no. 11 - harmonies du soir - [Mireille's Baudelaire]
no. 11 - harmonies du soir
Fragments of Mireille's Baudelaire
be good, my Sorrow, quiet your despair.
you call for Evening; it descends, is here;
around the town, a darkness in the air
promising peace to some, to others care.
while most, the rapid multitude of men,
lashed by their Lust, in merciless torment,
gather remorse on slavish holiday,
my Sorrow, take my hand and come away,
away from them. look, as the Years lean down
from heaven’s porches, clothed in ancient gowns;
Regret, in smiles, looms from the water’s depths;
under an archway sleeps the dying Sun.
and, like a shroud swept to the Orient,
listen, my dear, the sweet Night walks along.
MEDITATION
give up, my heart, and sleep your stolid sleep.
for you, old rover, spirit sadly spent,
love is no longer fair, nor is dispute;
farewell to brass alarms, sighs of the flute!
pleasures, give up a heart grown impotent!
the Spring, once wonderful, has lost its scent!
THE TASTE FOR NOTHINGNESS
Love with its dark, enchanting pains,
troupe of anxieties from hell,
its flasks of poison, tears as well,
its rattlings of bones and chains!
THE MURDERER’S WINE
quivering with grief, Elvira, chaste and thin,
near to her lover and unfaithful spouse,
seemed to be begging one last smile of him,
in which would shine the grace of his first vows.
DON JUAN IN HELL
her polished eyes are made of charming stones,
and in her essence, where the natures mix
of holy angel and the ancient sphinx,
where all is lit with gold, steel, diamonds,
a useless star, it shines eternally,
the sterile woman’s frigid majesty.
THE WAY HER SILKY GARMENTS -
Debauch and Death are a fine, healthy pair
of girls, whose love is prodigal and free.
their virgin wombs, beneath the rags they wear,
are barren, though they labour constantly.
THE TWO GOOD SISTERS
this freakish ghost has nothing else to wear
but some cheap crown he picked up at a fair
grotesquely perched atop his bony corpse.
A FANTASTICAL ENGRAVING
this is the black tableau that in my dream
I see unroll before my prescient eye.
there in an idle corner of that den
I see myself - cold, mute, envying,
envious of these men’s tenacious lust,
the morbid gaiety of these old whores,
trafficking gallantly before my face
in honour and in beauty, as of old!
GAMING
thus they traverse the blackness of their days,
kin to the silence of eternity.
o city! while you laugh and roar and play,
mad with your lusts to point of cruelty,
look at me! dragging, dazed more than their kind.
what in the Skies can these men hope to find?
THE BLIND
now are the autumn days of thought at hand,
and I must use the rake and spade to groom,
rebuild and cultivate the washed-out land
the water had eroded deep as tombs.
and who knows if the flowers in my mind
in this poor sand, swept like a beach, will find
the food of soul to gain a healthy start?
THE ENEMY
enchantress, say it - do you love the damned?
the irremissible,
you know it? know Remorse, whose poisoned shafts
find targets in our hearts?
enchantress, say it - do you love the damned?
THE IRREPARABLE
