Резултати претраге

Exotic Perfume

Versions: #1
When with closed eyes in autumn's eves of gold
I breathe the burning odours of your breast,
Before my eyes the hills of happy rest
Bathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold.
 
Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs
Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down,
Where men are upright, maids have never grown
Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows.
 
Led by that perfume to these lands of ease,
I see a port where many ships have flown
With sails outwearied of the wandering seas

Doomed women (Delphine and Hippolyte)

By the pale glow of languishing lamp lights,
lying on deep cushions saturated with scent,
Hippolyte dreamed of the powerful caresses
that drew the curtain off her youthful innocence.
 
She sought with eyes made unquiet by the storm
the already distant sky of her candidness
as a traveller would turn his head back toward
the blue horizons he walked past in the morning
 
The unhurried tears held back by her eyelashes,
her broken air, stupor, and doleful delight,
her vanquished arms thrown back like useless weapons,
all served and adorned her fragile beauty.
 
Lying at her feet, serene and full of joy,
Delphine kept watching her with eyes full of flames,
like a strong beast would watch a prey after having
sunk his teeth inside it to tag it as a prey.
 
Strong beauty kneeling in front of a beauty frail,
magnificent, she would inhale voluptuously
the wine of her triumph as she leaned toward her,
as if to be granted a sweet acknowledgement.
 
She sought deep in the eyes of her pallid victim
the inaudible hymn that is sung by pleasure,
and this infinite and sublime gratitude
that eyelids let out like a prolonged sigh.
 
'Hippolyte, dear heart, what do you think of this?
Will you now understand that you should not offer
the sacred holocaust of your early roses
to vehement breaths that could wither them to death?
 
My kisses are as light as these transient mayflies
that brush in the evening the great transparent lakes,
while those of your lover will dig their deep furrows
like chariots would, or some harrowing ploughs
 
They will pass over you like a heavy carriage,
horses or bullocks and their unforgiving hooves
Hippolyte, my sister, would you look at me,
my heart and soul, better half and everything,
 
would you cast at me a glance full of sky and stars?
For one of these charming gazes of divine balm,
I would unveil the most obscure of the delights,
I would put you to sleep in a dream without end!'
 
That is when Hippolyte raised her juvenile head:
'Ungrateful I am not, nor am I repentant.
Delphine dear, I suffer and I am most alarmed,
as would be after a nocturnal frightful meal.
 
I feel heavy terrors gather to pounce on me,
and dark ghostly legions of scattered spirits
trying to lead me down heaving and winding paths
enclosed from all sides by bloody horizons.
 
Would it be that we did perpetrate a strange act?
Would you, if possible, explain my troubled fright:
I shudder for fear when you whisper 'my angel!',
and yet I feel my mouth be drawn closer to you.
 
Don't you look at me so, you my only concern!
You whom I'll always love, you my chosen sister,
even if you were a pitfall along my path,
and the beginning of a certain perdition!'
 
While shaking her fair mane dramatically, Delphine,
as if she were twitching on an iron tripod,
answered with fateful eyes in a despotic voice:
'Who dares, in front of love, evoke damnation?
 
Forever damned be he, the useless dreamer
who was the first to set, in his stupidity,
to solve a problem both unsolvable and sterile,
have honesty meddle in the matters of love!
 
He who strives to unite in a mystical pact
the shadow and the heat, the night and plain daylight,
will never warm up his paralytic body
to the blazing sun that goes by the name of love!
 
Go, if you so desire, fetch an uncouth suitor,
offer your virgin heart to his cruel kisses.
And then, filled with remorse and horror, and livid,
you'll come back to bring me your now defaced breasts...
 
No more than one master can be pleased here below!'
Then the child, pouring out an immense suffering,
burst out 'I feel a chasm widening in my being,
and this gaping chasm is no other than my heart!
 
A blazing volcano, unfathomable void!
Nothing will ever sate this foul moaning monster,
nothing will ever quench the thirst of the Fury
that draws blood from the burns inflicted by her torch1
 
Let our drawn curtains set us apart from the world,
let our tiredness bring some rest to us at last!
I want to annihilate myself in your bosom,
find lying on your breast the fresh air of the tomb!
 
Come down now, come down now, ye pitiful victims,
come down the path that leads to everlasting hell!
Dive to the deep end of the pit, where all the crimes
get flayed by a wind that doesn't come from Heaven
 
and teem haphazardly in a growl of thunder.
Foolish shadows, run to the aim of your desires.
Never will you succeed in satiating your rage,
and your punishment will be born from your pleasures.
 
Never was your cave lit by a fresh beam of light.
Through every wall crack, feverish miasmas seep
and come ablaze, shining as fiery lanterns,
suffusing your bodies with their horrendous stench.
 
The harsh barrenness of your lustful enjoyment
exacerbates your thirst and parches your skin taut,
and the enraged wind blown by concupiscence
makes your flesh flap and slap like a decrepit flag.
 
Away from living folks, wandering, outcast,
run ye through the deserts, among wild packs of wolves.
Make your own destiny, ye poor unruly souls,
flee this infinity you bear inside yourselves!
 

• 1. Mmm... I bet 'sang' is just there for the rhyme.
  Come on, Charles, get a grip!

To Charles Baudelaire

I did not know you, I did not love you,
I do not know you and love you even less:
It'll do me ill to burden myself with your libeled name,
and the reason why I might still stand among your witnesses
 
is firstly that, in some other place, you fell and prayed
at those Feet joined first by cold nails, and then
by the swooned urge of sinful women who kissed them
hungrily and anointed them with mad tears.
 
You fell and prayed, like me, like all the souls
driven to the roads by hunger and thirst
that hope would embellish as they hit the Calvary!
 
A just and true Calvary, a Calvary where these doubts,
various grimaces and art, all weep over their debacle.
How come we sinful men could just die?
 
This translation does not claim to be of any particular value.
Glad if you liked it, sorry if you didn't.
You can reuse it as you please.
Glad if it's for knowledge or understanding, sorry if it's just for money or fame.

Praises of My Francisca

Upon new chords of you I sing.
And the new-born bud you bring
From solitude, the pure heart's Spring.
 
Your brows should be with garlands twined
Woman of delightful mind,
Who our trespasses unbind.
 
As the wondrous balm of Lethe,
Through thy kisses, I will breathe thee.
All are magnetised who see thee.
 
When my vices, wild and stormy,
From my wonted courses bore me
It was You appeared before me,
 
Star of Oceans! you that alter
Courses, when the pilots falter —
Take my heart upon your altar.
 
Cistern full of virtuous ruth,
Fountain of eternal youth,
Give to dumbness speech and truth!
 
What was dirty, you cremated,
What uneven — you equated,
What was weak you re-created.
 
Inn, on the hungry roads I tramp,
And, in the dark, a guiding lamp
To steer the lost one back to camp.
 
To my strength add strength, O sweet
Bath, where scents and unguents meet!
Anoint me for some peerless feat!
 
Holy water most seraphic,
On the lusts in which I traffic
Flash your chastity ecstatic.
 
Bowl of gems where radiance dances.
Salt that the holy bread enhances,
And sacred wine — your name is Frances!