Travelling Bohemians

The prophetic tribe of the ardent eyes
Yesterday they took the road, holding their babies
On their backs, delivering to fierce appetites
The always ready treasure of pendulous breasts.

The men stick their feet out, waving their guns
Alongside the caravan where they tremble together,
Scanning the sky their eyes are weighted down
In mourning for absent chimeras.

At the bottom of his sandy retreat, a cricket
Watched passing, redoubles his song,
Cybele, who loves, adds more flower,

Makes fountains out of rock and blossoms from desert
Opening up before these travelers in a yawn—
A familiar empire, the inscrutable future.

-Charles Baudelaire

The Sick Muse

My impoverished muse, alas! What have you for me this morning?
Your empty eyes are stocked with nocturnal visions,
In your cheek's cold and taciturn reflection,
I see insanity and horror forming.
The green succubus and the red urchin,
Have they poured you fear and love from their urns?
The nightmare of a mutinous fist that despotically turns,
Does it drown you at the bottom of a loch beyond searching?

I wish that your breast exhaled the scent of sanity,
That your womb of thought was not a tomb more frequently
And that your Christian blood flowed around a buoy that was rhythmical,

Like the numberless sounds of antique syllables,
Where reigns in turn the father of songs,
Phoebus, and the great Pan, the harvest sovereign.

-Charles Baudelaire

SPLEEN

I'M like some king in whose corrupted veins
Flows agèd blood; who rules a land of rains;
Who, young in years, is old in all distress;
Who flees good counsel to find weariness
Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred
Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird;
Whose weary face emotion moves no more
E'en when his people die before his door.
His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile
Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile;
The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good,
Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood
No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom
Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb.
The sage who takes his gold essays in vain
To purge away the old corrupted strain,
His baths of blood, that in the days of old
The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold,
Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains,
For green Lethean water fills his veins.

-Charles Baudelaire

THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD

O SHADOWY Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep
In the deep heart of a black marble tomb;
When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep
Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom;

And when the stone upon thy trembling breast,
And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace,
Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest,
And holds those feet from their adventurous race;

Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie,
(For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend)
During long nights when sleep is far from thee,

Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend
The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"--
And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek.

-Charles Baudelaire

Correspondences

Nature is a temple where the living pillars
Let go sometimes a blurred speech—
A Forest of symbols passes through a man's reach
And observes him with a familiar regard.

Like the distant echoes that mingle and confound
In a unity of darkness and quiet
Deep as the night, clear as daylight
The perfumes, the colors, the sounds correspond.

The perfume is as fresh as the flesh of an infant
Sweet as an oboe, green as a prairie
—And the others, corrupt, rich and triumphant

Enlightened by the things of infinity,
Like amber, musk, benzoin and incense
That sing, transporting the soul and sense.

-Charles Baudelaire

Höstsång

I

Snart skall vi svepas in i kyla, mörker och dimma;
alltför korta sommar, farväl till din ljusa dag!
Ekande klanglöst mot gårdars sten kan jag redan förnimma
vedträna, hur de faller med olycksbådande slag.

Vintern skall helt invadera min varelse: möda,
hård och påtvingad, bävan, hat, raseri,
och likt det arktiska helvetets sol, som dess röda
frusna block kommer åter mitt hjärta att bli.

Rysande hör jag dem falla, en efter en, dessa klossar.
Aldrig kan hammarslag när man reser schavotter runga
mera dovt; min själ är som tornet murbräckan krossar
långsamt med sina stötar, oförtrutna och tunga.

Slagens entonighet vaggar in mig i dvala; det är
som om i hast man spikade någonstans på en kista.
Men för vem? I går var det sommar. Nu är den här,
hösten. Det gåtfulla ljudet låter som uppbrott, det sista...

II

Din iris dunkla glans av grönt håller jag av
men bittert är mig allt i dag, och varken härden,
vårt rum eller din kärlek, ingenting i världen
går upp för mig mot sol över ett ljusdränkt hav.

Älska mig ändå ömt! Ge mig en moders tröst,
fast jag är elak nu, och otacksam och dyster;
brinn med en flyktig eld, o älskarinna, syster,
såsom en solnedgång eller en praktfull höst!

Kort blir ditt uppdrag! Glupsk och girig väntar döden.
Låt mig med pannan stödd mot dina knän betrakta
den milda höstens guld, se hur den slocknar sakta
medan jag sörjer än den vita sommarglöden.

-Charles Baudelaire