Original Title: "Tu mettrais l'univers"
Text: Charles Baudelaire (1857)
Year: 1967
You'd shove the whole universe in your alleyway
Impure woman! Boredom makes your soul cruel.
To exercise your teeth at this singular game,
Everyday, you need a heart added to your rack.
Your eyes, lit up like shops
Or blazing yew trees in public feasts,
Blatantly use of a feigned power,
Without ever knowing the law of their beauty.
Blind and deaf machine, fertile in cruelties!
Salutary instrument, drinker of the blood of the world,
How aren't you ashamed and how haven't you,
In front of all the mirrors, seen your charms fade?
The greatness of that ill where you believe yourself skillful
Never then has made you back away in terror,
When nature, tall in its hidden designs,
Makes use of you, oh woman, oh queen of sins,
- Of you, vile animal, - to knead a genius?
Oh miry greatness! Magnificent ignominy!
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