Читать книгу Poems of Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal) - Charles Baudelaire - Страница 4
ОглавлениеBenediction
| When by an edict of the powers supreme A poet’s born into this world’s drab space, His mother starts, in horror, to blaspheme Clenching her fists at God, who grants her grace. “Would that a nest of vipers I’d aborted Rather than this absurd abomination. Cursed be the night of pleasures vainly sported On which my womb conceived my expiation. Since of all women I am picked by You To be my Mate’s aversion and his shame: And since I cannot, like a billet-doux, Consign this stunted monster to the flame, I’ll turn the hatred, which You load on me, On the curst tool through which You work your spite, And twist and stunt this miserable tree Until it cannot burgeon for the blight.” She swallows down the white froth of her ire And, knowing naught of schemes that are sublime, Deep in Gehenna, starts to lay the pyre That’s consecrated to maternal crime. Yet with an unseen Angel for protector The outcast waif grows drunken with the sun, And finds ambrosia, too, and rosy nectar In all he eats or drinks, suspecting none. He sings upon his Via Crucis, plays With winds, and with the clouds exchanges words: The Spirit following his pilgrim-ways Weeps to behold him gayer than the birds. Those he would love avoid him as in fear, Or, growing bold to see one so resigned, Compete to draw from him a cry or tear, And test on him the fierceness of their kind. In food or drink that’s destined for his taste They mix saliva foul with cinders black, Drop what he’s touched with hypocrite distaste, And blame themselves for walking in his track. His wife goes crying in the public way —“Since fair enough he finds me to adore, The part of ancient idols I will play And gild myself with coats of molten ore. I will get drunk on incense, myrrh, and nard, On genuflexions, meat, and heady wine. Out of his crazed and wondering regard, I’ll laugh to steal prerogatives divine. When by such impious farces bored at length, I’ll place my frail strong hand on him, and start, With nails like those of harpies in their strength, To plough myself a pathway to his heart. Like a young bird that trembles palpitating, I’ll wrench his heart, all crimson, from his chest, And to my favourite beast, his hunger sating, Will fling it in the gutter with a jest.” Skyward, to where he sees a Throne blaze splendid, The pious Poet lifts his arms on high, And the vast lightnings of his soul extended Blot out the crowds and tumults from his eye. “Blessèd be You, O God, who give us pain, As cure for our impurity and wrong— Essence that primes the stalwart to sustain Seraphic raptures that were else too strong. I know that for the Poet You’ve a post, Where the blest Legions take their ranks and stations, Invited to the revels with the host Of Virtues, Powers, and Thrones, and Dominations. That grief’s the sole nobility, I know it, Where neither Earth nor Hell can make attacks, And that, to deck my mystic crown of poet, All times and universes paid their tax. But all the gems from old Palmyra lost, The ores unmixed, the pearls of the abyss, Set by Your hand, could not suffice the cost Of such a blazing diadem as this. Because it will be only made of light, Drawn from the hearth of the essential rays, To which our mortal eyes, when burning bright, Are but the tarnished mirrors that they glaze.” |
