Oracles

54 TRANSLATIONS FROM BAUDELAIRE CARRION Recall, my soul, the sight we twain have looked upon This summer morning soft and sweet, Beside the path, an infamous foul carrion, Stones for its couch a fitting sheet. Its legs stretched in the air, like wanton whores Burning with lust, and reeking venom sweated, Laid open, carelessly and cynically, the doors Of belly rank with exhalations foetid. Upon this rottenness the sun shone deadly straight As if to cook it to a turn, And give back to great Nature hundredfold the debt That, joining it together, she did earn. The sky beheld this carcase most superb outspread As spreads a flower, itself, whose taint Stank so supremely strong, that on the grass your head You thought to lay, in sudden faint. The flies swarmed numberless on this putrescent belly, Whence issued a battalion Of larvæ, black, that flowed, a sluggish liquid jelly, Along this living carrion. All this was falling, rising as the eager seas, Or heaving with strange crepitation— Was’t that the corpse, swollen out with a lascivious breeze, Was yet alive by copulation ?