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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

"You'd entertain the universe..."

This is in honor of my man, Baudelaire. It's an early "Happy Birthday" to him, since it officially starts tomorrow, but my place of business doesn't care about poet's birthdays, so I'll celebrate tonight, and tomorrow night. So, to start, here's the poem from which I've taken my internet name. I think it's appropriate, since I identify as a feminist.

You'd entertain the universe in bed,
Foul woman; ennui makes you mean of soul.
To exercise your jaws at this strange sport
Each day you work a heart between your teeth.
Your eyes, illuminated like boutiques
Or blazing stanchions at a public fair,
Use haughtily a power not their own,
With no awareness of their beauty's law.

Blind, deaf machine, fertile in cruelties!
Valuable tool, that drinks to whole world's blood,
Why are you not ashamed, how have you not
In mirrors seen your many charms turn pale?
The magnitude of all your evil schemes,
Has this, then, never shrunk your heart with fear,
When Nature, mighty in her secret plans,
Makes use of you, o woman! queen of sins!
--Of you, vile beast--to mould a genius?

O filthy grandeur! o sublime disgrace!

Works Cited: Baudelaire, Charles. "You'd entertain the universe..." Charles Baudelaire The Flowers of Evil. Trans. James McGowen. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. 53-4.

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