The Jewels

Amedeo Modigliani

Nude with a Necklace

The Jewels

My well-beloved was stripped. Knowing my whim,

She wore her tinkling gems, but naught besides:

And showed such pride as, while her luck betides,

A sultan's favoured slave may show to him.

When it lets off its lively, crackling sound,

This blazing blend of metal crossed with stone,

Gives me an ecstasy I've only known

Where league of sound and luster can be found.

She let herself be loved: then, drowsy-eyed,

Smiled down from her high couch in languid ease.

My love was deep and gentle as the seas

And rose to her as to a cliff the tide.

My own approval of each dreamy pose,

Like a tamed tiger, cunningly she sighted:

And candour, with lubricity united,

Gave piquancy to every one she chose.

Her limbs and hips, burnished with changing lustres,

Before my eyes clairvoyant and serene,

Swanned themselves, undulating in their sheen;

Her breasts and belly, of my vine and clusters,

Like evil angels rose, my fancy twitting,

To kill the peace which over me she'd thrown,

And to disturb her from the crystal throne

Where, calm and solitary, she was sitting.

So swerved her pelvis that, in one design,

Antiope's white rump it seemed to graft

To a boy's torso, merging fore and aft.

The talc on her brown tan seemed half-divine.

The lamp resigned its dying flame. Within,

The hearth alone lit up the darkened air,

And every time it sighed a crimson flare

It drowned in blood that amber-coloured skin.

~ Charles Baudelaire ~

Blind Men

Pieter Bruegel

The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind

Blind Men

Consider them, my soul: how hideous!

Eerie as sleepwalkers, vaguely absurd

as dummies are - dummies that can walk,

blinking their useless lids at nothingness.
Their eyes are quenched, and yet they seem to stare

at something, somewhere, questioning the sky

and never bending their benighted heads

in reverie toward the cobblestones.
What difference between their infinite dark

and the eternal silence? Round us all,

meanwhile, the city sings, and laughs, and screams,
man in pursuit of pleasure, whereas I ...

I too drag by, but wonder, duller still,

what Heaven holds for them, all these blind men?

~ Charles Baudelaire ~
(tr. Richard Howard)