300

Do you recall the object,

                As it was the morning and in

Our half sleep we had poured cups of

Milk and                          Had sat quietly 

In the light that              Covered the table

                Drinking as the air came down

From the opening at the height of your

Blue windows,

                             And as I had dressed in

A shirt of white cotton

And led you from your house

                            Into the cool lanes,

                            Do you recall the object,

Where I was a white figure before you

And you were blinded

        By the ferocity of that clear matin,

        So soft as it came upon us,

The burnished shade       Beneath oaks

                                              That seemed

Calcified giants in the      Trembling heat,

The grasses alive with voices

        As of lost spirits

That called their powers home,

                                                    O soul,

Do you recall the object that we saw?

            Murmuring in its haze of shapes,

A dark sleeper.

                        The voices of birds rang

                                              In the stillness.

297

Baudelaire : LE FLACON

There are strong perfumes for which all matter
Is porous. They seem to penetrate the glass.
Opening a casket brought from the Orient,
The lock protesting as it grates and stalls,

Or in some armoire of a deserted house, dusty
And black, breathing of time's bitter odour,
Sometimes you find an old flask from which
The bright soul of a recollection springs.

Manifold thoughts that had slept there, funereal
Chrysalides trembling in the humid darkness,
Draw out their wings and take to the air,
Tinted with azur, glazed with pink, leafed in gold.

Look there! an intoxicating memory flutters
In the murky air! Your eyes close : Vertigo
Seizes your vanquished soul, and pushes it bodily
Toward a gulf darkened by human miasmas.

It throws you down at the edge of an ancient chasm
Where, like Lazarus casting off the shroud,
A spectral cadaver moves as it begins to wake :
The old form of a charming, rancid love.

Just so, when I am lost to the memory of man,
When they have thrown me in the corner
Of a sinister armoire, an old and desolate casing,
Broken and abject and smeared with dust,

I will be your casket, my amiable sickness :
The testimony of your force and your virulence,
O dear poison prepared by the angels! Liquor that
Devours me! My heart lives and it dies in you.

295

Baudelaire : TOUT ENTIÈRE

This morning the Demon came
To me in my high chamber,
And, trying to catch me at fault,
Said to me : "I would like to know,

Among all the fine things
That make up her allure,
Among the black or pink objects
That compose her charming body,

Which is the sweetest?" O my soul!
You responded to the Abhorred :
"Since in her all is as a dittany,
Nothing can hold preference.

When all ravishes me, I ignore
If one thing should seduce.
She dazzles like the Aurora
And consoles like the Night ;

The harmony that governs her
Beautiful form is too exquisite
For any impotent analysis to
Note its numerous accords.

O mystic metamorphosis
Of all my senses melted into one!
Her breathing makes music,
As her voice makes perfume!"

294

Baudelaire : UNE CHAROGNE

Do you remember the object we saw, my love,
                That fine, soft morning of summer?
At a confluence of paths, a degenerate carrion
                Lay on a bed strewn with stones,

Its legs in the air like a lubricious woman,
                 Burning and sweating out toxins,
Displaying in a nonchalant and cynical manner
                Its stomach full of exhalations.

The sun beamed down upon its putrefaction
                 As if to cook it to a tenderness,
As if to uncouple all its mass, and render it up
                To nature that first joined it into one.

And heaven watched where the superb carcass
                Bloomed like a flower.
The miasma was so strong, you seemed close
                To falling unconscious on the grass.

Flies droned above the putrid abdomen
                Out of which came black battalions
Of larvae, flowing like a thick liquid
                Over an expanse of living rags.

It all rose and fell like a tide, or at times
                Bore up with a dark crackle ;
It seemed that the body, inflated by the vague
                Breath of these multiplications, lived.

And this little world gave out a strange music,
                Like to running water or the breeze,
Or to the rhythmic motion of grain
                That a winnower agitates and turns.

The forms effaced themselves and were no more
                Than a dream. A half-finished sketch
On a forgotten canvas, that the artist
                 May complete only through memory.

From behind the rocks a dog watched us
                With a baleful eye, raising its hackles,
Awaiting the moment that it could claim from
                The skeleton a morsel it had left.

You will one day be the semblance of this refuse,
                 Of this horrific infection,
Star of my eyes, heliocentre of my existence! You,
                My angel and my passion!

Yes! You will be such as this, O queen of grace.
                 After the last sacraments,
You will go beneath the soil and the flourishing
                 Grasses, to mould in your ossements.

Then, O my beauty! tell the vermin,
                 As they consume you with their kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
                 Of my decomposed love!