Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Late January

Pluviose, hating all that lives, and loathing me,
Distills his cold and gloomy rain and slops it down
Upon the pallid lodgers in the cemetery
Next door, and on the people shopping in the town.

My cat, for sheer discomfort, waves a sparsely-furred
And shabby tail incessantly on the tiled floor;
And, wandering sadly in the rain- spout can be heard
The voice of some dead poet who had these rooms before.

The log is wet, and smokes; its hissing high lament
Mounts to the bronchial clock on the cracked mental there;
While (heaven knows whose they were - some dropsical old maid's)

In a soiled pack of cards that reeks of dirty scent,
The handsome jack of hearts and the worn in queen of spades
Talk in suggestive tones of their old love affair.

From "Translations from 'Flowers of Evil' by Charles Baudelaire" 1936

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Sonnet "Once more into my arid days"

Once more into my arid days like dew,
Like wind from an oasis,or the sound
Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
Comes to destoroy me; once more I renew
Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
Long since to be but just one other mound
Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
And once again, and wiser in no wise
I chase your coloured phantom on the air,
And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
And stumble pitifully on to where,
Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,
Once more I clasp,- and there is nothing there.

From "Second April" 1921