THE IRREPARABLE
by: Charles Baudelaire
- AN we
suppress the old Remorse
- Who bends our heart beneath his stroke,
- Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse,
- Or as the acorn on the oak?
- Can we suppress the old Remorse?
-
- Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell,
- May we drown this our ancient foe,
- Destructive glutton, gorging well,
- Patient as the ants, and slow?
- What wine, what philtre, or what spell?
-
- Tell it, enchantress, if you can,
- Tell me, with anguish overcast,
- Wounded, as a dying man,
- Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past.
- Tell it, enchantress, if you can,
-
- To him the wolf already tears
- Who sees the carrion pinions wave,
- This broken warrior who despairs
- To have a cross above his grave--
- This wretch the wolf already tears.
-
- Can one illume a leaden sky,
- Or tear apart the shadowy veil
- Thicker than pitch, no star on high,
- Not one funereal glimmer pale
- Can one illume a leaden sky?
-
- Hope lit the windows of the Inn,
- But now that shining flame is dead;
- And how shall martyred pilgrims win
- Along the moonless road they tread?
- Satan has darkened all the Inn!
-
- Witch, do you love accursèd hearts?
- Say, do you know, the reprobate?
- Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts
- Make souls the targets of their hate?
- Witch, do you know accursèd hearts?
-
- The Might-have-been with tooth accursed
- Gnaws at the piteous souls of men,
- The deep foundations suffer first,
- And all the structure crumbles then
- Beneath the bitter tooth accursed.
-
- II.
-
- Often, when seated at the play,
- And sonorous music lights the stage,
- I see the frail hand of a Fay
- With magic dawn illume the rage
- Of the dark sky. Oft at the play
-
- A being made of gauze and fire
- Casts to the earth a Demon great.
- And my heart, whence all hopes expire,
- Is like a stage where I await,
- In vain, the Fay with wings of fire!
'The Irreparable' is reprinted from
The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James
Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919. |
MORE POEMS BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE |
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