The penitent of cities damned am I.
In shameful taverns where rank liquors flow,
And in new Sodoms viciously aglow,
Where outrage hides its lusts with murder nigh,
I watch in flaring nights with mournful eye,
And shuddering hear what monsters still we grow.
And all the crimes of men oppress me so
I call for vengeance to the angered sky.
Wrathful as prophets went in Holy Writ,
I walk with haggard cheek in public places,
Confessing sins that I do not commit.
And the Pharisees cry out with upturned faces:
"I thank thee, God, that I am not as this
Infamous poet by thy judgment is!"
"ET ERITIS SICUT DII."
Sick Artist, from the world around thee shrinking
To nurse the high ideal of thine Art,
Give thou no place to Nature in thy thinking,
That foolish, fertile slut obscene and stinking--
To the Artificial consecrate thy heart.
In spite of reed-pipes and loud songs of marriage,
Be thou remote, Reality desert,
The blood and flesh of women proud of carriage,
The flabby flesh of women thou disparage,
Deny their beauty which is only dirt.
Are thy tired spirit and thy parched mouth aching
For the cooling, carnal draught of their caress?
This is a thirst that thou canst best be slaking,
Swooning among thy lamp-lit bottles, breaking
The odorous seals of drunken dizziness.
Dream drunk with rum, whose tropic-heated spices
Ferment into a scented wine that joins
Thy subtle spirit in voluptuous vices
With negro women whose smooth flesh entices
Thy lubric hand to their anointed loins.
Drink kirsch, as turbulent as cascades shaded
By forests where the maidens bathe their feet;
Musked maraschino, sucked by mouths pomaded
In the sick air of brothels golden-braided
By those who queen it on the yielding seat;
And, hypocrite with ice one cannot sunder
Out of his flame, drink kuemmel, whose bright feast
Of boreal snow-masked fire evokes the wonder
Of roses under snow, O roses ... under
Archangel heavens women of the East.
And, for its green of bindweed-tangled fancies,
Drink absinthe, which shall open out to thee
Those forests where the fairy Vivien dances,
And the sage Merlin with her feet entrances
In the hoarse brushwood by the bitter sea.
Then to thy reeling brain shall dreams come sailing,
Upon the calm bed where thy body sank,
And thou shalt see dissolved in shadows paling,
All earthly things around thee, failing, failing,
While brighter surge the visions rank on rank.
Behold! Among the wan blue vapours, steaming
Before the scented, sounding sunrise, glows
A belt of glaciers whose thin peaks of dreaming
Mirrored upon an azure lake are gleaming
In the tropic valley guarded by their snows.
The leaves of mangoes, palms, and fig-trees sighing
Are wafting coolness o'er the billowing grass,
Where, garlanded like flowers, are women lying,
Bathing their lily limbs, beneath the flying
Jewels of furtive humming-birds that pass.
And a cascade of dazzling nakednesses
Falls from the peaks of glaciers in shoals,
And every following body holds and presses
The one that went before, holds and caresses;
A living stream of beauty rolls and rolls.
Arms, loins, and thighs are linked and intertwining,
Lightnings are playing on a vaporous mesh
Of luminous hair and supple limbs combining,
And from the lofty peaks of glaciers shining
For ever falling are new waves of flesh.
Drink every drop of this pure wine, and waste
In thine embraces all these limbs unreal.
Lie in thy bed of snow, and, undebased,
Enjoy all flesh in thine own flesh, and taste
The monstrous joy of soiling the Ideal.