307

Ophelia, 1905

All dreams hold within a certain scale,
So far as the body will allow. Their prodigies
Spin out upon a dull canvas: forms of brute
Colour that converge behind the palpebra's
Curtain, as forms of oil converge over water.
                             
                            Blue leaves glow like lamps
In the light behind the veil. Raspberries hang,
Succulent and cold in their endowed silence.
Openings of crimson and orange tremble as if
Tired of all their colour. Skeletal irides, lilies
Of insubstantial gold.

Position and motion join fast, breeding lights
Out of their confluence. Ophelia only watches,
Her hair strung with white periwinkles. It is
Her presence calls forth such forms, her fond
Thought that dances upon their surfeit. Hallow,
My dumb child. Make love come forth where
You lay your clouded eyes!

There will be a music to become the moment,
                And a time yet to lay your body down.

305

To speak your name, Bucephala,
                Is to hear the music of the sea.
                The dark body of the water
                                Moves languidly
                As humid air in summer. Weed
                Blows silently in the shallows.
                                The sun bends its
                Force upon a low mass of cloud.
                Motions that do not resonate
                                As does your name.
The wind drops in pitch.
You are safe from all damage,
                                My quiet witness.
                The water is your medium,
                It forms itself about you when
                                You dive,
                Falls from you when you fly.
                O, for such a boundary to hold!
                                You may return
                Into your origin or break away,
                Given such amnion to occupy.
What it the meaning of you, where you
Float, broken-headed, luminous, white,
                                On the dim swell?

        I will not hold your head
        In the cradle of my hands
        As I would a nodding rose.

        It is winter, and the light here
                        Is yet old enough.
        I will let you bloom, and pass.

304

Femme cueillant des fleurs, 1909

                She sits 
                        In her wooden folding chair
The feet of which compress the new grass
                            In the garden
Of her summer, which is of leisure,
Its fineness a quality of the very air :
                She leans
And places her hands on its seat, her arms
Testing the weight of her young body for
                            An infinitesimal moment.
                 She rises
To her feet, and the force of her arms carries
Into momentum.
                            How it is to move!
The shadow fades where her body rested!
Fierce love works in all the slowness of her.
                            Her body is blue.
                  She declines
Placing her left foot before her, to extract a
Flower from its sepals. Lueur : indigo, rouge.
                            It glows in its death.
Flots of pollen from the silent trees ahead.
                            Her body is red.

303

L'eau — la baigneuse, 1909

The water is composed of its desires :
                                                                 Golden and green,
The outer flourishings of evening light
                    That grace the softening edges of the trees
Fall into it,
                    Fluctuating in the movement of its surface,
Unburdening the water of its colour,
                                                                 Standing in it
As the spirit stands in the body.       Where the treetops
                    Pale into the blue ciel,
Darkening to blue as the sea past its corral,
                    They leave the water to its depth and do not
Furnish it in further colour.
                    The water resonates with cyan and amethyst,
It is its own measure in its substance.

                    At the epicentre of a system of rings,
                    A brilliant white body floats.
                    Black hair that does not meet the water,
                    White breasts that descend into it
                    Rising in networks of delicate light.
                    The river falls from her : she treads it
                    Silently with her outstretched hand.
                    No music but that of breath and motion.

At the far bank, songbirds weave their diverse ways.
                                                                 The air is fresh with
The ghosts of other swimmers, other songs.      

302

Down, snows!
                                 Our garden, dark bouche,
Swallows your ferment.
                                 Had I known your coming
Would be from darkness,
                I would have left a lamp before you,
At the heel of the path.
You father out your formlessness in shoals :
                                 Dim cloudbody, suspended
                Above the rooftops,
Drifting with the silent grace of a cephalopod.
                                 
                                                 Our thoughts may 
Dart out their patterns into the gloom,
                And you will not be exhausted in it,
For your darkness is as the soil
                That takes the fall of lightning
And the coursing rain
                         And forges itself anew in each.
Come down to us where we watch for you,
        Celebrator of surfaces, dolmen of voices!

Our memory that flies into its own forms
                                         Waits for your touch :
It is as you have been.              Come forth now.

301

We have forgotten that our life together

Is as the function of a vast organism.

A janitor wakes in his tenement, and for

A time he lays in bed and stares at the

Mantle of the window, and thinks about

The day to come, about the work that

He must do, the thousand slight concerns

That compose his daily movements.

An executive watches the facades of

Buildings pass the passenger window,

Thinking of the machinery of his life,

The causes that he sees around him

Removed from their obscure effects,

And tries to reckon what he will make.

There is equal energy in either mind.

There is equal power expended in the

Soft stature and poise of the nurse that

Tends upon an empty bed as can be seen

In the posture of a political candidate.

The universe is indifferent : it spends its

Forces absolutely and in all quadrants.

The differentiation of power we feel

Is a human dream, like the fear of a child

As she falls asleep. We are not bound

By any structure than our own. Our

Powers are commensurate with the stars.

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!