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Recall the object we saw, my soul,
That beautiful, so gentle summer morn:
At a bend in the path a foul carcass
On a bed strewn with pebbles,
Legs in the air, like a lewd woman,
Burning and sweating poisons,
Was opening in a nonchalant and cynical way
Its belly full of exhalations.
The sun shone down on that rot,
As if to cook it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
All that together she had joined;
And the sky watched the superb carcass
Bloom like a flower.
The stench was so strong that on the grass
You thought you would faint.
The flies buzzed over that putrid belly,
From which came black battalions
Of larvae, flowing like a thick liquid
Along those living rags.
All that descended, mounted like a wave,
Or surged forth sparkling;
One would have said the body, swollen with a vague breath,
Lived by multiplying.
And that world gave off a strange music,
Like running water and the wind,
Or the grain that a winnower with a rhythmic motion
Shakes and turns in his winnowing basket.
The forms were fading and were no more than a dream,
A sketch slow to appear,
On the forgotten canvas, which the artist finishes
Only by memory.
Behind the rocks a worried bitch
Was watching us with an angry eye,
Lying in wait for the moment to take back from the skeleton
The piece she had dropped.
— And yet you will be like that garbage,
To that horrible infection,
Star of my eyes, sun of my nature,
You, my angel and my passion!
Yes! such you will be, O queen of graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go, under the grass and lush blossoms,
To molder among the bones.
Then, O my beauty! tell the vermin
That will eat you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and divine essence
Of my decomposed loves!
Charles Baudelaire
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-a-carcass-charles-baudelaire/