The Martyr

Amongst gilt fabrics, flasks of scent and wine,

Rich furniture, white marble, precious moulds.

Fine paintings, and rich, perfumed robes that shine

Swirled into sumptuous folds,

In a warm room, that like a hot-house stifles

With dangerous and fatal breath, where lie

Pale flowers in crystal tombs, exquisite trifles,

Exhaling their last sigh —

A headless corpse, cascading in a flood

Hot, living blood, that soaks, with crimson stain

A pillow slaked and sated with blood

As any field with rain.

Like those pale visions which the gloom aborts

Which fix us in a still, hypnotic stare,

The bead, tricked out with gems of sorts,

In its huge mass of hair,

Like a ranunculous beside the bed,

Rests on the table, empty of all thought.

From eyes revulsed, like twilight, seems to spread

A gaze that looks at naught.

Upon the bed the carcase, unabashed,

Shows, in complete abandon, without shift,

The secret splendour that, in life, it flashed

Superbly, Nature's gift.

A rosy stocking, freaked with clocks of gold,

Clings to one leg: a souvenir, it seems:

The garter, from twin diamonds, with the cold

Stare of a viper gleams.

The singular effect of solitude

And of a languorous portrait, with its eyes

Provocative as is its attitude,

Dark loves would advertise —

And guilty joys, with feasts of strange delight,

Full of infernal kisses, omens certain

To please the gloating angels of the Night

Who swim behind each curtain.

And yet to see her nimble strength, the risky

Swerve of the rounded shoulder, and its rake,

The tented haunch, the figure lithe and frisky,

Flexed like an angry snake,

You'd know that she was young.

Her soul affronted, Her senses stung with boredom — were they bayed

By packs of wandering, lost desires, and hunted,

And finally betrayed?

The vengeful man, whose lust you could not sate,

(In spite of much love) nor quench his fire —

Did he on your dead flesh then consummate

His monstrous, last desire?

Answer me, corpse impure! With fevered fist,

Grim visage, did he raise you up on high,

And, as your silver frosty teeth he kissed,

Bid you his last goodbye?

Far from inquiring magistrates that sneer,

Far from this world of raillery and riot,

Sleep peacefully, strange creature, on your bier,

Of mystery and quiet.

Your lover roams the world. Your deathless shape

Watches his sleep and hears each indrawn breath.

No more than you can he ever escape

From constancy till death!

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)