BAUDELAIRE (1848)

 

 

 

 

this cabalist passion for milk and honey! I share the desert with machinists.

behind barricades of quatrains I work with raw materials, magic stones,

and – fallen into events, an impersonal history – have never had such company 

or communion. my tomahawk voice fells the tallest, gibbering with idiots 

savants, as waves of barbarism crash and rugby scrums form in boulevards.

what’s happened to the draped flaneur, or candled soul of monk? mania

and engagement! the engineered dream – Paris – is losing its dollhouse aura

as bourgeois goldfish in the pond are lunched on by black cormorants. 

this would have been the funniest opera ever, but I worked out the ending.

now I war with Latin egos who dislike the concavity of a poet’s brow,

Cain forehead complimenting a cloven hoof. they are scared of my agape 

mouth – with a cat’s incisors – intoning the formula ‘as above so below’.

a fieldmarshal is fucking my mother. that’s as good as France. in this nadir

darkroom, I develop poetry into photography, my broken heart a crystal ball. 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry: Niall McDevitt
Photo: Julie Goldsmith


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One Response to BAUDELAIRE (1848)

    1. I enjoyed that very much ‘ draped flaneur, candied soul of monk’ I will remember forever. Brava

      Comment by Jan Woolf on 28 November, 2020 at 8:49 am

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