The Flowers of Evil, page 7
C.B.
To the Reader
For all of us, greed, folly, error, vice
exhaust the body and obsess the soul,
and we keep feeding our congenial
remorse the same way vagrants nurse their lice.
Our sins are stubborn; our repentance, weak.
When we confess, we ask high premiums.
Assuming cheap tears will expunge our crimes,
we gladly walk the same old muddy track.
Thrice-potent Satan,° cushioned on perdition,
lulls our enchanted minds incessantly.
A perfect alchemist, he boils away
the valuable ore of our volition.
The Devil guides us like a puppet master.
Disgusting objects please us very well.
Each day we take another step toward Hell,
unflinching, through a putrid lack of luster.
In just the way that some broke debauchee
kisses and nips an old whore’s martyred tit,
we steal, in passing, off-limits delight
and squeeze it, like a seasoned orange, dry.
The ranks of demons reveling in our brains,
like multitudes of maggots, swarm and seethe,
and Death, invisible river, when we breathe,
descends into our lungs and softly keens.
Why haven’t arson, poison, rape, the knife
embroidered their enticing images
into our sad lives’ tedious tapestries?
Sadly, our spirits don’t have nerve enough.
There among all the jackals, panthers, mutts,
monkeys and vultures, scorpions and snakes,
those howling, yelping, grunting flocks and packs,
that infamous menagerie of our rots,
there’s one most ugly, false and dirty birth!
Though hardly moving, uttering no grand sound,
he’d gladly make a shambles of this land
and, yawning, swallow the entire earth:
Boredom! Moist-eyed, he dreams, while pulling on
a hookah pipe, of guillotine-cleft necks.
You, reader, know this tender freak of freaks—
hypocrite reader—mirror-man—my twin!
SPLEEN AND THE IDEAL
1 Benediction
Whenever, by some holy proclamation,
the Poet is born into this tedious sphere,
his cussing mother, full of indignation,
holds up her fists to God (who pities her):
“Dammit! I wish that I had nursed a mess
of vipers rather than have spawned that runt!
Cursed be the night of evanescent joys
when he was thrust in me as punishment.
Since, from all womankind, you lit on me
to cause my shamefaced husband so much woe,
and I can’t chuck this warped monstrosity
into the fireplace like a billet-doux,
I’ll make the hatred that you heap on me
redound upon the agent of your doom.
Yes, I’ll so twist this miserable tree
that its repulsive buds won’t ever bloom!”
She swallows thus the foaming spit of spite
and, ignorant of Heaven’s larger scheme,
constructs a pyre in the infernal pit
and consecrates it to maternal crime.
But, with an unseen angel as protector,
the outcast child drinks in the wine-like light
and finds ambrosia and vermilion nectar
in all that he is given to drink and eat.
He sings ecstatically from Calvary,°
plays with the winds, discourses with the clouds.
His journey’s guardian spirit loves to see
him happy as a songbird in the woods.
The people he would hold dear fear to love him
or, confident in his naïveté,
look for a way to wring a scream out of him.
They try out every sort of savagery.
They mix ash in or grossly hack and spit
on bread and wine intended for his mouth.
All he has touched those hypocrites throw out.
They chide their feet for walking in his path.
His wife keeps blabbing in the squares and quads:
“Well, since he thinks I’m worthy of a cult,
I’ll act like one of the barbaric gods
and tell him that I want my image gilt.
Yes, I’ll get drunk on genuflections, wine,
and sacrifices, incense, myrrh and nard,
all so that, laughing at him, I can own
the worship that he ought to give the Lord.
When I get bored with this impious show,
I’ll lay my bold frail hands on him and start
ripping, with nails like those the Harpies grow,
a path the whole way inward to his heart.
I’ll tear that heart, as if it were a red
and trembling baby bird, out of his chest,
then cruelly drop it in the dirt to feed
whichever vicious beast I like the most.”
The pious Poet raises his serene
hands heavenward toward a refulgent throne,
and glamorous flashes from his spirit screen
from him how nasty everyone has been:
“Blessings on you, my Lord, who send us pain
to cure, divinely, our impurities—
a balm that helps the stalwart best sustain
the potency of holy ecstasies!
I know that you prepare a special spot
for poets up there in the holy zones,
and you will call me to an infinite
party with Dominations, Virtues, Thrones.°
I know our one nobility is pain,
and neither earth nor Hell can make it worse.
What’s more, to plait my transcendental crown,
I need to tax time and the universe.
But all Palmyra’s lost antiquities°—
the precious ores, the pearls out of the sea—
though you yourself arrange them, can’t surpass
this crown of ever-dazzling clarity,
since it is made of perfect purity,
a holy metal from the primal blaze.
The eyes of man, majestic though they be,
are its obscure, sad mirror images.”
2 The Albatross
Often, for fun, the sailors on a ship
catch albatrosses, big seabirds, who trail
languorously, for the entire trip,
some vessel sailing on the ocean swell.
Soon as the crew has caught him on the deck,
this despot of the sky, bereft of pride,
lets his expansive white wings dangle, like
a pair of oars, clumsily at his side.
The feathered traveler is a lame and weak
joke now who had been beautiful before.
One sailor holds a pipe up to his beak;
another limps to mock the crippled flier.
The Poet is like this royal of the clouds
who rides on storms and scorns all archery:
once he is exiled to the earth, shrill crowds
abuse him, and his giant wings are in the way.
3 Elevation
Over the ponds and over the ravines,
over the mountains, forests, clouds and seas,
beyond the sun, beyond ethereal space,
beyond the starry hemispheres’ confines,
you fly, my spirit, with agility
and, like a good swimmer who loves the tide,
plow through immeasurable amplitude
with an ineffable and virile joy.
Fly far away from this depressing stink
and purify yourself in upper air.
Imbibe the holy fire that fills the clear
regions, as if it were a heavenly drink.
Happy is he who vigorously soars
beyond the boredom and the vast distress
so burdensome to our befuddled race
and dashes into those serene, bright spheres.
Happy is he whose lark-like intellect wings
into the vault of morning, who ascends
above this life and freely understands
the language of the flowers and silent things.
4 Correspondences
Nature, a temple in which porticoes
are growing, gives at times confounding talks.
The figurative groves through which man walks
look back at him with understanding eyes.
Hues, sounds and perfumes discombobulate
the senses just as far-off echoes fuse
into a deep and hazy synthesis
vast as the light of day and dark of night.
There are perfumes fresh as a baby’s skin,
sweet as an oboe’s skirl and green as grass,
while others are corrupt, imperious
and capable of infinite expanses,
like ambergris, musk, incense, benjamin,
which sing the rapture of the soul and senses.
5 I love recalling those antique, nude times . . .
I love recalling those antique, nude times
when Phoebus° gilded statues with his beams.
Then men and women played at games of speed
and no one was a cheater or a prude.
Yes, with the loving sunlight on their loins,
they exercised their excellent machines.
Back then prolific Cybele° did not
find all her sons so burdensome a weight,
but, like a she-wolf brimming with compassion,°
fed, from her dark brown nipples, all creation.
Like fruit without impurities or blots
whose smooth but firm rinds begged for little bites,
man, a refined, robust and mighty thing,
proudly exhibited what made him king.
Today, though, when the Poet would assess
such primal grandeurs in the nakedness
of man- and womankind, he feels a chill
despondency well up and grip his soul.
He meets with mournful and obscene tableaux.
O monstrous figures crying out for clothes!
O torsos suitable for travesties!
O bodies warped or morbidly obese
which the serene, grim god of Usefulness
swaddles like infant flesh in clothes of brass!
What of the tallow-pallid females whom
indulgence eats and feeds? And what of them,
the virgins, heirs to all their mothers’ sins?
Pregnancy makes a hideous difference!
We moderns do have, in our time, it’s true,
some charms the ancient peoples never knew,
like faces gnawed away by syphilis
and beauties, one might say, of listlessness,
but these inventions of a latter muse
can’t ever make such invalids refuse
tribute to sacred Youth whose pleasing face
is simple and untroubled and whose eyes
are bright and bracing as a flowing stream.
Youth pours on all things music and perfume
and warm vitality insouciantly,
like birds and clear skies, flowers and the sea.
6 The Beacons
Rubens,° sloth-garden, river of oblivion,
pillow where young flesh never ends up making love
but where the primacy of life flows on and on
like waves in seas and breezes in the big Above.
Leonardo,° deep and solemn looking-glass
where, in the shadows of the glaciers and the pines
framing the countryside, there are mysterious
and winsome angels wearing irresistible grins.
Rembrandt,° sad hospital with murmuring corridors
and one immense crucifix fastened to the wall,
a place where prayers ascend in filth and breathe through tears
and winter sunlight passes brusquely down the hall.
Michelangelo,° vague place where Hercules
mingles with Jesus Christ, and dead men’s mighty shades
rise from the earth, stand stiffly in the twilight haze
and, pointing with their fingers, tear their funeral shrouds.
A raging boxer with the brashness of a faun,
you showed us there is beauty in vulgarians;
O great heart filled with pride, O sickly, sallow man,
Puget,° you were the outlaws’ melancholy prince.
Watteau,° a carnival where many famous hearts
go flitting here and there like butterflies ablaze,
while in an airy room a chandelier imparts
insanity to dancers spinning on their toes.
Goya,° nightmare full of things unknown and wicked,
of fetuses sautéed for midnight witches’ revels,
of hags in front of mirrors and children wholly naked
who dress themselves most carefully to lead on devils.
Delacroix,° lake of blood where evil seraphim
live in the shade of ever-flourishing fir trees,
where curious fanfares fade away into the gloom
and disappear, like one of Weber’s stifled sighs.°
Lamentations, maledictions, cries of hate
and ecstasy, entreaties, sobs and hymns of praise
are sounds with which a thousand mazes resonate.
They are a holy opiate for the human race!
They are the watchword of a thousand sentinels,
an order that a thousand speaking horns have brayed;
they are the beacon on a thousand citadels,
the shout of hunters lost inside an endless wood.
Without a doubt, Lord God, this is the most sublime
assurance we can give you we are of some good—
that this impassioned sob rolls on and on through time
and dies out on the shore of your infinitude.
7 The Sick Muse
Poor muse, the sun is up. What’s wrong with you?
Your eyes are full of what you dreamt last night.
I see, reflected in your present hue,
cold, taciturn insanity and fright.
Have the green succubus and crimson fiend
emptied on you their urns of love and dread?
Has Nightmare’s impish and despotic hand
plunged you into Minturnae’s famous mud?°
I pray your breast, fragrant with healthiness,
constantly be the home of fine thoughts; may
your Christian blood flow just as strictly as
the measured music of an ancient ode
over which Phoebus, lord of melody,°
presides, and also Pan, the harvest god.°
8 The Muse for Sale
O muse of mine, you love rich palaces,
but, when all January whips its wind
through drifts and twilight boredom, will you find
some half-burnt sticks to warm your purple toes?
When moonbeams struggle through your windowpanes,
will your blue shoulders find their former tint?
Knowing your throat is dry, your money spent,
will you change coffered ceilings into coins?
To earn your daily bread you have to swing
the censer like an altar boy and sing
those holy hymns in which you don’t believe,
or vend your charms to eyes that don’t perceive
your tear-stained laughter—an emaciate fraud
who somehow pleasures the splenetic crowd.
9 The Bad Monk
Long ago cloisters had the sacred Truth
of Holy Scripture painted on their walls.
These pictures warmed the hearts of men of faith
and eased the chill inside their stringent cells.
Back when the Word of Christ was prosperous,
more than one famous monk, unknown today,
setting his easel in a charnel house,
glorified death in a straightforward way—
my soul’s the tomb in which I live and walk
forever on and on, bad eremite.
No pictures cheer this miserable retreat.
O lazy monk! When will I learn to make
what my hands write and what my eyes adore
out of the living vista of despair?
10 The Fiend
My youth was nothing but a dark storm, shot
through, now and then, by brilliant bursts of sun.
Thunder and flooding worked such total ruin
that ripe fruit’s tough to come by in my plot.
Here in my fall, my mental harvesttime,
I have to rake and shovel to regain
bits of the sodden soil in which the rain
dug holes, each one as spacious as a tomb.
Who can say if the flowers of which I dream
will find in dirt washed like an ocean shore
the mystic nurture that would make them bloom?—
The pain! The pain! Time eats our lives. What’s more:
a secret Fiend, our hearts’ devourer, grows
stronger by feeding on the blood we lose.
11 Bad Luck
You’ll need a lot of initiative
to lift that great weight, Sisyphus.°
However much one works for success,
Art takes time and Life is brief.°
My heart beats like a muffled drum
that leads a funerary march
far from the famed tombs near the church
to the graveyard where no mourners come—
but, deep in mantle, gems are dozing
in uncollected obscurity
out of the reach of pick and spade,
and the sweetest flowers are releasing
their secret perfume reluctantly
in the remotest solitude.
12 The Past Life
I lived for years beneath a vast arcade
which ocean suns lit with a thousand hues.
At dusk the columns—tall, straight, sumptuous—
transformed the scene into a grotto made
of basalt. Rolling mirrors of the skies,
the waves mixed, in a solemn, mystic way,
their opulent, all-powerful harmony
