The Giant Book of Poetry

by William H. Roetzheim, Editor

  or by any one,

  these inure, have inured, shall inure,

  to the identities from which

  they sprang, or shall spring.

  Did you guess any thing lived only its moment?

  The world does not so exist,

  no parts palpable or impalpable so exist,

  no consummation exists

  without being from some long previous consummation,

  and that from some other,

  without the farthest conceivable one

  coming a bit nearer the beginning than any.

  Whatever satisfies souls is true;

  prudence entirely satisfies the craving and glut of souls,

  itself only finally satisfies the soul,

  the soul has that measureless pride

  which revolts from every lesson

  but its own.

  Now I breathe the word of the prudence

  that walks abreast with time,

  space, reality,

  that answers the pride

  which refuses every lesson but its own.

  What is prudence is indivisible,

  declines to separate one part of life from every part,

  divides not the righteous from the unrighteous

  or the living from the dead,

  matches every thought or act by its correlative,

  knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement,

  knows that the young man

  who composedly periled his life and lost it

  has done exceedingly well for himself without doubt,

  that he who never periled his life,

  but retains it to old age in riches and ease,

  has probably achieved

  nothing for himself worth mentioning,

  knows that only that person has really learned

  who has learned to prefer results,

  who favors body and soul the same,

  who perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct,

  who in his spirit in any emergency whatever

  neither hurries nor avoids death.

  This Compost1

  1

  Something startles me where I thought I was safest,

  I withdraw from the still woods I loved,

  I will not go now on the pastures to walk,

  I will not strip the clothes from my body

  to meet my lover the sea,

  I will not touch my flesh to the earth

  as to other flesh to renew me.

  O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?

  How can you be alive you growths of spring?

  How can you furnish health

  you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?

  Are they not continually putting distempered corpses

  within you?

  Is not every continent worked over and over

  with sour dead?

  Where have you disposed of their carcasses?

  Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?

  Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?

  I do not see any of it upon you today,

  or perhaps I am deceived,

  I will run a furrow with my plough,

  I will press my spade through the sod

  and turn it up underneath,

  I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

  2

  Behold this compost! behold it well!

  Perhaps every mite has once formed

  part of a sick person—yet behold!

  The grass of spring covers the prairies,

  the bean bursts noiselessly

  through the mould in the garden,

  the delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,

  the apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,

  the resurrection of the wheat appears

  with pale visage out of its graves,

  The tinge awakes over the willow-tree

  and the mulberry-tree,

  the he-birds carol mornings and evenings while

  the she-birds sit on their nests,

  the young of poultry break through the hatched eggs,

  the new-born of animals appear,

  the calf is dropt from the cow,

  the colt from the mare,

  out of its little hill faithfully rise

  the potato’s dark green leaves,

  out of its hill rises

  the yellow maize-stalk,

  the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,

  the summer growth is innocent and disdainful

  above all those strata of sour dead.

  What chemistry!

  That the winds are really not infectious,

  that this is no cheat,

  this transparent green-wash of the sea

  which is so amorous after me,

  that it is safe

  to allow it to lick my naked body all over

  with its tongues,

  that it will not endanger me with the fevers

  that have deposited themselves in it,

  that all is clean forever and forever,

  that the cool drink from the well tastes so good,

  that blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,

  that the fruits of the apple-orchard

  and the orange-orchard,

  that melons, grapes, peaches, plums,

  will none of them poison me,

  that when I recline on the grass

  I do not catch any disease,

  though probably every spear of grass

  rises out of what was once catching disease.

  Now I am terrified at the Earth,

  it is that calm and patient,

  it grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,

  it turns harmless and stainless on its axis,

  with such endless successions of diseased corpses,

  it distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,

  it renews with such unwitting looks

  its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,

  it gives such divine materials to men,

  and accepts such leavings from them at last.

  When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer1

  When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

  when the proofs, the figures,

  were ranged in columns before me;

  when I was shown the charts and the diagrams,

  to add, divide, and measure them;

  when I, sitting, heard the astronomer,

  where he lectured with much applause

  in the lecture-room,

  how soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

  till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself,

  in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

  looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

  Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)

  A Carrion1

  Translated by Sir John SQuire

  Rememberest thou, my sweet, that summer’s day,

  how in the sun outspread

  at a path’s bend a filthy carcass lay

  upon a pebbly bed?

  Like a lewd woman, with its legs in air,

  burned, oozed the poisonous mass;

  its gaping belly, calm and debonair,

  was full of noisome gas.

  And steadily upon this rottenness,

  as though to cook it brown

  and render Nature hundredfold excess,

  the sun shone down.

  The blue sky thought the carrion marvelous,

  a flower most fair to see;

  and as we gazed it almost poisoned us—

  it stank so horribly.

  The flies buzzed on this putrid belly, whence

  black hosts of maggots came,

  which streamed in thick and shining rivers thence

  along that ragged frame.

  Pulsating like a wave, spurting about

  bright jets, it seemed to liv
e;

  as though it were by some vague wind blown out,

  some breath procreative.

  And all this life was strangely musical

  like wind or bubbling spring,

  or corn which moves with rhythmic rise and fall

  in time of winnowing.

  The lines became indefinite and faint

  as a thin dream that dies,

  a half-forgotten scene the hand can paint

  only from memories …

  Behind the rocks there lurked a hungry hound

  with melancholy eye,

  longing to nose the morsel he had found

  and gnaw it greedily.

  Yet thou shalt be as vile a carrion

  as this infection dire,

  O bright star of my eyes, my nature’s sun,

  my angel, my desire!

  Yea, such, O queen of the graces, shalt thou be

  after the last soft breath,

  beneath the grass and the lush greenery

  a-moldering in death!

  When they sweet flesh the worms devour with kisses,

  tell them, O beauty mine,

  of rotting loves I keep the bodily blisses

  and essence all-divine!

  from Fuses I – on Love1

  Translated from the French by Norman Cameron

  Love may arise from a generous sentiment—namely,

  the liking for prostitution;

  but it soon becomes corrupted

  by the liking for ownership.

  Love seeks to escape from itself,

  to mingle itself with its victim,

  as a victor nation with the vanquished—

  and yet at the same time

  to retain the privileges of a conqueror.

  The sensual pleasures of a man who keeps a mistress

  have in them something both of the angel

  and of the proprietor.

  Charity and ferocity.

  from Fuses I — on Art1

  Translated from the French by Norman Cameron

  At a theater or ball,

  each person is being pleasured by everybody else.

  What is art?

  Prostitution.

  The pleasure of being in a crowd

  is a mysterious expression of delight

  in the multiplication of number.

  Number is all, and in all,

  number is within the individual.

  Intoxication is a number.

  from Fuses I — on God2

  Translated from the French by Norman Cameron

  Even if God did not exist,

  religion would still be holy and divine.

  God is the only being who, in order to rule,

  does not need even to exist.

  Creations of the mind are more alive than matter.

  Heautontimoroumenos3

  Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks

  I’ll strike thee without enmity

  nor wrath,—like butchers at the block!

  As Moses smote the living rock,

  —till from thine eyelids’ agony

  the springs of suffering shall flow

  to slake the desert of my thirst;

  and on that flood, my lust accurst

  with Hope to fill its sails, shall go

  as on the waves, a pitching barge,

  and in my bosom quickening,

  thy sobs and tears I love shall ring

  loud as a drum that beats a charge!

  For am I not a clashing note

  in God’s eternal symphony,

  thanks to this vulture, Irony,

  whose talons rend my heart and throat?

  She’s in my voice, the screaming elf!

  My poisoned blood came all from her!

  I am the mirror sinister

  wherein the vixen sees herself!

  I am the wound and I the knife!

  I am the blow I give, and feel!

  I am the broken limbs, the wheel,

  the hangman and the strangled life!

  I am my heart’s own vampire, for

  I walk alone, condemned, forlorn,

  by laughter everlasting torn,

  yet doomed to smile, —ah, nevermore!

  Metamorphoses of the Vampire1

  Translated by George Dillon

  Meanwhile from her red mouth the woman,

  in husky tones,

  twisting her body like a serpent upon hot stones

  and straining her white breasts

  from their imprisonment,

  let fall these words, as potent as a heavy scent:

  “My lips are moist and yielding, and I know the way

  to keep the antique demon of remorse at bay.

  All sorrows die upon my bosom. I can make

  old men laugh happily as children for my sake.

  For him who sees me naked in my tresses, I

  replace the sun, the moon, and all the stars of the sky!

  Believe me, learned sir, I am so deeply skilled

  that when I wind a lover in my soft arms, and yield

  my breasts like two ripe fruits for his devouring—both

  shy and voluptuous, insatiable and loath—

  upon this bed that groans and sighs luxuriously

  even the impotent angels would be damned for me!”

  When she had drained me of my very marrow, and cold

  and weak, I turned to give her one more kiss—behold,

  there at my side was nothing but a hideous

  putrescent thing, all faceless and exuding pus.

  I closed my eyes and mercifully swooned till day:

  and when I looked at morning for that beast of prey

  who seemed to have replenished her arteries

  from my own,

  the wan, disjointed fragments of a skeleton

  wagged up and down

  in a lewd posture where she had lain,

  rattling with each convulsion like a weathervane

  or an old sign that creaks upon its bracket, right

  mournfully in the wind upon a winter’s night.

  Spleen1

  Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks

  November, angry at the capital,

  whelms in a death-chill from her gloomy urn

  the pallid dead beneath the graveyard wall,

  the death-doomed who in dripping houses yearn.

  Grimalkin prowls, a gaunt and scurvy ghoul,

  seeking a softer spot for her sojourn;

  under the eaves an ancient poet’s soul

  shivers and flees and wails at each return.

  The grieving church-bell and the sputtering log

  repeat the rusty clock’s harsh epilogue;

  while in a pack of cards, scent-filled and vile,

  grim relic of a spinster dropsical,

  the knave of hearts and queen of spades recall

  their loves, defunct, and sinistrously smile.

  The Flask1

  Translated by James Huneker

  There are some powerful odors that can pass

  out of the stoppered flagon; even glass

  to them is porous. Oft when some old box

  brought from the East is opened and the locks

  and hinges creak and cry; or in a press

  in some deserted house, where the sharp stress

  of odors old and dusty fills the brain;

  an ancient flask is brought to light again,

  and forth the ghosts of long-dead odors creep.

  There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep

  a thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides,

  phantoms of old the folding darkness hides,

  who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold,

  rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold.

  A memory that brings languor flutters here:

  the fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear

  thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit

  where, like a Laz
arus from his winding-sheet,

  arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost

  of an old passion, long since loved and lost.

  So I, when vanished from man’s memory

  deep in some dark and somber chest I lie,

  an empty flagon they have cast aside,

  broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride,

  will be your shroud, beloved pestilence!

  The witness of your might and virulence,

  sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup

  of life and death my heart has drunken up!

  The Ghostly Visitant1

  Translated by Sir John SQuire

  Like the mild-eyed angels sweet

  I will come to thy retreat,

  stealing in without a sound

  when the shades of night close round.

  I will give thee manifold

  kisses soft and moony-cold,

  gliding, sliding o’er thee like

  a serpent crawling round a dike.

  When the livid morn creeps on

  you will wake and find me gone

  till the evening come again.

  As by tenderness and truth

  others rule thy life and youth,

  I by terror choose to reign.

  The Murderer’s Wine2

  Translated by Sir John SQuire

  My wife is dead and I am free,

  now I may drink to my content;

  when I came back without a cent

  her piteous outcries tortured me.

  Now I am happy as a king,

  the air is pure, the sky is clear;

  just such a summer as that year,

  when first I went a-sweethearting.

  A horrible thirst is tearing me,

  to quench it I should have to swill

  just as much cool wine as would fill

  her tomb—that’s no small quantity.

  I threw her down and then began

  to pile upon her where she fell

  all the great stones around the well—

  I shall forget it if I can.

  By all the soft vows of our prime,

  by those eternal oaths we swore,

  and that our love might be once more

  as ‘twas in our old passionate time,