Works

Beside a monstrous Jewish whore I lay
One night, we were two corpses side by side,
And came to dream beside this hired bride
Of beauty my desire had turned away.

I saw again her native majesty,...

Like pensive cattle lying on the sands
They gaze upon the endless seas, until
Feet grope for feet, and hands close over hands,
In languid sweetness or with quivering chill.
...

Within the dwindling glow of light from languid lamps,
Sunk in the softest cushions soaked with heady scent,
Hippolyta lay dreaming of the thrilling touch
That spread apart the veil of her young innocence.
...

I have not forgotten our little white retreat
Where we were neighbors to the town of busy streets;
Our plaster Venus and Pomona barely could
Conceal their nakedness within our meagre wood....

That kind heart you were jealous of, my nurse
Who sleeps her sleep beneath the humble turf,
I'd like to give her flowers, wouldn't you?
The dead, the poor dead, have their sorrows too,...

for Victor Hugo

I.

In sinuous coils of the old capitals
Where even horror weaves a magic spell,
Gripped by my fatal humours, I observe
Singular beings with appalling charms.
...

This morning how grand is the space!
Without bridle or spurs, in our haste
Let us set out by horseback on wine,
For the heavens-enchanted, divine!

Like two angels gone insane...

My wife is dead and I am free!
And I can guzzle all I want.
When I came home without a cent
Her crying knifed the heart in me.

I am as happy as a king;
The air is pure, the sky divine......

Often, beneath a street lamp's reddish light,
Where wind torments the glass and flame by night,
Where mankind swarms in stormy turbulence
Within a suburb's muddy labyrinth,
...

A handsome woman's tantalizing gaze
Gliding our way as softly as the beam
The sinuous moon sends out in silver sheen
Across the lake to bathe her careless rays;
...

One night, from bottles, sang the soul of wine:
'0 misfit man, I send you for your good
Out of the glass and wax where I'm confined,
A melody of light and brotherhood!
...

Every man worth the name
has a yellow snake in his soul,
seated as on a throne, saying
if he cries: 'I want to!': 'No!'


Lock eyes with the fixed gaze
of Nixies or Satyresses, says...

The way her silky garments undulate
It seems she's dancing as she walks along,
Like serpents that the sacred charmers make
To move in rhythms of their waving wands.
...

Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted souls in whom the la...

Old monasteries under steadfast walls
Displayed tableaux of holy Verity,
Warming the inner men in those cold halls
Against the chill of their austerity.
...

Your feet are as slender as hands, your hips, to me,
wide enough for the sweetest white girl's envy:
to the wise artist your body is sweet and dear,
and your great velvet eyes black without peer....

Around me roared the nearly deafening street.
Tall, slim, in mourning, in majestic grief,
A woman passed me, with a splendid hand
Lifting and swinging her festoon and hem;
...

Your head, your gesture, your air,
are lovely, like a lovely landscape:
laughter's alive, in your face,
a fresh breeze in a clear atmosphere.

The dour passer-by you brush past there,...

The prophetic tribe with burning eyes
yesterday took to the highway, carrying
children slung on their backs, or offering
proud hunger the breast's ever-ripe prize.
...

I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence filled the air with the ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality....