Tuesday, October 10, 2017

The Tarot of Baudelaire



When a heavy lid of low sky
covers a soul moaning with ennui and fright,
and the whole horizon is rounded by
a black day pouring down, sadder than any night;


When the earth is turned to a muggy dungeon
where Hope is the shadow of a bat, feeling
with feeble, flapping wings along the grunge on
walls and bumping its head against a putrid ceiling;


When the crawling spiders of scattershot rains
drop cold bars that imprison us,
water trickles along the channels in our brains,
and the people around us feel poisonous -



The bells speak out suddenly with fury
and lance the sky with dreadful howls,
and frightened strays and exiles, sorry
and homeless, rage from deep within their bowels.


Long hearses roll, slow, silent, hypnotic,
through my soul.  Hope, defeated, cries
out its atrocious anguish - despotic.
A black hood slides over my ferocious eyes.

Spleen: When a Heavy Lid of Low Sky...
Written by Charles Baudelaire
Translated from the French by James McColley Eilers

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