This book was published five years ago now, I started working on it at the end of 2013 and worked through it for a whole year before abandoning the labour due to exhaustion and the effect it was having on my mental health. Baudelaire is not to be messed with. This fella is the real deal.
Well, here I am again, five years later, back working on the project. It's a lifelong one, to completely transverse Les Fleurs du Mal in its entirety. I'm still working on completing the first section Spleen & Ideal.
Oh yes, my version will not be called The Flowers of Evil, a completely meaningless title at this stage. I've opted for The Crown of Pain. Here's two sonnets from The Enemy. Only the English transversions supplied this time. Enjoy! Oh, and buy the buke if you want on the link provided. You'd be supporting independent publishers and contemporary writers, if you do. Cheers!
XII.
Past Lives
For
a long time I appear to have lived under great gates,
Beneath
blue skies lit by a thousand suns,
And
whose ancient pillars, Corinthian and Ionic,
Are
rendered by the night into grottos of basalt.
These
swells, weathering imagery solemn
Of
scavenger birds and carrion,
With
Diogenes laid out and shit stained,
Are
reflected back to me in the imagery from newsreels.
And
it is here, among such ruins, that I have also
Discovered
beneath the thunder within the Azure light,
Naked
slaves, heavily impregnated with odours,
Who
keep me refreshed beneath the palms,
And
the only sounds I seem to be able to hear are the long
Penetrating
sighs, uttered after many merciless pleasures.
XIII. Travellers
Yesterday,
they packed up all their things and hit
The
open road again, their children packed into vans
And
caravans, ready with fierce appetites, while
The
mothers look sceptically upon the horizon.
And
the men, seated proudly at the wheel
Of
their shiny transports cram packed with goods
Of
every possible kind, like Magi of old leading these
Prophetic
tribes, to strike out and follow their own star.
The
crows, seeing them passing along, caw out
And
also take flight in a wing clap of vermillion.
From
Anatolia they first came, a riot in lion’s hides,
And,
cooling rocks, and bringing flowers to the desert,
Cybele,
the earth Goddess, smiled down upon them,
Blessing
their familiar empire, set in the tumult of the future.
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