Contemporary Belgian Poetry Part 10

But dizziness I ate, and madness drank.

And that is why I trail a debile frame, With my youth dying in the husk of my strength.

THE PENITENT.

The penitent of cities d.a.m.ned am I.

In shameful taverns where rank liquors flow, And in new Sodoms viciously aglow, Where outrage hides its l.u.s.ts 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, G.o.d, 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 s.l.u.t 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 k.u.mmel, 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 gra.s.s, Where, garlanded like flowers, are women lying, Bathing their lily limbs, beneath the flying Jewels of furtive humming-birds that pa.s.s.

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.

VENGEANCE.

Woman with heart stabbed by a hidden wrong, Whose vengeful fingers, proud, and tapering long, Have strapped thy naked lover in his sleep Down to the bed, where now his wild eyes weep Their scalding tears like vitriol, and stare On broken furniture and carpets where Weapons, clothes, flowers are in mad medley cast, In sheets still with his kisses warm, thou hast To soldiers prost.i.tuted thee, and spent Their vigour with thy body's vehement Surging of spasms quivering under them; But what thought, like a hideous diadem Of thorns, hath rent thy forehead, when the third, His white flesh scarcely sated, having heard Thy l.u.s.tful moaning till his heart grew sick, Looked, as a b.i.t.c.h looks beaten with a stick, To the black, frantic face of thy betrayer, And asked with plaintive murmur: "Shall I slay her?"

THE SONG OF THE FORGES.

O frenzied forges with your noise and blaring, Red, reeking fires that comb dishevelled skies, Your hollow rumbling is like stifled swearing, And the gra.s.sed earth about you burns and dies.

When blind, mad man, intent on gain and plunder, Thinks he is matter's master, in your maw Lugubriously rolls a hollow thunder, That says: We forge and forge, without a flaw,

The chains from which thou hast not wit to save thee, O foolish man! we rivet link by link The shackles which for ever shall enslave thee.

Sweat, pant, and fill the furnace to the brink,

Throw in the coal, and pour the crackling casting Through the cut sand, beat, crush the pig to shape, Temper the sword, sheet, deck, and rig with masting The tyrant ships that sweep the sea with grape,

Crowd with machines the hamlet and the haven, To prison thee more deep than dungeons held In durance making thee a pauper craven...

Stupid humanity! we weld and weld

With the vile toil disease beyond reclaiming, And imbecility, and discontent, Murder, and hate that sets the mansion flaming, b.l.o.o.d.y revolt and heavy punishment.

We forge the fate of every generation; We crush the father and the child as well, Spitting at heavens that shake with consternation The soot and coal of our relentless h.e.l.l!

See! to the stainless blue of skies upcurling Our towering chimneys' belched, polluted breath, Above the waste and ravaged lands unfurling Their sable flags of slavery and death!

HERMAPHRODITE.

Rosy and naked, pure as a flower divine, The mystic being of old stories sleeps, Stretched in the gra.s.s like a bough of eglantine, In the flowery clearing in the forest deeps.

Upon his folded arm he rests his head; The sleeping kisses of the sun repose Upon his delicate body softly spread, And shimmer from his shoulders to his toes.

And near him, with a murmur as of bees, Runs the clear brook through gra.s.s and lily flowers, Under the fig-trees' laden boughs, and flees, Winding along the tangled secret bowers.

Sweet sorcery of the flesh! A sphinx above thee Asks the thrilled senses to resolve desires!

With shame and terror tremble all who love thee, And they who see thee burn with thousand fires.

Seeing thy more than human loveliness Women and youths their envious glances dart; They sigh with lowered eyes, and weep, and press Sometimes their hand upon their maddened heart.

"Where is the heavenly G.o.ddess," so they cry, "Whose loveliness can match thy perfect frame?

And what young G.o.d, all sun and spring, can vie With all this freshness blent with tender flame?"