Tr. Baudelaire -- "The Corpse"

Remember, my soul, the sight of a dear
Summer’s dawn, where the path split
A corpse on a bed of rocks, feet
Splayed like a prostitute, dripping
And bubbling poisons, baring
Her chest with that tired, familiar
Look -- and filled with a breath...

The sun was shining on the wreck,
As if to cook it up, to render back
To nature all the parts that once
Were whole. Like a flower the sky
Watched the body unfold, and it stank
So much you thought you would faint.
From the stomach battalions of larvae
Streamed, while just above flies buzzed.
Everything rose and fell like a wave
Or bubbled out from the gaps;
The body seemed to multiply
In mutilating gasps.
And the world exhaled
A haunting air, like the sound of water
On swaying wood, or the rustle of wheat
At a reaper’s feet. The form was effaced
-- No more than a dream, the early mark
Of what is to be, a picture to glean
From your memory. Meanwhile a mongrel
Over the rocks spied with a hungry eye,
Looking for an interlude to pick a bone.

That’ll be you, someday:
A fume and infection, sun of my sight,
You, pupil’s star, my cherub, my heart.
Queen of graces, upon the final sacraments
Lain beneath the clover and the grass,
You’ll go to mold with the bones, like that.
So, pulchritude, tell all the maggots
Who come to steal cheeks from your kiss,
That I at least have kept alive
The memory of the lips.