By Charles Baudelaire
At my side the Demon writhes forever,
Swimming around me like
impalpable air;
As I breathe, he burns my lungs like fever
And fills
me with an eternal guilty desire.
Knowing my love of Art, he snares my senses,
Appearing in woman’s most
seductive forms,
And, under the sneak’s plausible pretenses,
Lips
grow accustomed to his lewd love-charms.
He leads me thus, far from the sight of God,
Panting and broken with
fatigue into
The wilderness of Ennui, deserted and broad,
And into my bewildered eyes he throws
Visions of festering wounds and
filthy clothes,
And all Destruction’s bloody retinue.
Translated by C. F. Macintyre