Tim Breuer, Watcher

Magma — No. 1

July, 2023

Charles Baudelaire

A Martyr. Drawing by an Unknown Master

In the midst of perfume flasks, of sequined fabrics
And voluptuous furniture,
Of marble statues, pictures, and perfumed dresses
That trail in sumptuous folds,

In a warm room where, as in a hothouse,
The air is dangerous, fatal,
Where bouquets dying in their glass coffins
Exhale their final breath,

A headless cadaver pours out, like a river,
On the saturated pillow
Red, living blood, that the linen drinks up
As greedily as a meadow.

Like the pale visions engendered by shadows
And which hold our eyes riveted,
The head, its mane of hair piled up in a dark mass
And wearing precious jewels,

On the bedside table, like a ranunculus,
Reposes; and, empty of thoughts,
A stare, blank and pallid as the dawn,

Escapes from the upturned eyeballs.
On the bed, the nude torso shamelessly displays
With the most complete abandon
The secret splendor and fatal beauty

That nature had bestowed on her;
A rose stocking embroidered with gold clocks remains
On her leg like a souvenir;
The garter, like a hidden flashing eye,

Darts its glance of diamond brilliance.
The bizarre aspect of that solitude
And of a large, languid portrait
With eyes as provocative as the pose,

Reveals an unwholesome love,
Guilty joys and exotic revelries,
With infernal kisses
That delighted the swarm of bad angels

Hovering in the curtains’ folds;
And yet one sees from the graceful slimness
Of the angular shoulders.
The haunches slightly sharp, and the waist sinuous

As a snake poised to strike,
That she’s still quite young! — Had her exasperated soul
And her senses gnawed by ennui
Thrown open their gates to the thirsty pack

Of lost and wandering desires?
The vengeful man whom you could not with all your love
Satisfy when you were alive,
Did he use your inert, complacent flesh to fill

The immensity of his lust?
Reply, impure cadaver! and by your stiffened tresses
Raising you with a fevered arm,
Tell me, ghastly head, did he glue on your cold teeth

The kisses of the last farewell?
— Far from the sneering world, far from the impure crowd,
Far from curious magistrates,
Sleep in peace, sleep in peace, bizarre creature,

In your mysterious tomb;
Your mate roams o’er the world, and your immortal form
Watches over him when he sleeps;
Even as you, he will doubtless be faithful
And constant until death.