7/30/2019 Ruth White's Flowers of Evil
2/3
Man's sole relief and his glory...Consciousness in evil.
II
An idea, a form, a beingParted from the azure and fallenInto the
slough of some leaden stixWhere no eye of heaven can penetrate;An
angel, rash wanderer,Tempted by the love of ugliness,Lashing out
like a swimmer,In the depths of a huge nightmare...And struggling,
o fierce anguish,Against a gigantic undertowWhich goes singing like
a horde of madmenAnd pirouetting in the gloom.An unfortunate
man,Groping futilely,Seeking the light and the key,To escape from a
hole full of reptiles;A damned man descending endless,
bannisterless stairs,Going lampless down the brink of a pitWhose
stench betrays its water depths,
Where slimy monsters glare,With great phosphorescent eyes,That
deepen the darkness of the nightAnd make nothing but themselves
visible;A ship held in a crystal trap,Icebound at the pole,Seeking
the fatal passage by whichIt reached that prison;- All these are
clear emblems, perfect picturesOf an unchangeable fate.They make us
think that whatever he does,The devil does well.
SPLEEN
When the low heavy sky weighs like a lidOn the spirit, aching
for the light,And when, embracing the horizon,It pours on us a
black day which is sadder than any night;When the earth is turned
into a gripping dungeon,In which Hope, like a bat,Flutters blindly,
and bruises its timid wing
And tender head against the walls and rotted ceilings;When the
rain, stretching down its long streaks of waterImitates the bars of
an enormous prison...And a silent throng of loathesome spiders
comeAnd weave their webs inside our brains;Then suddenly... The
bells swing angrilyAnd hurl their hideous uproar into the skyLike a
band of wandering spirits,Who wail relentlessly.- And long hearses,
without drums or music,
