The Songs of Maldoror
Song V
Chapter 1
Let the reader not rage at me if my prose doesn’t delight them. You claim my ideas are at least odd. What you say, worthy soul, is true; but a slanted truth. And what a rich well of blunders and mix-ups every slanted truth becomes! Flocks of starlings have a flight all their own, shaped by a steady, even drill, like a disciplined troop obeying one leader’s sharp call. It’s instinct’s voice they heed, urging them ever toward the flock’s heart, while their swift wings keep pushing them past; so this throng of birds, bound by a shared pull to one magnetic point, darting back and forth, weaving and crisscrossing every which way, forms a frantic whirl; its whole mass, with no fixed path, seems to spin on itself in a broad churn born of each part’s restless dance; and its core, always straining to spread, yet ever squeezed and shoved back by the clashing press of surrounding lines bearing down, stays tighter than any of those lines, which grow denser the closer they cling to that heart.
Despite this wild swirling, starlings still slice through the air with rare speed, gaining precious ground each second toward their toil’s end and journey’s aim. You too, don’t fuss over the strange way I sing these strophes. Rest assured, poetry’s core notes still hold their rightful sway over my mind. I’d gladly shun overblown rare cases; my bent fits the realm of what’s possible. Sure, between your literature’s far ends, as you see it, and mine, lie countless midway shades; splitting them up would be a cinch; but it’d serve no good and risk tainting a grand philosophical grasp — rational only when taken as meant, wide and bold — with something cramped and false.
You know how to blend zeal with inner chill, a watcher with a focused temper; to me, you’re flawless. Yet you won’t grasp me! If you’re unwell, heed my advice (the best I’ve got for you) and stroll the countryside. A poor trade, huh? Once you’ve aired out, come back; your senses will rest easier. Stop weeping; I didn’t mean to hurt you. Isn’t it true, friend, that my songs win some of your goodwill? So what stops you from climbing the rest of the ladder? The line between your taste and mine is unseen; you’ll never pin it down — proof it’s not even there. Ponder this then (I just skim the matter here): might you not have struck a pact with stubbornness, that charming mule’s daughter, such a lush fount of bias?
If I didn’t know you weren’t a fool, I’d spare you this jab. No need to crust over in the bony shell of some axiom you deem unshakable. Other axioms stand firm too, running alongside yours. If you crave caramel (nature’s grand jest), no one’ll call it a sin; but those with fiercer, grander wits, favoring pepper and arsenic, have solid cause to act so, not aiming to force their quiet rule on folks who quake at a shrew or a cube’s stark faces.
I speak from know-how, not playing provocateur here. Just as rotifers and tardigrades can take near-boiling heat without always losing life, so you’ll fare if you can soak up, with care, the bitter, oozing sap seeping slow from the itch my sharp ramblings stir. What, haven’t they grafted a severed rat’s tail onto a live one’s back? Try likewise hauling my corpse-like reason’s shifts into your mind. But watch out. As I write, fresh shivers ripple through the mind’s air; it just takes guts to face them square.
Why that grimace? You even pair it with a move no one could ape without long practice. Trust that habit’s key to all; and since the gut recoil, sparked at the first pages, has shrunk deep — easing up the more you read, like a boil lanced — hope remains, though your head’s still sick, that your cure’s soon to hit its final stretch. To me, it’s clear you’re already sailing full into recovery; yet your face stays gaunt, alas! But buck up! You’ve got a rare spark; I love you, and I don’t despair of your full release, so long as you swallow some healing doses to speed off the last dregs of this ill.
For a sharp, bracing meal, first rip off your mother’s arms (if she’s still around), carve them into bits, and eat them in one day, your face showing no flicker. If she’s too old, pick a fresher, younger surgical mark — say, your sister — whose tarsal bones, when she steps, easily tilt and pivot; the scalpel will grip her fine. I can’t help pitying her fate; I’m not one whose icy zeal just fakes kindness. You and I, we’ll shed for her, this loved maiden (though I’ve no proof she’s pure), two uncurbed tears, two drops of lead. That’s it.
The gentlest brew I’d prescribe is a basin brimming with pus thick with kernels, steeped beforehand with an ovarian cyst, a follicular sore, an inflamed foreskin flipped back from the glans by tight scarring, and three red slugs. Follow my orders, and my poetry will greet you arms wide, like a louse kissing a hair’s root clean.
Chapter 2
Before me, an object stood on a mound. I couldn’t make out its head clearly; but already I guessed it wasn’t shaped like most, though I couldn’t pin down the exact curve of its edges. I didn’t dare draw near that still pillar; and even if I’d had the walking legs of over three thousand crabs (not counting those for grabbing or chewing food), I’d have stayed rooted, had a trifling event not taxed my curiosity, bursting its banks. A beetle, rolling a ball with its jaws and feelers — mostly dung-packed stuff — scuttled fast toward the named mound, plainly bent on heading that way. This jointed beast wasn’t much bigger than a cow! Doubt my words? Come to me, and I’ll satisfy the skeptics with sound witnesses.
I trailed it from afar, openly hooked. What did it want with that fat black ball? O reader, you who endlessly boast your sharp wits (and not without cause), could you tell me? But I won’t test your famed riddle-love too hard. Know this: the gentlest punishment I can deal you is to point out that this secret won’t unravel (it will) till life’s end, when you’ll trade grim philosophies with death by your bedside — or maybe just this strophe’s close.
The beetle reached the mound’s base. I’d matched its tracks, still far from the scene’s stage; for just as skuas, restless birds ever famished, haunt seas bathing both poles and stray into milder zones only by chance, so I felt uneasy, dragging my legs forward with heavy sloth. But what was this flesh I neared? I knew the pelican clan splits four ways: gannet, pelican, cormorant, frigate. That grayish shape wasn’t a gannet. That plastic lump wasn’t a frigate. That crystal flesh wasn’t a cormorant.
Now I saw him, the man with a brain bare of its ringed ridge! I groped dimly through my memory’s folds for where — scorching waste or icy void — I’d once glimpsed that long, wide, vaulted beak, ridged sharp, clawed, swollen, and hooked at its tip; those jagged, straight edges; that lower jaw, split to near the point; that gap spanned by a membranous skin; that broad, yellow, baggy pouch swallowing the throat, stretchable wide; and those tight, slit nostrils, almost unseen, carved in a basal groove! Had this lung-breathing, simple-haired being been a full bird down to its soles, not just its shoulders, I’d not have struggled so to name it — easy enough, as you’ll see. But this time I’ll skip it; for my point’s sake, I’d need one of those birds on my desk, even stuffed. I’m not rich enough for that.
Chasing an old hunch, I’d have pegged its true kind at once and slotted it into nature’s ledger, this figure whose sickly poise I admired. With what thrill at not being wholly blind to its dual form’s secrets, and what greed to know more, I gazed at its lasting change! Though it lacked a human face, it struck me as fine as an insect’s twin threadlike feelers; or rather, as a hasty burial; or better, as the law of mending maimed organs; and above all, as a fiercely rotting brew! Yet, heedless of all around, the stranger stared ahead with his pelican head!
Another day, I’ll pick up this tale’s end. Still, I’ll press my story with bleak haste; for if you itch to know where my mind’s headed (heaven forbid it’s just fancy!), I’ve resolved to wrap it up in one go — not two! Though no one can fault my grit. Yet facing such a scene, more than one feels their heart throb against their palm.
A master coaster, an old sailor, just died near unknown in a Brittany port, hero of a dire tale. Back then, he captained long voyages for a Saint-Malo shipper. After thirteen months away, he reached his wife’s hearth as she, still abed, bore an heir he claimed no part in. The captain hid his shock and rage; he coolly asked her to dress and join him for a stroll on the town’s ramparts. It was January. Saint-Malo’s walls loom high, and when the north wind howls, the boldest flinch. The wretch obeyed, calm and resigned; back home, she raved. She died that night. Just a woman, though. While I, a man, facing no lesser drama, doubt I held sway enough to keep my face still!
As the beetle hit the mound’s foot, the man raised his arm west (right where a lamb vulture and Virginia owl had locked in aerial strife), wiped a long tear — its hues a diamond weave — on his beak, and told the beetle:
“Wretched ball! Haven’t you rolled it long enough? Your vengeance isn’t quenched; and already this woman, whose legs and arms you bound with pearl strands into a shapeless lump to drag with your claws through valleys and paths, over thorns and stones (let me near to see if it’s still her!), has seen her bones gouged raw, her limbs worn smooth by spinning friction’s law, fused in clotted oneness; her frame, stripped of primal lines and natural arcs, now shows the dull blur of a single mass, too like a sphere’s mash of mangled bits! She’s long dead; leave those scraps to the earth, and beware lest your burning rage swell past repair — this isn’t justice anymore; for selfishness, hid in your brow’s husk, lifts slow, like a wraith, the shroud that cloaks it.”
The lamb vulture and Virginia owl, drawn near by their fight’s twists, closed in. The beetle quaked at those surprise words; and what elsewhere might’ve been a slight twitch became the stark badge of a fury unbound; for it scraped its hind thighs fiercely on its wing-covers’ edge, shrieking shrill:
“Who are you, timid thing? Seems you’ve forgotten some strange turns of old days; your memory’s slipped, brother. This woman betrayed us, one by one. You first, me next. I’d say this slight shouldn’t (shouldn’t!) fade so quick from recall. So quick! Your grand heart lets you forgive. But do you know if, despite her atoms’ warped state, mashed to dough (no point now guessing if it’s less two stout wheels’ grind than my wild zeal that swelled her bulk), she’s truly gone? Hush, and let me have my revenge.”
It resumed its grind, shoving the ball ahead as it went. Once it drifted off, the pelican cried:
“That woman, by her witch’s craft, gave me a webfoot’s head and turned my brother to a beetle; maybe she deserves worse than I’ve named.”
And I, unsure if I dreamt, piecing from their words the bitter ties fueling the bloody clash overhead between lamb vulture and Virginia owl, flung my head back like a hood to free my lungs’ play and stretch, shouting skyward:
“You up there, end your feud! You’re both right; for she pledged each her love, so she duped you both. But you’re not alone. She stripped you of human shape too, making cruel sport of your holiest pangs. And you’d doubt me! She’s dead anyway; and the beetle’s dealt her a mark none can erase, despite the first betrayed’s pity.”
At that, they quit their brawl, no longer tearing feathers or flesh; they were wise to stop. The Virginia owl, fine as a treatise on a dog’s curve chasing its master, sank into a ruined convent’s cracks. The lamb vulture, fine as the law stunting chest growth in adults whose urge to swell mismatches their body’s intake, vanished in the air’s high layers. The pelican, whose grand pardon struck me deep — unnatural as it felt — took back its mound’s lighthouse stillness, as if warning human sailors to heed his case and guard their fate from dark witches’ love, staring ever ahead. The beetle, fine as a drunk’s trembling hands, faded at the horizon.
Four more lives to scratch from life’s ledger. I tore a whole muscle from my left arm, lost to what I did, so shaken by this fourfold woe. And I’d thought it was just dung. What a brute I am.
Chapter 3
The fitful collapse of human faculties: whatever your mind leans to guess, these aren’t mere words. At least, not like others. Let them raise a hand, whoever’d think it fair to beg some hangman to flay them alive. Let them lift their head, grinning with relish, whoever’d willingly bare their chest to death’s bullets. My eyes will hunt for scar marks; my ten fingers will focus all their care to probe that oddball’s flesh; I’ll check if brain splatters hit the satin of my brow. Isn’t it true no lover of such torment exists in the whole cosmos? I don’t know laughter, that’s real, never having felt it myself. Yet what folly to claim my lips wouldn’t stretch wide if I glimpsed someone swearing such a man roams somewhere?
What none would wish for their own life fell to me by an uneven draw. It’s not that my body swims in pain’s lake; that’d pass. But my mind withers under a tight, ceaseless brooding; it screams like marsh frogs when a pack of greedy flamingos and starved herons swoops onto their reedy edge. Happy’s the one who sleeps sound in a feather bed, plucked from an eider’s breast, not noticing they betray themselves. Over thirty years, and I’ve not slept yet. Since my birth’s unspeakable day, I’ve sworn an unyielding hate to drowsy planks. I willed it so; let no one take blame. Quick, shed that stillborn doubt.
See this pale crown on my brow? Tenacity wove it with her bony fingers. While a shred of scorching sap runs in my bones like a molten torrent, I won’t sleep. Each night, I force my ashen eye to fix on stars through my window’s panes. To steel myself, a wood splinter parts my swollen lids. When dawn breaks, it finds me unchanged — body propped upright, standing against the cold wall’s plaster. Yet sometimes I dream, never losing a beat of my sharp self or free motion; know that the nightmare lurking in shadow’s glowing corners, the fever pawing my face with its stump, every foul beast raising its bloody claw — well, it’s my will that spins them round to feed its endless churn.
Indeed, an atom avenging its frail speck, free will dares assert, with fierce clout, that it doesn’t breed dullness among its kin: a sleeper’s less than a beast gelded yesterday. Though insomnia drags these muscles, already reeking of cypress, to the pit’s depths, the white crypt of my mind will never fling its shrines wide to the Creator’s gaze. A secret, noble justice, whose outstretched arms I leap to by instinct, bids me hunt this vile curse without cease. Dread foe of my rash soul, when they light a lantern on the coast, I forbid my wretched loins to lie on dewy grass. Victor, I fend off the sly poppy’s traps.
So it’s plain this strange fight has walled my heart’s aims, a starved thing gnawing itself. Impenetrable as giants, I’ve lived with eyes gaped wide. At least it’s clear that by day anyone can mount a stout stand against the Great Outer Thing (who knows its name?); for then will guards its own with fierce grit. But once night’s vapor veil spreads, even over the doomed set to hang, oh, to see your intellect clutched in a stranger’s profane hands! A ruthless scalpel probes its thick briars. Conscience wheezes a long curse; for its modesty’s shroud takes cruel tears. Shame! Our gate’s flung wide to the Celestial Brigand’s wild prying.
I didn’t earn this vile torment, you, loathsome spy of my cause! If I am, I’m no other. I won’t brook this vague split in me. I crave lone reign in my inmost reasoning. Autonomy, or turn me to a hippo. Sink underground, o nameless blight, and don’t rise before my haggard wrath. My self and the Creator — it’s too much for one brain.
When night cloaks the hours’ flow, who hasn’t wrestled sleep’s pull on their sweat-soaked bed? That bed, drawing dying powers to its breast, is just a tomb of squared pine. Will ebbs slow, as if facing unseen might. A sticky tar thickens the eyes’ lens. Lids seek each other like old friends. The body’s but a breathing corpse. At last, four massive stakes nail every limb to the mattress. And note, please, the sheets are mere shrouds. Here’s the censer where religion’s incense burns. Eternity roars like a far-off sea and nears with great strides. The room’s gone; bow low, humans, in the death chamber’s blaze!
Sometimes, straining in vain to beat the body’s flaws, mid deepest sleep the magnetized sense gawks to find itself a tomb-block, reasoning sharp on peerless finesse:
“Breaking this bed’s a knot trickier than you’d think. Perched on the cart, they haul me to the guillotine’s twin posts. Odd thing, my limp arm’s mastered a stump’s stiff knack. It’s grim to dream you’re bound for the scaffold.”
Blood gushes wide across the face. The chest heaves in fits, swelling with wheezes. An obelisk’s weight chokes rage’s spread. Reality’s crushed sleep’s haze! Who doesn’t know that when the fight drags on between proud self and catalepsy’s dread swell, the crazed mind loses grip? Gnawed by despair, it wallows in its ill till it’s tamed nature; and sleep, seeing its prey slip free, flees wing-flapped and shamed from its heart, never to return.
Toss some ash on my burning socket. Don’t stare at my eye that never shuts. Grasp the pangs I bear (yet pride’s appeased)? When night bids humans rest, a man I know strides hard through fields. I dread my resolve buckling to age’s blows. Let that fatal day come when I’ll doze! On waking, my razor, slicing through my neck, will prove nothing was more real.
Chapter 4
“But who! Who dares slink here like a plotter, dragging their body’s coils toward my black chest? Whoever you are, freakish python, what excuse justifies your laughable presence? Is it some vast remorse gnawing at you? For, look, boa, your wild grandeur, I’d wager, doesn’t boast the wild gall to dodge my likening it to a crook’s face. That frothy, whitish drool, to me, spells rage. Hear this: don’t you know your eye’s far from sipping celestial light? Forget not that if your puffed-up brain thought me fit to toss you some soothing words, it’s only from ignorance bare of face-reading skill. For a good stretch, turn your eyes’ gleam toward what I, like any, can call my face! Don’t you see it weep? You misjudged, basilisk. You’ll have to hunt elsewhere for the bleak scrap of ease my stark weakness denies you, despite my goodwill’s loud pleas. Oh, what force, words can’t grasp, dragged you to doom? It’s near impossible I’d stomach the thought you don’t see that, with one heel’s stomp on the reddened turf, I could mash your fleeing triangular head’s curves into a nameless paste of savanna grass and crushed flesh.”
“Vanish quick from my sight, pale-faced wretch! Fear’s false shimmer showed you your own ghost! Drop your vile doubts, lest I turn accuser and hurl a charge your reptile-eating hawk would surely back. What monstrous mind-twist blinds you to me? Don’t you recall the grand favors I dealt — life’s gift I pulled from chaos — and your vow, etched forever, to never ditch my flag, staying true till death? As a child (your wits then in their prime bloom), you’d scramble first up the hill, swift as an ibex, to greet dawn’s motley rays with a wave of your small hand. Your voice’s notes burst from a ringing throat like diamond pearls, pooling their lone selves into a pulsing hymn of praise. Now you fling my long patience at your feet like a mud-stained rag. Gratitude’s roots withered like a pond’s dry bed; but ambition’s sprouted in a sprawl I’d hate to name. Who’s this listener, so smug in their frail abuse?”
“And who are you, bold thing? No! No! I’m not wrong; and despite your endless shape-shifts, your serpent head will ever blaze before my eyes like a beacon of eternal wrong and cruel sway! He craved command’s reins, but can’t rule! He sought to be all creation’s dread, and won. He aimed to prove he’s the cosmos’s lone king — and there he failed. O wretch! Did you wait till now to hear the murmurs and plots rising at once from every sphere, brushing your brittle drum’s fringed rim with savage wings? It’s near, the day my arm topples you into dust poisoned by your breath; and, ripping vile life from your guts, I’ll leave your corpse — riddled with twists — on the path to teach the stunned traveler that this throbbing flesh, striking their eyes dumb and freezing their tongue, cool heads can’t liken to more than a rotted oak stump, felled by age!”
“What pity stalls me before you? Back off, I say, and wash your boundless shame in a newborn’s blood — that’s your way. It suits you. Go, keep trudging on. I doom you to wander. I doom you to roam alone, kinless. Trek ceaselessly till your legs give out. Cross desert sands till the world’s end swallows stars into void. When you pass a tiger’s den, it’ll bolt to dodge seeing its own bent mirrored in your perfect wickedness.”
“But when dire fatigue halts you before my palace’s slabs, choked with briars and thistles, mind your tattered sandals and tiptoe through the vestibules’ grace. It’s no idle tip. You might rouse my young wife and infant son, bedded in lead vaults along the old keep’s roots. If you didn’t take care, their underground shrieks could blanch you. When your iron will stole their lives, they knew your might was fierce, no doubt there; but they never dreamt (their last farewells swore it) your Providence would prove so pitiless!”
“Still, speed through these silent, forsaken halls — emerald-paneled but with faded crests — where my ancestors’ proud statues rest. Those marble husks seethe at you; shun their glassy stares. This lone, last kin’s tongue warns you. See their arms raised in brash defense, heads flung back bold? Surely they’ve guessed the harm you dealt me; and if you stray near the icy plinths propping those carved blocks, vengeance waits.”
“If your defense has aught to fling back, speak. Too late for tears now. You should’ve wept when the time was ripe. If your eyes finally see, judge your deeds’ toll yourself. Farewell! I’m off to breathe cliff breezes; for my half-choked lungs cry loud for a calmer, purer sight than you!”
Chapter 5
O baffling pederasts, I won’t hurl insults at your grand downfall; I won’t cast scorn on your funnel-shaped anus. Enough that the shameful, near-uncurable diseases besieging you carry their sure punishment. Lawmakers of dull codes, crafters of tight morals, step back from me, for I’m a fair soul. And you, young lads — or rather young girls — tell me how and why (but keep a safe distance, for I too can’t curb my lusts) vengeance sprouted in your hearts to crown mankind’s flank with such wounds. You make it blush for its sons with your ways (which I revere!); your whoring, offered to any comer, works the logic of the deepest thinkers, while your wild sensitivity fills even women with awe. Are you less earthly than your kin, or more? Do you wield a sixth sense we lack? Don’t lie; say what you think. It’s no question I pose; for since I’ve watched the grandeur of your vast minds, I know where I stand.
Be blessed by my left hand, hallowed by my right, angels shielded by my boundless love. I kiss your face, I kiss your chest, I kiss, with my soft lips, every part of your sweet, fragrant frame. Why didn’t you tell me straight off what you were, crystals of a higher moral grace? I had to guess myself the countless treasures of tenderness and purity locked in your burdened heart’s beats. Chest wreathed in rose and vetiver garlands. I had to part your legs to know you, my mouth clinging to your modesty’s badges. But (a point worth noting) don’t forget to wash your parts’ skin daily with warm water; else venereal sores will surely sprout on the cracked corners of my insatiable lips.
Oh, if instead of a hell, the universe were one vast heavenly anus, watch the move I make toward my groin: yes, I’d thrust my rod through its bloody ring, shattering its pelvic walls with my fierce jerks! Misery wouldn’t then have blown whole dunes of shifting sand into my blinded eyes; I’d have found the buried spot where truth sleeps, and my sticky seed’s rivers would’ve plunged into an ocean’s maw! But why catch myself mourning a dream-state that’ll never bear the stamp of final truth? Let’s not bother building fleeting guesses.
Till then, let whoever burns to share my bed seek me out; but I set a stern rule to my welcome: they mustn’t top fifteen years. Don’t let them think I’m thirty; what’s that matter? Age doesn’t dull feeling’s fire — far from it; and though my hair’s turned snow-white, it’s not from old age, but for the cause you know. Me, I don’t love women! Nor even hermaphrodites! I crave beings like me, their brows stamped with human nobility in sharper, unfading lines! Are you sure those with long hair share my nature? I doubt it, and I won’t ditch my stance.
A briny drool leaks from my mouth, I don’t know why. Who’ll suck it out to rid me of it? It rises, keeps rising! I know what it is. I’ve noticed when I drink the throat-blood of those bedding beside me (they’re wrong to call me vampire, since that’s for dead who crawl from graves, while I’m alive), I spew some back next day through my mouth: there’s the foul drool’s tale. What can I do if vice-weakened organs shirk nutrition’s task? But don’t spill my secrets to anyone. I don’t say this for me; it’s for you and others, so the secret’s charm reins in those lured by the unknown’s electric pull, tempted to ape me, within duty’s and virtue’s bounds.
Kindly glance at my mouth (I’ve no time now for longer courtesies); it hits you first with its shape’s look, no snakes in your comparisons; for I shrink its weave to the tightest knot, feigning a cold streak. You’re not blind to its stark opposite. If only I could peer through these angelic pages at my reader’s face! If they’ve not passed puberty, let them draw near. Clasp me tight, and don’t fear hurting me; let’s slowly cinch our muscles’ bonds. Tighter. I feel it’s no use pressing on; this paper’s opacity, striking in many ways, blocks our full merge most gravely.
Me, I’ve always nursed a vile whim for the pale youths of schools and the wan kids of mills! My words aren’t dream’s echoes, and I’d have too many memories to untangle if forced to parade before your eyes the deeds that’d back my pained claim’s truth. Human law hasn’t caught me red-handed yet, despite its agents’ slick skill. I even slew (not long ago!) a pederast who wouldn’t bend enough to my lust; I tossed his corpse down an old well, and they’ve no hard proof on me.
Why tremble in fear, lad reading me? Think I’d do you the same? You’re wildly unfair. You’re right: watch out for me, especially if you’re fair. My parts eternally stage a grim swell; none can claim (and how many drew near!) they’ve seen them calm — not even the muck-raker who stabbed them in a mad fit. Ungrateful wretch!
I swap clothes twice a week, not mainly for cleanliness’s sake. If I didn’t, mankind’s ranks would vanish in days, locked in long fights. Wherever I roam, they hound me ceaselessly with their presence, lapping my feet’s skin. What power do my seed-drops wield to draw all that breathes through scent-nerves! They trek from the Amazon’s banks, cross the Ganges’ watered vales, ditch polar lichen, braving vast journeys to hunt me, asking still cities if they’ve glimpsed, fleeting by their walls, the one whose sacred seed scents mountains, lakes, heaths, woods, cliffs, and the seas’ wide sprawl!
Despair at not finding me (I hide in the remotest haunts to stoke their zeal) drives them to dire deeds. They mass three hundred thousand a side, and cannon roars herald the clash. All wings flare at once, like one warrior. Squares form and fall, never to rise. Spooked horses bolt every way. Shells plow the earth like relentless meteors. The battle’s stage turns a vast slaughter-field when night looms and the moon’s quiet crescent peeks through cloud-gaps. Pointing me to leagues strewn with corpses, that misty arc bids me muse a moment on the grim toll my strange, enchanting lure — Providence’s gift — trails behind.
Pity it’ll take centuries yet before mankind fully perishes by my sly snare! So a shrewd mind, unboasting, wields means that seem at first to bar its ends to reach them. My wit ever climbs to this grand riddle, and you yourself see I can’t stick to the modest theme I first meant to chase.
One last word: it was a winter night. While the breeze hissed through pines, the Creator cracked his door amid the dark and let a pederast in.
Chapter 6
Hush! A funeral train passes by you. Bend your twin knees to the earth and strike up a grave’s chant. (If you take my words more as a plain nudge than a stern order out of place, you’ll show wit, and the best kind.) You might just cheer the dead soul’s shade that way, off to rest from life in a pit. I’d even say it’s sure. Note I’m not claiming your view can’t clash with mine somewhat; but what matters most is grasping sound notions of morality’s base, so each must soak in the rule to do others what you’d maybe wish done to you.
The priest of faiths leads the march, clutching a white flag in one hand — peace’s sign — and in the other a golden emblem of man’s and woman’s parts, as if to hint those fleshly tools, stripped of metaphor, are mostly dire weapons in the hands of blind wielders chasing clashing ends, not sparking a timely stand against that famed passion stirring nearly all our woes. A horse’s tail, thick-maned, hangs tied (artfully, of course) to his lower back, sweeping the ground’s dust. It warns us not to sink by our ways to beasts’ rank.
The coffin knows its path and trails the comforter’s flowing robe. The dead child’s kin and friends, by their stance, choose to close the procession’s line. It glides with grandeur, like a ship cleaving open sea, fearless of sinking; for now, storms and reefs don’t show aught less than their plain absence. Crickets and toads tag a few steps behind the death feast; they too know their humble presence at anyone’s rites will someday count. They whisper in their vivid tongue (don’t be so smug, let me offer this selfless tip, as to think you alone hold the rare knack to voice your mind’s stirrings) of him they oft saw dash through green meadows, plunging his limbs’ sweat into the bluish waves of sandy gulfs.
At first, life seemed to beam on him free of guile, crowning him grand with blooms; but since your own wit sees — or guesses — he stopped at childhood’s edge, I needn’t stretch my strict proof’s preamble till a real retraction calls. Ten years. A tally dead-on matched to a hand’s fingers. It’s little, and it’s much. Here, though, I’ll lean on your love for truth to say with me, no second’s delay, it’s little.
And as I mull these dark riddles — how a human vanishes from earth easy as a fly or dragonfly, with no hope of return — I catch myself nursing a sharp pang that I likely won’t live long enough to explain well what I don’t claim to grasp. Yet since, by odd chance, I’ve not lost life since that far-off time I began this line in dread, I reckon it’s not wasted here to build a full confession of my stark helplessness, especially now, facing this grand, unnearable question.
Broadly put, it’s a queer thing, this pull to hunt (then voice) likenesses and gaps lurking in the raw traits of things most opposed, often least fit, at first glance, for such oddly kindred pairings; and, on my honor, they lend a writer’s style — sating this private itch — the wild, unforgettable air of an owl grave till eternity. So let’s ride the current hauling us.
The red kite’s wings stretch longer than a buzzard’s, its flight far smoother; so it spends life aloft. It barely rests, roaming vast tracts daily; and this grand sweep isn’t a hunt’s drill, prey’s chase, or even scouting; for it doesn’t hunt; flight seems its natural state, its favored perch. You can’t help marveling at its way. Its long, slim wings look still; the tail seems to steer every turn, and the tail doesn’t err: it’s ever at work. It rises effortless; it dips as if sliding a slant; it swims more than flies; it speeds its rush, slows it, halts, and hangs fixed in place for hours. No wing-flick shows: widen your eyes like an oven door, and it’s just as useless.
Anyone’s got the sense to admit, though with a grudging twist, they don’t catch at first any link — however faint — between the red kite’s flight’s grace and the child’s form, rising soft above the open coffin like a water lily piercing the surface; and that’s the unforgivable flaw of unyielding ignorance’s mire. This calm majesty tying my sly comparison’s ends is already too plain, its symbol clear enough, for me to marvel more at what’s excused only by the same trite stamp that cloaks any oft-seen thing or sight in deep, unjust indifference. As if the daily shouldn’t still snag our awe!
Reaching the graveyard’s gate, the train hastens to halt; it means to go no further. The gravedigger finishes the pit; they lower the coffin with all due care; a few sudden shovels of dirt cloak the child’s frame. The priest of faiths, amid the stirred crowd, speaks words to bury the dead deeper in their minds.
“He says he’s stunned so many tears fall for such a trifling act. Verbatim. But he fears he hasn’t framed well what he deems a clear bliss. Had he thought death so unlikable in its naiveté, he’d have quit his post to spare swelling the fair grief of the dead’s many kin and friends; but a secret voice bids him offer comforts, not useless, even if just the hope of a soon reunion in the skies between the gone and the spared.”
Maldoror bolted off at full gallop, seeming to aim for the graveyard walls. His steed’s hooves raised a false crown of thick dust round its master. You can’t know that rider’s name; but I do. He drew nearer and nearer; his platinum face began to show, though its lower half stayed wrapped in a cloak the reader’s kept in mind, baring only his eyes. Mid-speech, the priest of faiths pales sudden, for his ear catches the jagged gallop of that famed white horse that never left its lord.
“Yes,” he adds again, “my trust runs deep in that soon reunion; then we’ll grasp, clearer than before, what meaning clings to soul and body’s brief split. Who thinks they live here cradles a mirage worth hastening to dissolve.”
The gallop’s din swelled louder; and as the rider, hugging the horizon, loomed in the gate’s optic sweep, swift as a whirling cyclone, the priest of faiths, graver still, pressed on:
“You don’t seem to guess that this one, whom sickness forced to know only life’s first steps, and whom the pit just took to its breast, is the true living; but know, at least, that he whose vague shape you glimpse, borne by a nervy steed — and on whom I urge you fix your eyes fast, for he’s but a dot, soon to vanish in the heath—though he’s lived long, is the sole true dead.”
Chapter 7
“Each night, when sleep hits its deepest pitch, an old spider of the grand kind slowly pokes her head from a hole in the floor at one of the room’s corner meets. She listens close for any rustle still twitching its jaws in the air. Given her bug’s build, she can’t do less — if she aims to swell literature’s hoard with vivid guises — than pin jaws on a sound. Once sure silence holds sway around, she pulls, one by one, her body’s parts from her nest’s depths, no pondering needed, and creeps with measured steps toward my bed. Strange thing! Me, who drives off sleep and nightmares, I feel my whole frame freeze when she climbs the ebony legs of my satin cot. She grips my throat with her claws and sucks my blood with her belly. Plain as that! How many liters of that purple brew, whose name you know, has she not gulped since starting this routine with a grit fit for a worthier cause! I don’t know what I did to earn her ways with me. Did I crush a leg by mistake? Did I snatch her young? Those two shaky guesses can’t stand a hard look; they barely stir a shrug in my shoulders or a smirk on my lips, though no one should mock. Watch out, black tarantula; if your acts lack a watertight reason, one night I’ll jolt awake by my dying will’s last gasp, snap the spell locking my limbs still, and squash you between my finger-bones like a lump of soft muck. Yet I dimly recall I let your legs crawl up my chest’s bloom and on to the skin cloaking my face; so I’ve no right to curb you. Oh, who’ll untangle my muddled past! I grant her what’s left of my blood as a prize: counting the last drop, it’d half-fill a revel’s cup at least.”
He speaks, shedding his clothes nonstop. He plants one leg on the mattress and, pressing the sapphire floor with the other to hoist himself, lies flat. He’s set not to shut his eyes, ready to face his foe head-on. But doesn’t he swear the same each time, only for that uncanny vow’s fatal shadow to break it? He says no more and yields with pain; for to him, an oath is holy. He wraps himself grandly in silk’s folds, scorns lacing his curtains’ gold tassels, and, resting his long black curls on the pillow’s velvet fringe, probes with a hand the wide gash at his neck where the tarantula’s taken to nesting like a second lair, while his face breathes contentment. He hopes this night (hope with him!) marks the last act of that vast sucking; for his sole wish is the hangman end his life: death, and he’d be glad.
Look at that old spider of the grand kind, slowly poking her head from a hole in the floor at one of the room’s corner meets. We’re out of the tale now. She listens close for any rustle still twitching its jaws in the air. Alas! We’ve hit the real now, as for this tarantula, and though an exclamation could cap each line, that’s no cause to skip it! She’s sure silence reigns around; now she pulls, one by one, her body’s parts from her nest’s depths, no pondering needed, and creeps with measured steps toward the lone man’s bed. She pauses a beat; but short, that flicker of doubt. She tells herself it’s not time to quit tormenting yet, that first she must hand the doomed man fair grounds for his endless ordeal. She’s climbed beside the sleeper’s ear.
If you’d catch every word she’ll spill, clear your mind’s porch of stray clutter and at least thank the care I show, staging these theatric scenes I deem worth your real heed; for who’d stop me keeping these tales to myself?
“Wake, love-flame of old days, gaunt skeleton. Time’s come to stay justice’s hand. We won’t keep you long from the answer you crave. You hear us, don’t you? But don’t stir your limbs; you’re still under our magnetic grip today, and brain’s dullness lingers — for the last time. What mark does Elsinore’s face leave in your mind? Forgotten! And Reginald, proud-stepped — did you etch his traits in your loyal brain? See him hid in the curtains’ folds; his mouth bends to your brow; but he daren’t speak, shyer than me. I’ll recount a youth’s tale and set you back on memory’s track…”
Long since, the spider split her belly, unleashing two youths in blue robes, each with a blazing sword, who took posts by the bed as if to guard sleep’s shrine henceforth.
“This one, still gazing at you — for he loved you deep — was the first of us two you gave your heart. But your rough ways often stung him. He strove ceaselessly to spare you any gripe against him; an angel couldn’t have done better. One day, you asked if he’d swim with you by the sea’s edge. Both, like twin swans, you leapt from a sheer rock at once. Ace divers, you cut the water’s mass, arms stretched overhead, hands clasped. For minutes, you swam between currents. You surfaced far off, hair tangled and dripping salt. But what mystery passed underwater, leaving a long blood-trail through the waves? Back atop, you swam on, feigning blindness to your friend’s growing faint. His strength bled fast, and you still drove your broad strokes toward the misty horizon fading ahead. The wounded cried distress, and you played deaf. Reginald struck your name’s echo thrice, and thrice you answered with a lustful yell. Too far from shore to return, he strained in vain to trace your wake, to reach you and rest a hand on your shoulder. The grim hunt dragged an hour, he waning, you waxing. Despairing to match your pace, he sent a brief prayer to the Lord for his soul, flipped to float like a plank — heart pounding wild under his chest — and waited death to end waiting. By then, your stout limbs were out of sight, still speeding off, swift as a dropped plumb. A boat, back from setting nets offshore, crossed those waters. The fishermen took Reginald for a castaway and hauled him, faint, aboard. They found a gash in his right flank; each seasoned hand swore no reef’s point or rock shard could pierce so fine yet deep a hole. A sharp blade, like the keenest stiletto, alone could claim that slim wound’s craft. He never told the dive’s full tale through the waves’ guts, keeping that secret still. Tears now roll down his faded cheeks, splashing your sheets: memory’s sometimes bitterer than the deed. But I’ll spare pity — it’d esteem you too high. Don’t roll those raging eyes. Stay calm instead. You know you can’t move. Besides, my tale’s not done.”
“Raise your sword, Reginald, and don’t let vengeance slip so easy. Who knows? It might one day chide you.”
“Later, you hatched short-lived remorse, vowing to mend your wrong by picking another friend to bless and honor. By this penance, you’d wipe past stains, showering the next victim with care you denied the first. Vain hope; character doesn’t shift overnight, and your will stayed fixed. Me, Elsinore, I first saw you, and from then couldn’t shake you. We locked eyes a spell, and you smiled. I dropped mine, struck by a weird gleam in yours. I wondered if, under dark’s cloak, you’d slid down to us from some star’s face; for — I’ll own it now, no need to feign — you didn’t match mankind’s boars; a halo of blazing rays ringed your brow’s edge. I longed to bond close with you; your stark, strange nobility froze me, a stubborn dread prowling round. Why didn’t I heed conscience’s warnings? Sound inklings. Seeing me waver, you blushed too and stretched an arm. I boldly set my hand in yours, and after, felt stronger; a whiff of your wit had seeped into me. Hair loose, breathing breeze’s gusts, we strolled a bit through thick groves of mastic, jasmine, pomegranate, and orange, their scents dazing us. A boar brushed our clothes at full tilt, a tear falling from its eye as it saw me with you; I couldn’t fathom its act. By dusk, we hit a bustling city’s gates. Domes’ curves, minarets’ spires, and belvederes’ marble globes carved sharp jags through the gloom against the sky’s deep blue. But you wouldn’t rest there, though we sagged with weariness. We skirted the outer walls like night-jackals, dodging keen sentries, and slipped out the far gate from that solemn huddle of reasoning beasts, civilized as beavers. A lantern-fly’s buzz, dry grass’s snap, a wolf’s fitful howls far off trailed our dim, unsure trek through fields. What drove you to shun human hives? I asked myself, unease stirring; my legs were starting to balk at such long toil. At last, we reached a dense wood’s fringe, its trees snarled with tall, wild vines, parasite plants, and monstrous cacti spines. You stopped by a birch. You told me to kneel, ready to die; you gave me a quarter-hour to quit this earth. Stolen glances during our long run, cast when I wasn’t watching, odd moves I’d clocked for their uneven beat, flashed to mind like an open book’s pages. My doubts proved true. Too weak to fight, you felled me like a gale snaps an aspen leaf. One knee pinned my chest, the other pressed damp grass; one hand clamped my arms in its vice, and I saw the other draw a knife from your belt’s sheath. My struggle was near nil, and I shut my eyes: a herd of oxen’s stomps rang out afar, borne by the wind. It charged like a train, hounded by a herdsman’s stick and a dog’s jaws. No time to waste, and you knew it; fearing aid’s sudden nearness — doubling my strength — and seeing you could lock just one arm at a go, you settled, with a quick flick of steel, to slice my right wrist clean. The chunk dropped neat to the ground. You fled as pain dazed me. I won’t tell how the herdsman saved me or how long healing took. Know this: that betrayal, unlooked-for, sparked my death-wish. I sought battles, baring my chest to strikes. I won fame on killing fields; my name chilled even the boldest, my iron hand sowing slaughter and ruin in enemy ranks. Yet one day, when shells roared louder than ever, and squadrons, torn from their lines, whirled like straw in death’s cyclone, a brash rider strode up to vie for victory’s crown. Both armies froze, mute, to watch. We fought long, gashed and helm-smashed. By pact, we paused to rest, then resume fiercer. Each, awed by their foe, raised their visor: ‘Elsinore!’… ‘Reginald!’… those bare words our panting throats gasped together. He, sunk in despair’s bleak pit, had taken arms like me, and bullets spared him. What a reunion! But your name stayed mute! He and I swore an endless bond—surely unlike the pair you starred in! An archangel, dropped from heaven as God’s herald, bade us meld into one spider and haunt your bed each night, sucking your throat till a high command halted the curse. Near ten years, we plagued your cot. From today, you’re free of our hunt. That vague vow you spoke of wasn’t to us, but to the Might stronger than you; you knew bowing to that firm decree was best. Wake, Maldoror! The magnetic spell weighing your brain’s cords these two lustres’ nights lifts.”
He wakes as bidden and sees two celestial shapes fade into the air, arms twined. He doesn’t try sleeping again. He eases his limbs from bed, one by one. He warms his icy skin at the gothic hearth’s rekindled coals. A lone shirt cloaks his frame. He hunts the crystal carafe with his eyes to wet his parched palate. He opens the window’s shutters. He leans on the sill. He gazes at the moon, spilling a cone of rapt rays on his chest, where silver motes flutter like moths in unspeakable softness. He waits for morning’s dusk to bring, with a scene-shift, faint relief to his shaken heart.