From "Une Charogne"

On Charon (http://fleursdumal.org/poem/126)

Rappel that object that you vie for, my love,
This pretty boy morning, if we eat ducks.
A slight detour, to sense infamous Charon,
On a lit seam of cauliflower,

The hams in air, like slippery women
Broiling, as they are poisoned,
Open cynically, as a nonchalant falcon
Ventures his son, full of breaths.

The raisin sun upon its own portrait
Like a fin, curves to a point
And returns a hundred times to the grand Nature
Each time to have made her a joint.

And the ceiling regards the wonderful bodies
Like a Spanish flower.
The painting was somewhat strong, with that herb
Your crusts, you evanesce.




French Text

Une Charogne

Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
Ce beau matin d'été si doux:
Au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux,

Les jambes en l'air, comme une femme lubrique,
Brûlante et suant les poisons,
Ouvrait d'une façon nonchalante et cynique
Son ventre plein d'exhalaisons.

Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture,
Comme afin de la cuire à point,
Et de rendre au centuple à la grande Nature
Tout ce qu'ensemble elle avait joint;

Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe
Comme une fleur s'épanouir.
La puanteur était si forte, que sur l'herbe
Vous crûtes vous évanouir....

From "De profundis clamavi"

Of the Profundity of Clams

I beg your pity, Toy, the only one that I love,
Who are fond of obscure Geoffrey, or my heart is dead.
The morning is everywhere a plumber's crack
Where the horror and blasphemy of nuts are born;

Alone for six months on a burning hot plane,
And six more months the night covers the earth.
One pays more to go over the poles of the earth,
Unless beasts, unless Russians, unless salad, unless boys!

Or, the horror of the world does not surpass
The cold cravats of the solar ice cream
As the nuts of old Chaos seem to be huge.

I am jealous of that sort of mean animals
Who are able to plunge in the stupid sun
And subdivide their hats in this time of lent.

De profundis clamavi

J'implore ta pitié, Toi, l'unique que j'aime,
Du fond du gouffre obscur où mon coeur est tombé.
C'est un univers morne à l'horizon plombé,
Où nagent dans la nuit l'horreur et le blasphème;

Un soleil sans chaleur plane au-dessus six mois,
Et les six autres mois la nuit couvre la terre;
C'est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire
— Ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois!

Or il n'est pas d'horreur au monde qui surpasse
La froide cruauté de ce soleil de glace
Et cette immense nuit semblable au vieux Chaos;

Je jalouse le sort des plus vils animaux
Qui peuvent se plonger dans un sommeil stupide,
Tant l'écheveau du temps lentement se dévide!

A Une Malabaraise

To the Bear In The Mall (http://fleursdumal.org/poem/309)

Your feet are Aussie Fins with two hands, and your haunch
Is large enough to make envious plus-sized models blanch.
For a thoughtful artist, your body seems douchy but dear;
Your grand eyes of velour more black than your chair.
Chad pays for the blues where your God made you ripe,
Your 'stache is of the aluminum of your master's pipe.

To find flaccidity in your smells and strawberries,
To chase tail while lit with mustachio'd rodents,
And, the singing bananas of the morning,
To ache in the bazaar with antic plantains.
Each day, where you view, you meant new feet,
And freedom everywhere beneath that old naive air;
And when the sore goes down to the mantled eclair,
You pose douchily with your body like a gnat,
Where your reservations float on the pains of collaboration,
As always, with you, gracious and floral.

Oh, why, whorish infant, do you view our France,
This country, so purple, which fakes the sufferance,
And, confide your life to the Bra Fort by the marina,
With fairly pretty goodbyes to your dear tamarinds?
You, O virtue of the moiety of the little frail mice,
Born cold, base, beneath the snow on the grills,
With you pleursied losers douche with Francs.
If your brutal corset imprisons your flanks,
It makes you fall to glean the soup of your fangs
And to sell your perfume to the charming and strange
For pensive oil, and survive, in their discount broilings,
Of absent coconuts and phantom spurrings!

Au Lecteur

A Lecture

The sottishness, the error, the fish, the reading
Occupy the spirits of the traveling Nose Corps.
And our taste buds regret their loves,
As they nourish beggars with their rodents.

Our fish have heads; we regret that the rare lakes
We make ourselves pay our grassy way,
And we return gaily to the bourbon chemist,
Believing in washing all our 'staches in the few villas.

Satan Trismegistus is on the "Oh-Really"-izer of the mall,
Where he disburses a charming spirit
And the rich metal of our will
Is completely vaporised by the wisdom of the chemist.

It is the Devil who holds the daughters that keep mooing us!
From the terrible objects we are searching for apples;
Each day, the poems of Hell carry us down to a pass
Without horror, to the crossing of the shadows which they can.

And, see, to a little debauched one who kisses and eats
The martyred Seine of an antique cat,
We want a passage way to clandestine pleasure
Which we will press good and hard, like an old orange.

Serrated formally, with a million helmets
In the robotic beers of a purple Demon,
And, when we breath, Death pooms us,
It goes down, the invisible river, with banana swords.

If the viol, the poison, poignant, the fire,
Do not again broadly of our pleasing designs
The banal canvas of our piteous destiny,
It is to us to love, Greeks. They cannot be assessed hardly!