabs the unbeliever by the hair,
and says, shaking him, “You will learn the rule.
For I am your good Angel, do you hear? I want it.

“You must love, without making a face,
the poor, the evil, the twisted, the foolish,
so that when Jesus passes
you may spread a triumphal carpet with your charity.

“That is Love. Before your heart grows cold,
light your ecstasy again for the glory of God.
That is the true pleasure
whose charm does not die.”

And the Angel, punishing as much as he loves,
beats the cursed man with giant fists.
But the damned man always answers,
“I do not want to.”


The Fountain

Your beautiful eyes are tired, poor lover.
Stay a long time without opening them again,
in that lazy pose
where pleasure has surprised you.

In the court the fountain talks
and is never silent, day or night.
Softly it keeps alive the ecstasy
into which love has thrown me this evening.

The open jet,
in a thousand flowers,
where happy Phoebe
puts her colors,
falls like a rain
of broad tears.

So your soul, set on fire
by the burning flash of pleasure,
jumps, quick and bold,
toward the vast enchanted skies.

Then, dying, it pours itself out
in a wave of sad weakness
which, by an unseen slope,
comes down to the bottom of my heart.

The open jet,
in a thousand flowers,
where happy Phoebe
puts her colors,
falls like a rain
of broad tears.

O you, whom night makes so beautiful,
how sweet it is, leaning above your breasts,
to hear the eternal complaint
sobbing in the basins.

Moon, sounding water, blessed night,
trees that tremble all around,
your pure sadness
is the mirror of my love.

The open jet,
in a thousand flowers,
where happy Phoebe
puts her colors,
falls like a rain
of broad tears.


The Romantic Sunset

How beautiful the Sun is when it rises fresh,
like an explosion throwing out its greeting.
Blessed is the one who can, with love,
greet its setting, more glorious than a dream.

I remember. I saw everything—flower, spring, furrow—
grow weak under its eye like a beating heart.
Let us run toward the horizon, it is late, run quickly,
to catch at least one slanting ray.

But I chase in vain the god who withdraws.
The irresistible Night sets up its rule,
black, wet, deadly, and full of trembling.

A smell of the grave swims in the darkness,
and my fearful foot crushes, by the edge of the swamp,
unexpected toads and cold snails.


The Abyss

Pascal had his abyss moving with him.
Alas, all is abyss—action, desire, dream,
speech—and many times on my hair standing upright
I feel the wind of Fear passing.

Above, below, everywhere, depth and shore,
silence, space, terrible and charming.
On the floor of my nights God with His wise finger
draws a nightmare with many shapes, without rest.

I fear sleep as one fears a great hole,
full of vague horror, leading one knows not where.
Through every window I see only the infinite,

and my spirit, forever haunted by dizziness,
envies the numbness of nothingness.
Ah, never to go out from Numbers and Beings.


The Laments of an Icarus

The lovers of prostitutes
are happy, well-fed, and full of strength.
As for me, my arms are broken
from embracing clouds.

It is because of those strange stars
that burn deep in the sky
that my eyes, now burned out,
see only memories of suns.

In vain I wanted from space
to find the end and the middle.
Under some eye of fire that I do not know,
I feel my wing breaking.

And burned by love of beauty,
I will not have the high honor
of giving my name to the abyss
that will serve me as my grave.


Meditation

Be wise, O my Pain, and stay more quiet.
You asked for Evening. It comes. Here it is.
A dark air wraps the city,
bringing peace to some, worry to others.

While the low crowd of mortals,
under the whip of Pleasure, that merciless executioner,
goes to gather remorse in their slavish feast,
my Pain, give me your hand. Come here.

Far from them, see the dead Years
leaning over the balconies of the sky
in old-fashioned dresses.
See smiling Regret rise from the water.

See the dying Sun fall asleep under an arch,
and like a long burial cloth stretched in the East,
hear, my dear, hear
the sweet Night walking.


The Self-Tormentor

I will strike you without anger
and without hate, like a butcher.
Like Moses striking the rock,
I will make from your eyelid

the waters of suffering spring out
to water my Sahara.
My desire, swollen with hope,
will float on your salty tears

like a ship that goes out to sea,
and in my heart, made drunk by them,
your dear sobs will sound
like a drum calling men to battle.

Am I not a false note
in the holy symphony,
because of hungry Irony
that shakes me and bites me?

It is in my voice, that harsh cry.
That black poison is all my blood.
I am the dark mirror
where the cruel woman looks at herself.

I am the wound and the knife.
I am the slap and the cheek.
I am the broken wheel and the limbs,
the victim and the executioner.

I am the vampire of my own heart,
one of those great abandoned ones
condemned to eternal laughter
and no longer able to smile.


The Irremediable

An Idea, a Form, a Being
fallen from the blue sky
into a muddy, lead-colored Styx
where no eye from Heaven can enter;

an Angel, careless traveler,
tempted by love of the ugly,
struggling at the bottom of a huge nightmare
like a swimmer;

fighting, in funeral fear,
against a giant whirlpool
that sings like mad people
and spins in the darkness;

an unhappy man under a spell,
fumbling in useless ways,
trying to escape a place full of snakes,
searching for the light and the key;

a damned soul going down without a lamp,
at the edge of an abyss
whose smell betrays
its wet depth;

down endless stairs without a rail,
where slimy monsters stay awake,
and their wide eyes of fire
make the night even blacker

and show nothing
but themselves;

a ship trapped in the pole,
as if in a prison of crystal,
trying to find by what deadly narrow sea
it fell into that jail—

clear signs, perfect image
of a fate beyond cure,
which makes one think
that the Devil always does his work well.

Dark and shining face-to-face,
which a heart made into its mirror;
a well of Truth, clear and black,
where a pale star trembles;

an ironic, hellish lighthouse,
torch of Satan-like graces,
the only comfort and the only glory—
conscience inside Evil.


The Clock

Clock, dark god, frightening and calm,
whose finger warns us and says, “Remember.”
Soon the living pains
will plant themselves in your fearful heart like arrows.

Dreamlike Pleasure will run away
toward the horizon
like a spirit disappearing behind the stage.
Every moment eats a piece

of the delight given
to each man for his short season.

Three thousand six hundred times an hour,
the Second whispers, “Remember.”
Quickly, with its insect voice,
Now says, “I know the Past,

and I have sucked your life
with my dirty mouth.”

Remember. Remember. Be mindful.
My metal throat speaks every language.
Minutes, foolish man, are pieces of gold ore.
You must not let them go

without pulling the gold from them.

Remember that Time is a greedy gambler
who always wins, never cheating. That is the law.
Day grows less, night grows more. Remember.
The abyss is always thirsty. The water-clock empties.

Soon the hour will strike
when holy Chance,
when noble Virtue, your still-virgin wife,
when even Repentance, last poor inn on the road,

will all say to you,
“Die, old coward. It is too late.”



Paris Scenes


The Sun

Along the old poor district,
where shutters hang from broken houses
and hide secret pleasures,
when the cruel sun strikes again and again

the city and the fields,
the roofs and the wheat,
I go out alone to practice
my strange fencing,

smelling in every corner
for the chance of a rhyme,
stumbling on words
as on paving stones,

sometimes hitting against lines
I had dreamed long ago.

This fatherly giver, enemy of weakness,
wakes the worms in the fields
as it wakes the roses.
It sends care up into the sky

and fills both minds and hives with honey.
It makes crippled men young again
and gentle and happy
like girls.

It tells the harvest
to grow and ripen
in the immortal heart
that always wants to flower.

And when, like a poet,
it comes down into the city,
it gives honor to the lowest things
and enters like a king,

without noise and without servants,
into every hospital
and every palace.


The Offended Moon

O Moon, quietly loved by our fathers,
from your high blue lands
where the stars follow you
like a bright and elegant court,

my old Cynthia, lamp of our dark rooms,
do you see lovers on their rich beds
showing their fresh white teeth in sleep?
Do you see the poet striking his head against his work?

Do you see the snakes
joining together under dry grass?
Under your yellow mask,
with your secret foot,

do you still go, as in older days,
from evening until morning,
to kiss the faded graces
of Endymion?

“I see your mother, child
of this poor age,
bending over her mirror
with the heavy weight of years,

and skillfully putting white powder
on the breast
that fed you.”


To a Red-Haired Beggar Girl

White girl with red hair,
whose dress, through its holes,
lets one see both poverty
and beauty,

for me, poor poet,
your young sickly body,
full of freckles,
has its own sweetness.

You wear more proudly
than some queen in a romance
with velvet shoes
your heavy wooden clogs.

Instead of a short rag,
let a great court dress
fall in long, loud folds
behind your heels.

And in place of torn stockings,
let there still shine on your leg,
for the eyes of wicked men,
a golden knife.

Let badly tied ribbons
show for our sins
your two beautiful breasts,
bright as eyes.

Let your arms, when one wishes to undress you,
pretend to refuse
and drive away with playful blows
the little laughing fingers.

Pearls of the purest water,
sonnets by old master Belleau,
forever offered
by your chained lovers,

crowds of little poets
giving you their first fruits
and watching your shoe
under the staircase,

many a page, in love with chance,
many a lord and many a Ronsard
would wait with delight
for your fresh little room.

You would count on your beds
more kisses than lilies,
and bring under your law
more than one Valois.

And yet you go begging
for some old broken bit
lying at the door
of a cheap eating place at the street corner.

You walk, looking from below,
at little jewels worth almost nothing
which I cannot, oh forgive me,
give to you.

So go, then, with no other ornament—
no perfume, no pearls, no diamond—
than your thin nakedness,
O my beauty.


The Swan

Andromache, I think of you. That little river,
poor and sad mirror where once there shone
the great majesty of your widow’s grief,
that false Simois made larger by your tears,

suddenly made my rich memory grow
as I crossed the new Carrousel.
Old Paris is gone. The shape of a city, sadly,
changes faster than the heart of a human being.

Now I see only in my mind
that camp of huts,
those piles of rough pillars and unfinished tops,
the grass, the great stones green from rainwater,
and in the windows the confused shining
of broken old things for sale.

There once stood a great place of animals.
There, one morning, at the hour
when Work wakes under the cold clear sky,
when the street-cleaning wagons push a dark storm
through the silent air,

I saw a swan that had escaped from its cage.
With its webbed feet rubbing the dry stones,
it dragged its white feathers over the rough ground.
Near a stream with no water, the poor creature,
opening its beak,

beat its wings nervously in the dust,
and seemed to say, its heart full
of memory of its beautiful native lake,
“Water, when will you rain?
Thunder, when will you sound?”

I see again that unhappy creature,
strange and fatal myth,
sometimes raising its eager head
on its shaking neck toward the sky,
like the man in Ovid,

toward that mocking and cruelly blue sky,
as if it were sending up a complaint to God.

Paris changes, but in my sadness
nothing has moved. New palaces, scaffolds, blocks of stone,
old poor districts—everything becomes, for me,
an allegory,
and my dear memories are heavier than rocks.

So before the Louvre one image oppresses me.
I think of my great swan, with its wild movements,
like exiles, absurd and noble,
eaten by a longing with no end. And then I think of you,

Andromache, fallen from the arms of a great husband,
made low like common cattle under proud Pyrrhus,
bending in ecstasy beside an empty tomb,
widow of Hector, and wife of Helenus.

I think of the black woman, thin and sick,
walking in the mud, searching with wild eyes
for the lost coconut trees of splendid Africa
behind the huge wall of fog.

I think of everyone who has lost
what can never be found again, never, never—
of those who drink only tears
and nurse Pain as if it were a good wolf,

of thin orphans drying up like flowers.
So, in the forest where my spirit goes into exile,
old Memory sounds its horn with all its breath.
I think of sailors forgotten on an island,

of prisoners, of the defeated,
and of many others too.


The Seven Old Men

Busy city, city full of dreams,
where the ghost, in broad daylight, catches the passer-by,
where mysteries flow everywhere like sap
through the narrow channels of the mighty giant,

one morning, while in the sad street
the houses, made taller by the mist,
looked like the two banks of a swollen river,
and the whole scene, like the soul of an actor,

was covered by a dirty yellow fog,
I walked on, making my nerves hard like a hero
and arguing with my already tired soul
through the suburb shaken by heavy carts.

Suddenly an old man appeared,
whose yellow rags copied the color
of that rainy sky,
and whose look would have made people give him alms
if wickedness had not shone in his eyes.

His pupils seemed dipped in bitter poison.
His look sharpened the cold itself,
and his beard, long-haired and stiff as a sword,
stuck out like the beard of Judas.

He was not bent but broken.
His back made with his leg
a perfect right angle,
so that his stick, completing his appearance,
gave him the awkward shape and step

of a crippled animal
or a Jew with three legs.
Through snow and mud he stumbled on,
as if he were crushing the dead under his shoes,
more hostile to the universe than indifferent.

Then another just like him followed—
same beard, same eyes, same back, same stick, same rags.
Nothing separated this hundred-year-old twin
from the first one. They seemed from the same hell,
and these strange ghosts walked

with the same step toward an unknown goal.
To what filthy plot was I being offered?
What evil chance was making me so low?
For I counted, minute after minute,
seven times, that terrible old man multiplying himself.

Whoever laughs at my fear,
and does not feel a brotherly shiver,
should remember that in spite of all that decay
these seven hateful monsters
seemed eternal.

Could I, without dying, have seen the eighth—
that cruel double, ironic and fatal,
that disgusting phoenix, son and father of himself?
But I turned my back
on the infernal line.

Angry like a drunk man who sees double,
I went home. I shut my door in fear,
sick and dark in spirit,
my mind burning and confused,
wounded by mystery and by absurdity.

In vain my reason tried to take the helm.
The storm, playing, threw all its efforts aside,
and my soul danced and danced, like an old boat
without masts,
on a monstrous sea with no shores.


The Little Old Women

In the winding folds of old capitals,
where everything, even horror, can turn to enchantment,
I watch, obeying my dark moods,
for strange beings, old and broken, yet charming.

These disjointed monsters were once women,
Eponine or Lais. Broken creatures, bent or twisted—
let us love them. They are still souls.
Under torn skirts and cold cloth

they creep on, beaten by cruel winds,
shaking at the loud rolling of the buses,
pressing to their side, like holy relics,
a little bag embroidered with flowers or signs.

They trot along like puppets.
They drag themselves like wounded animals,
or dance without wishing to dance, poor little bells
from which a merciless Demon hangs.

Their eyes are holes from which water shines.
Their eyes are like wells made by a million tears,
like metal pots where a gold light trembles,
light that seems to come from distant evenings.

They seem to move through snow, mud, noise,
and the cruel crowd,
with something noble still under all their ruin,
something old, secret, and unconquered.

Do they feel in their old bones
the sharp hidden cold of winter?
Or do they remember, at evening,
when the city lights begin to burn,

their proud young days,
the lovers, the mirrors, the silk,
the perfumes, the famous names,
all the power they once held?

One was wounded by her unhappy country.
Another was crushed by the grief her husband gave her.
Another, pierced like a Madonna by her child—
all of them could have made a river with their tears.

Ah, how many of those little old women I have followed.
One of them, especially, at the hour
when the setting sun makes the sky bleed
with red wounds,

used to sit alone on a bench, thoughtful,
to hear one of those brass concerts
with which soldiers sometimes fill our gardens,
and which, in those golden evenings
when one feels life come back,

pour a little heroism into the hearts of city people.
That woman, still straight, proud, full of rule and order,
breathed in that lively warlike music with hunger.
Her eye sometimes opened like the eye of an old eagle.
Her marble forehead seemed made for laurel.

So you walk on, stoic and without complaint,
through the chaos of living cities,
mothers with bleeding hearts, courtesans, or saints,
whose names were once on every tongue.

You who were once grace, or glory—
no one knows you now. A rude drunk man
insults you in passing with a laughing kind of love.
A cowardly dirty child dances behind your heels.

Ashamed to exist, dried-up shadows,
afraid, bent low, you move along the walls,
and no one greets you, strange fates,
pieces of humanity ripe for eternity.

But I, I who watch you tenderly from far away,
my anxious eye fixed on your uncertain steps,
as if I were your father—wonderful thing—
I taste, without your knowing it, secret joys.

I see your young passions open again.
Dark or bright, I live your lost days.
My multiplied heart enjoys all your vices.
My soul shines with all your virtues.

Ruins, my family, minds like mine,
each evening I give you a solemn farewell.
Where will you be tomorrow, women of eighty years,
under the terrible claw of God?


A Passing Woman

The deafening street cried around me.
Tall, thin, in deep mourning, majestic in sorrow,
a woman passed, with a rich and graceful hand
lifting and swinging the edge of her dress.

Quick and noble, with a leg like a statue,
I drank in, tense like a madman,
from her eye, pale sky where the storm is born,
the sweetness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills.

A flash—then night. O passing beauty,
whose look made me suddenly live again,
shall I see you again only in eternity?

Elsewhere, far from here, too late, never perhaps.
For I do not know where you flee, and you do not know where I go,
O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it.


Evening Twilight

Here comes charming evening, friend of the criminal.
It comes like an accomplice, with wolf-like steps. The sky
slowly closes like a great bedroom alcove,
and impatient man changes into a wild beast.

O evening, dear evening, desired by the one
whose arms can honestly say, “Today
we worked.” Evening is the one that relieves
minds eaten by savage pain,
the stubborn scholar whose forehead grows heavy,
and the bent worker going back to his bed.

Yet at the same time unhealthy demons
wake heavily in the air, like men of business,
and beating their wings, they strike shutters and awnings.
Through the lights troubled by the wind,
Prostitution begins to shine in the streets.
Like an ant hill, it opens all its hidden roads.

Everywhere it makes for itself a secret path,
like an enemy trying a sudden attack.
It moves inside the muddy heart of the city
like a worm stealing from Man what he eats.
Here and there one hears kitchens hissing,
theaters crying out, orchestras growling.

The shared tables, whose delights are games of chance,
fill with prostitutes and cheats, their partners.
And thieves, who know neither rest nor mercy,
soon begin their work as well,
gently forcing doors and boxes
to live for a few days and dress their lovers.

Gather yourself, my soul, in this serious hour,
and close your ear to this roaring.
It is the time when the pain of the sick grows worse.
Dark Night takes them by the throat. They finish
their fate and go toward the common abyss.
The hospital fills with their sighs.

Many a one will never again come back
to seek the fragrant soup,
by the fire in the evening, near a loving soul.
Most of them, indeed, have never known
the sweetness of a home
and have never truly lived.


Gambling

In faded chairs old courtesans sit,
pale, with painted eyebrows, soft and fatal eyes,
making little sweet faces, while from their thin ears
fall the small hard sounds of stone and metal.

Around the green tables are faces without lips,
lips without color, jaws without teeth,
and fingers shaking in an infernal fever,
searching the empty pocket or the beating breast.

Under dirty ceilings a line of pale lamps
and huge oil lights throw their brightness
onto the dark foreheads of famous poets
who come there to waste their bloody sweat.

That is the black picture which, in a dream at night,
I saw spread out before my clear-seeing eye.
I too, in a corner of the silent cave,
saw myself leaning there, cold, silent, and jealous.

Jealous of the stubborn passion of those people,
of the funeral joy of those old whores,
and all of them gladly trading before my face,
one his old honor, another her beauty.

And my heart was afraid to envy many a poor man
running with great desire toward the gaping abyss,
and who, drunk on his own blood, would in the end
prefer pain to death and hell to nothingness.


Dance of Death

Proud, like a living woman, in her noble shape,
with her large bouquet, her handkerchief, and her gloves,
she has the ease and careless grace
of a thin coquette with strange airs.

Has anyone ever seen at a ball a waist more fine?
Her exaggerated dress, in its royal width,
falls richly over a dry foot
pressed by a bright little shoe, pretty as a flower.

The lace playing along her collarbones,
like a sensual stream rubbing against a rock,
modestly protects from foolish laughter
the funeral charms she wants to hide.

Her deep eyes are made of emptiness and darkness,
and her skull, dressed with flowers in an artistic way,
sways softly on her fragile bones.
O charm of a nothingness dressed with madness.

Some will call you a caricature,
those lovers drunk on flesh who do not understand
the nameless elegance of the human frame.
Great skeleton, you answer my dearest taste.

Do you come to trouble, with your powerful grin,
the feast of Life? Or does some old desire,
still kicking your living carcass,
push you, trusting fool, to the sabbath of Pleasure?

To the song of violins, to the flame of candles,
do you hope to chase away your mocking nightmare,
and do you come to ask from the flood of wild joy
a little coolness for the hell burning in your heart?

Unending well of foolishness and fault,
eternal still of ancient pain,
through the curved bars of your ribs
I still see the restless snake wandering.

To tell the truth, I fear that your coquetry
will not find a prize worthy of its effort.
Which mortal heart can understand the mockery?
Only the strong grow drunk on the charm of horror.

The abyss of your eyes, full of terrible thoughts,
makes dizziness grow, and careful dancers
will not look at, without bitter sickness,
the eternal smile of your thirty-two teeth.

And yet, who has not held a skeleton in his arms,
and who has not fed on things from the grave?
What do perfume, clothing, or fine dress matter?
Whoever acts disgusted only thinks himself beautiful.

Nose-less dancer, irresistible whore,
tell those dancers who pretend to be shocked,
“Proud pretty boys, in spite of powder and red paint,
you all smell of death, perfumed skeletons.

“Faded Antinouses, smooth-faced dandies,
polished corpses, old lovers with gray hair,
the universal turning of the dance of death
carries you away to places no one knows.

“From the cold banks of the Seine to the burning edge of the Ganges,
the mortal herd jumps and faints, without seeing
in a hole in the ceiling the trumpet of the Angel
open like a black gun.

“In every land, under every sun, Death admires you
in your twisting movements, ridiculous Humanity,
and often, like you, perfuming herself with myrrh,
mixes her irony with your madness.”


Love of Lies

When I see you pass, my dear lazy one,
to the music of instruments breaking against the ceiling,
holding your harmonious and slow movement,
and carrying the boredom of your deep look,

when I look, in the gaslight that colors it,
at your pale forehead, made beautiful by a sickly charm,
where the torches of evening light a dawn,
and at your eyes, drawing me in like those of a portrait,

I say to myself, “How beautiful she is,
and strangely fresh.” Her massive memory,
royal and heavy like a tower,
and her heart, bruised like a peach,
are ripe, like her body, for skillful love.

Are you an autumn fruit with supreme taste?
Are you a funeral vase waiting for tears,
a perfume that makes one dream of far-off oases,
a soft pillow, or a basket of flowers?

I know there are eyes, the most melancholy eyes,
that hide no precious secret,
beautiful boxes without jewels, lockets without relics,
emptier and deeper than the sky itself.

But is it not enough that you are appearance,
to gladden a heart that runs from truth?
What does your foolishness or your coldness matter?
Mask or decoration, hail. I adore your beauty.


I Have Not Forgotten

I have not forgotten, neighbor of the city,
our white house, small but quiet,
its plaster Pomona and its old Venus
in a poor little grove hiding their naked limbs,

and the sun in the evening, flowing and splendid,
which behind the window where its sheaf broke apart
seemed, like a great open eye in the curious sky,
to watch our long and silent dinners,

spreading widely its beautiful candle-like reflections
over the simple tablecloth and the rough curtains.


The Big-Hearted Servant

The big-hearted servant whom you were jealous of,
and who sleeps her sleep under humble grass,
we should bring her some flowers.
The dead, the poor dead, have great sorrows.

And when October blows, trimming the old trees,
its melancholy wind around their stones,
surely they must find the living very ungrateful,
sleeping warmly in their beds as they do,

while, eaten by black dreams,
with no bedfellow and no good talk,
old frozen skeletons worked by the worm,
they feel the snows of winter dripping down,
and the century passing, while no friend and no family
replace the rags hanging on their gate.

When the log whistles and sings, if in the evening,
quietly, I saw her sitting in the armchair,
if, in a blue and cold December night,
I found her hidden in a corner of my room,

serious, and coming from the depth of her eternal bed
to cover the grown child with her motherly eye,
what could I answer that faithful soul
seeing tears fall from her hollow eyelid?


Mist and Rain

O ends of autumn, winters, springs soaked with mud,
sleep-giving seasons, I love you and praise you
for wrapping my heart and my brain
in a cloudy winding sheet and a vague tomb.

In this great plain where the cold south wind plays,
where through the long nights the weathercock grows hoarse,
my soul, better than in the time of warm new spring,
will open wide its raven wings.

Nothing is sweeter to a heart full of funeral things,
and on which frost has long been falling,
O pale seasons, queens of our lands,
than the unending sight of your pale darkness—

unless it is, on a moonless evening,
two by two,
to lay pain to sleep
on a chance-made bed.



Wine


The Soul of Wine

One evening the soul of wine sang in the bottles:
“Man, toward you, my dear poor brother,
from my glass prison and my red wax seals,
I send a song full of light and brotherhood.

I know how much labor, sweat, and burning sun
must be given on the flaming hill
to make my life and give me a soul.
But I will not be ungrateful or harmful.

For I feel a great joy when I fall
into the throat of a man worn out by work,
and his warm chest is a sweet tomb
where I am far happier than in my cold cellars.

Do you hear the Sunday songs sounding,
and hope singing in my beating heart?
With your elbows on the table and your sleeves turned up,
you will praise me, and you will be glad.

I will light the eyes of your delighted wife.
I will give your son back his strength and color,
and I will be, for that weak athlete of life,
the oil that makes the muscles of fighters strong.

Into you I will fall, vegetable ambrosia,
precious grain thrown by the eternal Sower,
so that from our love poetry may be born,
and rise toward God like a rare flower.”


The Ragpickers’ Wine

Often, in the red light of a street lamp
whose flame the wind beats and troubles,
in the heart of an old muddy suburb
where humanity swarms in stormy unrest,

one sees a ragpicker coming, shaking his head,
stumbling and striking the walls like a poet,
and, not caring about the spies, his subjects,
pouring out his whole heart in glorious plans.

He makes promises, gives noble laws,
throws down the wicked, lifts up the victims,
and under the sky spread like a hanging cloth,
he grows drunk on the splendor of his own virtue.

Yes, these people hunted by family troubles,
ground down by labor and tormented by age,
broken and bent under a heap of rubbish,
the confused vomit of huge Paris,

come back smelling of old barrels,
followed by companions whitened in many battles,
whose mustaches hang like old flags.
Banners, flowers, and triumphal arches

rise before them by a solemn magic,
and in the dazzling and shining feast
of trumpets, sun, cries, and drums,
they bring glory to a people drunk with love.

So through playful humanity
wine rolls gold like a shining river.
Through the throat of man it sings its victories
and rules by its gifts like true kings.

To drown bitterness and rock to sleep the laziness
of all those old cursed people who die in silence,
God, touched with regret, had made sleep.
Man added Wine, the holy son of the Sun.


The Murderer’s Wine

My wife is dead. I am free.
So now I can drink all I want.
When I came home without a coin,
her cries tore my nerves apart.

I am happy as a king.
The air is pure, the sky is beautiful.
We had a summer just like this
when I first fell in love.

The terrible thirst that tears at me
would need, to satisfy itself,
as much wine as her grave can hold.
That is not a small thing to say.

I threw her down into a well,
and I even pushed over her
all the stones from the edge.
I will forget her, if I can.

In the name of our loving promises,
which nothing can break,
and to make peace between us
as in the beautiful days of our drunken joy,

I begged her to meet me
one evening on a dark road.
She came there, foolish creature.
We are all more or less mad.

She was still beautiful,
though very tired, and I—
I loved her too much. That is why
I said to her: leave this life.

No one can understand me.
Did even one of these stupid drunkards
ever think in his sick nights
of making a burial cloth out of wine?

That hard, filthy woman,
strong as an iron machine,
never, in summer or winter,
knew true love,

with its black enchantments,
its hellish train of alarms,
its little bottles of poison, its tears,
its sounds of chains and bones.

Now here I am, free and alone.
Tonight I will drink until I fall dead.
Then, without fear and without regret,
I will lie down on the earth

and sleep like a dog.
The cart with its heavy wheels,
loaded with stones and mud,
or the stopped wagon,

may crush my guilty head
or cut me in half.
I care no more about that
than about God, the Devil, or the Holy Table.


The Solitary Man’s Wine

The strange look of a woman of pleasure,
which slips toward us like the white ray
the moving moon sends to the trembling lake
when she wishes to bathe her lazy beauty there,

the last bag of coins in a gambler’s fingers,
a shameless kiss from thin Adeline,
the sounds of soft and weakening music
like the distant cry of human pain,

all that is worth less, O deep bottle,
than the rich healing balms your fruitful belly
keeps for the thirsty heart of the faithful poet.
You pour into him hope, youth, and life,

and pride too, that treasure of every poor man,
which makes us triumphant
and like the gods.


The Lovers’ Wine

Today the sky is splendid.
Without bit, without spurs, without reins,
let us ride on wine
toward a magical and holy heaven.

Like two angels tortured
by a burning fever,
in the blue crystal of morning
let us follow the far-off mirage.

Softly balanced on the wing
of the wise whirlwind,
in a shared madness,
my sister, swimming side by side,

we will flee without rest
and without pause
toward the paradise
of my dreams.



Flowers of Evil


A Martyr

Among bottles, rich cloth,
paintings, marble, and sweet-smelling dresses
that fall in proud heavy folds,
in a warm room, like a closed glass house,
where the air itself feels dangerous and deadly,
and where dying flowers in glass cases
breathe out their last weak sigh,

a headless body lies there, pouring out
on the thirsty pillow
a red living blood like a river,
and the cloth drinks it in
with the greed of a field.

Like pale visions born from shadow,
visions that hold our eyes and will not let them go,
the head lies on the bedside table
with its dark mass of hair
and its precious jewels,
like a strange flower.

Empty now of thought,
it gives out from its turned white eyes
a vague pale look like evening light.
On the bed the naked trunk shamelessly displays,
in the fullest abandonment,
the secret splendor and fatal beauty
that Nature gave to it.

A pink stocking, with small pieces of gold,
still remains on one leg like a memory.
The garter, like a secret burning eye,
sends out a hard shining look.
The strange sight of this loneliness,
and of a great soft portrait nearby,
with its tempting eyes and pose,

shows us a dark love,
a guilty joy, and wild feasts
full of hellish kisses,
in which a swarm of evil angels
must once have rejoiced
while swimming in the folds of the curtains.

And yet, when one sees the fine thin shape
of that sharp shoulder,
that slightly pointed hip,
that quick waist like an angry snake,
one thinks: she is still very young.
Did her soul, driven mad,
and her senses, bitten by boredom,

open themselves at last
to the thirsty pack
of wandering and lost desires?
Did the revengeful man whom you could not satisfy in life,
though you gave him so much love,
pour out on your dead and willing flesh
the endless size of his desire?

Answer, unclean body.
And lifting your hard hair
with a feverish hand,
tell me, terrible head,
did you keep on your cold teeth
the final goodbye?

Far from the mocking world,
far from the dirty crowd,
far from curious judges,
sleep in peace, strange creature,
sleep in peace
inside your mysterious grave.

Your husband runs through the world,
and your deathless form
keeps watch near him while he sleeps.
No doubt he will be faithful to you
as you were to him,
faithful and constant
until death.


Damned Women

Lying on the sand like thoughtful cattle,
they turn their eyes toward the line of the sea,
and as their feet search for each other
and their hands move closer together,
they feel soft weakness
and bitter shivering.

Some, loving long shared secrets,
go into the deep places of the groves
where the little streams keep talking,
and there they slowly spell out
the love of timid young childhood
while scratching the bark of young trees.

Others, like sisters, walk slowly and seriously
through rocks full of ghostly shapes,
where Saint Anthony once saw rise before him,
like red flowing lava,
the bare breasts
of his temptations.

There are some who, by the light
of dying pieces of burning wood,
call on Bacchus to help them
from the silent hollow
of old pagan caves,
calling him to put to sleep
their screaming fevers and their ancient remorse.

And others, whose breasts love holy cloth,
hide a whip under their long garments
and mix, in the dark wood
and the lonely nights,
the foam of pleasure
with the tears of suffering.

O virgins, O demons, O monsters, O martyrs,
great souls that despise common reality,
seekers of the infinite, holy women and wild ones,
sometimes full of cries, sometimes full of tears,
you whom my soul has followed
through your own hell,

poor sisters, I love you
as much as I pity you,
for your dark pain,
your thirst that nothing can satisfy,
and the jars of love
with which your great hearts are filled.


The Two Good Sisters

Vice and Death are two pleasant daughters,
rich in kisses and full of health.
Their sides, always virginal and dressed in rags,
have never borne a child
through all their endless labor.

To the dark poet, enemy of family life,
favorite of hell and poor courtier,
graves and brothels show under their shade
a bed that Remorse has never known.

The coffin and the room of pleasure,
both fertile in blasphemy,
offer us in turn, like two good sisters,
terrible pleasures
and dreadful sweetness.

When will you bury me, Vice with dirty arms?
O Death, when will you come,
beautiful rival of her charms,
upon her foul myrtles
among your black cypress trees?


Allegory

She is a beautiful woman, with a rich proud neck,
who lets her hair fall into her wine.
The claws of love, the poisons of the gambling house,
everything slides away and grows dull
against the granite of her skin.

She laughs at Death
and mocks Vice,
those monsters whose hands, always scratching and cutting,
have still respected, in all their destroying games,
the hard majesty
of that firm straight body.

She walks like a goddess
and rests like a sultana.
In pleasure she has a kind of holy faith,
and with her open arms, filled by her breasts,
she calls to the race of men
with her eyes.

She believes, she knows,
this barren virgin and yet necessary one
for the movement of the world,
that the beauty of the body
is a sublime gift
that tears forgiveness
from every shame.

She does not know Hell,
nor Purgatory.
And when the hour comes
to enter the black Night,
she will look at the face of Death
like a newborn child—
without hatred and without remorse.


A Voyage to Cythera

My heart, like a bird, flew happily
and moved freely around the ropes.
The ship rolled under a cloudless sky
like an angel drunk on bright sunlight.

“What is that sad black island?” we asked. “It is Cythera,”
we were told, “a land famous in songs,
the common Eldorado of all old bachelors.
Look well. After all, it is only a poor little place.”

Island of sweet secrets and feasts of the heart,
where the shining ghost of ancient Venus
still seems to float above the sea like a perfume
and fill the spirit with love and softness.

Beautiful island of green myrtles and open flowers,
honored forever by every nation,
where the sighs of loving hearts
roll like incense through a garden of roses,

where the endless cooing of a dove—
but Cythera was now nothing more than poor land,
a rocky desert troubled by harsh cries.
Yet I did notice one strange thing.

It was not a temple among leafy shadows,
where a young priestess, loving flowers,
went about with her body burning from secret heat,
opening her dress a little to the passing wind.

But as we passed near enough to the shore
for our white sails to disturb the birds,
we saw that it was a gallows with three branches,
black against the sky like a cypress tree.

Fierce birds, sitting on their food,
were tearing in rage at a hanging body already ripe.
Each drove its dirty beak, like a tool,
into every bleeding corner of that rotting flesh.

The eyes were only two holes. From the fallen belly
the heavy intestines hung down on the thighs,
and those executioners, full of ugly delight,
had completely cut off his manhood with their beaks.

Under his feet, a crowd of jealous four-footed beasts,
their noses lifted, circled and wandered.
One larger animal moved in the middle
like an executioner among his helpers.

You who lived on Cythera, child of so fair a sky,
silently you suffered all these insults
to pay for your shameful worship
and for the sins that denied you burial.

Ridiculous hanged man, your pain is mine.
At the sight of your hanging limbs,
I felt, like vomit rising to my teeth,
the long river of old bitter grief.

Before you, poor devil so dear to memory,
I felt again all the beaks and all the jaws
of the tearing crows and black panthers
that once loved to work upon my flesh.

The sky was beautiful. The sea was calm.
But for me, from then on, all was black and bloody.
Alas, my heart seemed buried
in that thick symbolic cloth like a burial sheet.

On your island, O Venus, I found still standing
only a gallows of symbols where my own image hung.
O Lord, give me the strength and the courage
to look at my heart and my body without disgust.



Revolt


Abel and Cain

Race of Abel, eat, drink, and sleep.
God smiles kindly on you.

Race of Cain, crawl in the mud
and die in misery.

Race of Abel, your sacrifice
smells sweet to Heaven.

Race of Cain, your task
will never have an end.

Race of Abel, see your crops
and your cattle grow rich.

Race of Cain, your hungry body
shakes and burns.

Race of Abel, your gold gives birth
to more gold and more children.

Race of Cain, your heart
burns with need.

Race of Abel, you grow and feed
like worms in rotting wood.

Race of Cain, drag your people
up to the sky

and throw God down
to the earth.

Race of Abel, your shame—
here is the iron plow defeated.

Race of Cain, into the earth
drive the great spear.

Race of Abel, behold the field
and the fruit of your seed.

Race of Cain, your womb
is still barren.

Race of Abel, enjoy, grow fat,
and live in peace.

Race of Cain, inside your cave
tremble and cry out.

Race of Abel, climb to Heaven
like a thick tree.

Race of Cain, in the muddy depths
fall like iron.

Race of Cain, O race with burning heart,
hear this great cry:

Throw God down
to the earth.


The Litanies of Satan

O you, wisest and fairest of the Angels,
god betrayed by fate and robbed of praise,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

O Prince of exile, to whom wrong was done,
and who, defeated, rises stronger than before,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who know everything, great king of things below,
familiar healer of human pain,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who even to the leper and the outlaw
teach, through love, the taste of Heaven,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who make Death, your old strong mistress,
give birth to Hope—the mad and lovely one,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who give the condemned man your calm proud look
that lets him curse the crowd and the scaffold,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who know in what corners of jealous lands
the hidden God buried the precious stones,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You whose clear eye knows the deep storehouses
where the sleeping metals lie,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You whose broad hand hides the cliffs
from the walker who falls while sleepwalking,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who gently taught weak old bones
how to stand up again when a horse had stepped on them,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who, so that suffering men may be comforted,
mixed salt and sulfur in gunpowder,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who set your mark, your subtle sign,
on the forehead of Croesus when he has no pity,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

You who put into the eyes and hearts of girls
the worship of wounds and the love of rags,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

Support of exiles, lamp of inventors,
confessor of the hanged and of plotters,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.

Foster father of those whom angry God the Father
drove from the earthly paradise,

O Satan, take pity on my long misery.


Prayer

Glory and praise to you, Satan, in the heights
of Heaven, where once you ruled,

and in the deep places of Hell, where, defeated,
you dream in silence.

Grant that my soul may one day rest
beneath the Tree of Knowledge,

near you, when its branches spread
above your forehead like a new temple.



Death


The Death of Lovers

We will have beds full of light perfumes,
deep couches like tombs,
and strange flowers on shelves,
opened for us under fairer skies.

Using up their last warmth in rivalry,
our two hearts will be like two great torches,
whose double light will shine back
in our two spirits, those twin mirrors.

One evening made of rose and mystical blue,
we will exchange one final flash,
like a long sob
full of farewells.

And later an Angel, opening the doors a little,
will come, faithful and joyful,
to bring life again to the dimmed mirrors
and the dead flames.


The Death of the Poor

It is Death that comforts, alas, and keeps us alive.
It is the goal of life, and the only hope
which, like an elixir, rises in us and makes us drunk,
and gives us the heart to walk on until evening.

Through storm, snow, and frost,
it is the trembling light on our black horizon.
It is the famous inn written in the book,
where one will be able to eat, sleep, and sit down.

It is an Angel holding in his magic fingers
sleep and the gift of ecstatic dreams,
and remaking the bed
of the poor and naked.

It is the glory of the Gods. It is the mystic storehouse.
It is the poor man’s purse and his ancient homeland.
It is the open doorway
toward the unknown heavens.


A Curious Man’s Dream

Do you know, as I do, that sweet pain,
and do people say of you, “What a strange man”?
I was about to die. In my loving soul
there was a special illness,
desire mixed with horror.

Fear and sharp hope, but with no rebellion.
The more the fatal sandglass emptied itself,
the more my torture grew bitter and delicious.
My whole heart was tearing itself away
from the familiar world.

I was like a child hungry for the show,
hating the curtain as one hates an obstacle.
At last the cold truth appeared.

I was dead without surprise,
and the terrible dawn wrapped itself around me.
What? Is that all?
The curtain was raised,
and I was still waiting.


The Voyage

For the child who loves maps and prints,
the universe is as large as his appetite.
Ah, how great the world is by lamplight,
and how small it is in the eyes of memory.

One morning we leave, our minds full of fire,
our hearts swollen with bitterness and desire,
and we go, following the rhythm of the wave,
rocking our endless longing on the limited sea.

Some go, happy to escape an ugly country.
Others flee the horror of their cradle.
A few, astrologers drowned
in the eyes of a woman,
that tyrant Circe with dangerous perfumes,

drink themselves drunk on space and light
and blazing skies,
so that they may not be changed into beasts.
The ice that bites them, the suns that darken them,
slowly erase the mark of kisses.

But the true travelers are only those
who leave for the sake of leaving.
Light-hearted people, like balloons,
they never move away from their fate,
and, without knowing why, always say, “Let us go.”

Those whose desires have the shape of clouds,
who dream, as a young soldier dreams of the cannon,
of great changing pleasures, unknown pleasures,
whose names the human mind
has never been able to learn.

We imitate, horror of horrors, the spinning top and the ball
in their dancing and jumping. Even in sleep
Curiosity troubles us and rolls us onward,
like a cruel Angel whipping suns.

Strange fate, where the goal keeps moving,
and, being nowhere, can be anywhere.
There Man, whose hope is never tired,
runs forever like a madman
to find rest.

Our soul is a three-masted ship looking for its ideal land.
A voice sounds on deck, “Look sharp.”
A voice from the masthead, fierce and mad, cries,
“Love… glory… happiness.” Hell—it is only a reef.

Every island pointed out by the lookout
is an Eldorado promised by Fate.
Imagination, which sets up its wild feast,
finds, in the morning light,
nothing but a poor rock.

O poor lover of imagined lands.
Must one chain him, throw him into the sea,
that drunken sailor, inventor of new Americas,
whose mirage only makes the gulf more bitter?

Like the old wanderer, stamping in the mud,
dreaming, nose in the air, of shining paradises,
his enchanted eye discovers a Capua
wherever a candle lights
some dirty inn.

Amazing travelers, what noble stories
we read in your eyes, deep as the sea.
Show us the jewel boxes of your rich memories,
the wonderful treasures made of stars and upper air.

We want to travel without steam and without sail.
To brighten the boredom of our prisons,
let your memories pass across our minds,
stretched tight like canvas,
with all their framed horizons.

Tell us, what did you see?

“We saw stars and waves.
We saw sands as well.
And in spite of many shocks
and unexpected disasters,
we were often bored, just as we are here.

The glory of the sun on the violet sea,
the glory of cities in the setting sun,
lit in our hearts an uneasy fire,
a desire to plunge into a sky
whose reflection tempted us.

The richest cities, the grandest landscapes,
never held the mysterious attraction
of those things chance makes with clouds,
and desire always
left us uneasy.

Pleasure only adds strength to desire.
Desire, old tree whose food is pleasure,
while your bark grows thicker and harder,
your branches want to see
the sun more closely.

Will you always go on growing,
great tree more living than the cypress?
Yet we did carefully gather
some sketches for your hungry album,
brothers who find beautiful
all things that come from far away.

We greeted idols with elephant trunks,
thrones covered with shining jewels,
palaces with such fairy richness
that for your bankers they would be a ruinous dream,

costumes that are drunkenness for the eyes,
women whose teeth and nails are colored,
and clever jugglers
caressed by snakes.”

And then? And then what else?

“O childlike minds,
so that we may not forget the most important thing,
we saw everywhere, and without even looking for it,
from top to bottom of the fatal ladder,
the boring show
of immortal sin.

Woman, low slave, proud and foolish,
adoring herself without laughter,
loving herself without disgust.
Man, greedy tyrant, lustful, hard, and selfish,
slave of the slave,
a gutter flowing in the sewer.

The executioner enjoying his work,
the martyr sobbing,
the feast flavored and perfumed by blood,
the poison of power weakening the despot,
and the people in love
with the whip that makes them stupid.

Many religions like ours,
all climbing toward heaven.
Holiness, like a delicate rich man in a feather bed,
finding pleasure among nails and rough hair.

Humanity talking, drunk on its own genius,
and now mad as it was long ago,
crying out to God in furious pain,
‘O my equal, O my master, I curse you.’

And the least foolish, bold lovers of madness,
fleeing the great herd fenced in by Fate
and taking shelter in the endless opium—
that is the eternal report
of the whole globe.”

Bitter knowledge, the knowledge gained from travel.
The world, small and monotonous, today,
yesterday, tomorrow, always, shows us our own face—
an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.

Must one leave? Must one stay? If you can stay, then stay.
Leave, if you must. One runs, another hides,
trying to deceive the watchful and deadly enemy,
Time. There are, alas, runners without rest,

like the Wandering Jew and like the apostles,
for whom nothing is enough, neither wagon nor ship,
to flee that shameful net-thrower. There are others
who know how to kill him without leaving their cradle.

When at last he sets his foot upon our back,
we will be able to hope and cry, “Forward.”
Just as once we set out for China,
our eyes fixed on the wide sea, our hair in the wind,

we will go aboard the sea of Darkness
with the joyful heart of a young passenger.
Do you hear those voices, charming and funeral,
singing, “This way, you who want to eat

the perfumed lotus. It is here that they gather
the miraculous fruits your heart longs for.
Come, drink yourselves drunk on the strange color
of this afternoon that never ends.”

From the familiar voice we know the ghost.
There our Pylades stretch out their arms to us.
“To cool your heart, swim toward your Electra,”
says she whose knees we once kissed.

O Death, old captain, it is time. Let us raise anchor.
This country bores us, O Death. Let us sail.
Though sky and sea are black as ink,
our hearts, as you know, are full of light.

Pour us your poison, that it may comfort us.
We want, since this fire burns our brains so hard,
to plunge to the bottom of the gulf—Heaven or Hell, what does it matter?—
to the bottom of the Unknown, to find something new.