A Buddhist Prayer

based on a passage in Buddhist literature

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Baudelaire’s first book of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal (“Flowers of Evil”), was published in 1857 when the poet was 36. Six of the poems, some of which have already been translated here by Lasha Darkmoon, were immediately banned as obscene. Au Lecteur stood as the book’s preface, containing some of the most quotable lines in French literature.

Victor Hugo was to enthuse, “Your fleurs du mal shine and dazzle like stars. I applaud your vigorous spirit!” Others were not so impressed. “Everything in it which is not hideous is incomprehensible,” the poetry critic of Le Figaro wrote angrily. “And everything one understands is putrid”. 

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Translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood (more…)

The Atman

translated by
Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood (more…)

One night I lay next to a hideous whore
like a corpse cuddling a rotting cadaver.
Then I began dreaming of a far more
attractive female. Wow, how I fancied her!

I began picturing this lady’s noble air
of command. The cool authority of
her eye. The perfumed helmet of her hair.
Such hot thoughts!  Jeeze, I’m all steamed up for love!

Lady, I’d like to cover you with kisses!
Wild kisses! Are you ready for caresses
from head to foot, my charming chickadee?

If only, cruel temptress, you could try
to melt the glacier in your icy eye!
No? You mean you can’t spare a tear for me?

Rotting  Corpse

Remember that thing we saw, my love,
one fine sweet summer morning as we turned
the path. Across the gravel-strewn ground
lay sprawled a rotting corpse. Its legs aloft,

kicking the air like a whore on heat,
seething and dripping with poisons,
displaying in a shameless fashion its fetid
womb, reeking with rotten smells!

The sun blazed down upon this festering
heap of putrescence, as if to toast it to a turn,
giving back to Nature with a vengeance
all the bits and pieces she had put together.

The sky watched that gorgeous corpse
blossom like a baleful flower. The stench
of it was so appalling, you almost
swooned away  on the grass! Flies buzzed

round that foul womb. From it  poured forth
black batallions of maggots like a viscous
jelly, oozing across the mass of living rags.
Rising and falling  in waves, the whole thing

popped and crackled and sputtered
like a sparkling devilfroth.  It was as if
the body, inflated with unmentionable
gases, was alive and kicking!

†

Une Charogne : http://fleursdumal.org/poem/126~

To a Passing Stranger

The deafening traffic roared round me in the street.
Tall, slim, in full mourning, noble in her
grief, a woman passed by, with one stately hand
lifting and swinging the rich hem of her gown

Swiftfooted, aristocratic, statuesque.
As for me, like a maniac possessed, I drank
from her eye…livid sky, where tempests take shape,
the sweetness that enthrals, the pleasure that kills!

A lightening flash . . . then night! Lovely passerby,
whose glance has suddenly given me new life,
will I see you again only in Eternity?

 Elsewhere—far from here! too late! perhaps never!
Where you flee, where I go, neither of us knows—
O you whom I might have loved, O you who knew it!

Chanson d’Automne

†

the long sobbing
of violins
in fall of year
sickens my soul
and grieves it…all
hopes perish here

see woebegone
me pale and wan
how time’s a-creeping
on slow…while i
remember my
lost youth a-weeping

and so i go
on winds of woe
borne on by grief
hither and thither
like a dry wither
ing yellow leaf