The Valley Below

by Charles Baudelaire (original translation. cw: necrophilia.)

remember the object we saw, my soul
that summer morning, soft and sweet
at a twist in the path, a foul carrion
in its bed, seminated with pebbles

its legs in the air, as a woman aroused
hot and dripping with poisons
splayed in a cynical, nonchalant way
womb swollen with expirations

the sun shone fully on the decay
as to roast it, until just right
to return as millions to Nature’s noblesse
the cosmos she had contained

and heaven saw the magnificent carcass
as a blossoming flower
the stench was so potent, there on the grass
you thought you might collapse

the flies buzzing around the putrid belly
were issuing black batallions
of worms, pouring forth, pustulent
along the living tatters

the whole descended and rose like a wave
or sprayed in a sparkling spume
one could say the body, swole by murky breath
flourished in its inflation

and the world was rendered a stranger song
of watery flux and the wind
or grain that a winnower’s rhythmic geste
turns and churns in a basket

the shapes dissolved, no more than a dream
a sketching slow to arrive
on canvas forgot, where the artist derives
from memory alone

behind the rocks, an anxious bitch
watched us with angry eye
le squellette awaiting a chance to reclaim
the morsel that she had left

— and though you will be the same as this filth
as this horrible infection
stars of my eyes, sun of my nature
you, my angel, my passion!

yes! such will you be, O queen of graces
after the last sacraments
when you go, beneath fatted flowers and grasses
to moulder amongst the bones

then, O my beauty! say to the worm
who is eating you with his sex
i have kept the shape and essence divine
of my loves' decomposition!

//

waalaikumsalam 🌒