Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/52

48 thou, my sweet, that summer’s day,
 * How in the sun outspread

At a path’s bend a filthy carcase lay
 * Upon a pebbly bed?

Like a lewd woman, with its legs in air,
 * Burned, oozed the poisonous mass;

Its gaping belly, calm and debonair,
 * Was full of noisome gas.

And steadily upon this rottenness,
 * As though to cook it brown

And render Nature hundredfold excess,
 * The sun shone down.

The blue sky thought the carrion marvellous,
 * A flower most fair to see;

And as we gazed it almost poisoned us—
 * It stank so horribly.

The flies buzzed on this putrid belly, whence
 * Black hosts of maggots came,

Which streamed in thick and shining rivers thence
 * Along that ragged frame.

Pulsating like a wave, spirting about
 * Bright jets, it seemed to live;

As though it were by some vague wind blown out,
 * Some breath procreative.