The Carcass|Charles Baudelaire

Remember that object we saw, dear soul

In the sweetness of a summer morn

At a bend of the path a loathsome carrion

On a bed with pebbles strewn

With legs raised like a lustful woman

Burning and sweating poisons

It spread open, nonchalant and scornful

Its belly, ripe with exhalations

The sun shone onto the rotting heap

As if to bring it to the boil

And tender a hundredfold to vast Nature

All that together she had joined

And the sky watched that superb carcass

Like a flower blossom out

The stench was so strong that on the grass

You thought you would pass out

Flies hummed upon the putrid belly

Whence larvae in black battalions spread

And like a heavy liquid flowed

Along the tatters deliquescing

All together it unfurled, and rose like a wave

And bubbling it sprang forth

One might have believed that, with a faint breath filled

The body, multiplying, lived

And this world gave out a strange music

Like of running water and of wind

Or of grain in a winnow

Rhythmically shaken and tossed

Form was erased and all but a vision

A sketch slow to take shape

On a forgotten canvas, which the artist finishes

From memory alone

Behind the rocks a fretting bitch

Looked at us with fierce mien

Anxious to retrieve from the corpse

A morsel that she had dropped

Yet to this rot you shall be like

To this horrid corruption

Star of my eyes, sun of desire

You, my angel and my passion

Yes, such you shall be, you, queen of all graces

After the last sacraments

When you go beneath the grass and waxy flowers

To mold among the skeletons

Then, oh my beauty! You must tell the vermin

As it eats you up with kisses

That I have preserved the form and essence divine

Of my decayed loves