Oracles

TRANSLATIONS FROM BAUDELAIRE 55 And all the carcase now sounded strange symphonies Like wind, or running water wan, Or grain that winnower shakes and turns, whene’er he plies With motion rhythmical his fan. The shapes effaced themselves ; no more their images Were aught but dreams, a sketch too slow To tint the canvas, that the artist finishes By memory that does not go. Behind the rocks a bitch unquietly gazed on Ourselves with eye of wrathful woe, Watching her time to return unto the skeleton For tit-bits that she had let go. Yet you are like to it, this dung, this carrion, To this infection doubly dire, Star of my eyes that are, and still my nature’s sun, You, O my angel ! You, my own desire ! Yes ! such will you be, queen, in graces that surpass, Once the last sacraments are said ; When you depart beneath wide-spreading blooms and grass To rot amid the bones of many dead. Then, O my beauty ! tell the worms, who will devour With kisses all of you to dust ; That I have kept the form and the essential power Divine of my distorted lust.