Evening Harmony

Charles Baudelaire

Les Fleurs du Mal XLVII

Harmonie du Soir

Now comes the time when, quavering on its stem
Each flower exhales like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes spiral in the evening air;
Melancholy valse and vertigo of languor!

Each flower exhales like a censer;
The violin shudders like a heart in torment;
Melancholy valse and vertigo of languor!
The sky is a high altar both beautiful and sad.

The violin shudders like a heart in torment,
A tender heart, terrified of the Void vast and dark!
The sky is a high altar both beautiful and sad;
The ensanguined sun has drowned in blood.

A tender heart, terrified of the Void vast and dark,
Into which the luminous past vanishes without trace!
The ensanguined sun has drowned in blood…
Your memory shines within me like a monstrance!

translated by AC 1999

Illustration: Portait of Baudelaire in 1861 (1995)
from a photograph by Carjat

Swan of Yuggoth

Swan Of Yuggoth

Albedo
Becoming music unfettered, white-winged, the Swan
Calls out from where a blue supergiant circles
The Ancient of Days.
Beneath a leprous, hermaphroditic moon the Earth’s Lover
Sees a rabid dog
Escape through a secret rose garden.
White roses covered in snow,
The sacred source of illumination, kalas out of space.
Sounds awake, aeons of light years so far distant
Before the scattered remnants of the Milky Way
Spawned this Swan of other aeons,
Cross of Northern Skies, Bird of Aethyr returning to aethyr.
Penetrate unhindered
Even here
Crystalising arcane colours.
Eidolon of Yuggoth, glorified, spotless, virginal,
The light touch of your icy plumage ruffles this lake’s
Clear surface, reflecting tall trees, pale pillars
Descending quiet as splintered sunlight
Glances from your rippling wake.
Opposites are transformed
Into a new cold being, Diadem of My Heart.
Incorruptible, arising reborn,
Displacing ashes of purgatorial fires, long-necked body thrusting
Towards Leda, as the cries of her conjoined twins
Smash open the cosmic egg.
So, you are still dreaming.
But your eyes are perfect stones, like mirrors;
Transplutonic realms,
Awesome power zones, disguised as petals.
Their supreme light pervades the Ultimate Snow,
An incursion of otherness, a visible vibration.

Bird of Aethyr, returning to aethyr, Swan of Yuggoth.