L'Ennemi



Ma jeunesse ne fut qu'un ténébreux orage,

Traversé çà et là par de brillants soleils;

Le tonnerre et la pluie ont fait un tel ravage,

Qu'il reste en mon jardin bien peu de fruits vermeils.



Voilà que j'ai touché l'automne des idées,

Et qu'il faut employer la pelle et les râteaux

Pour rassembler à neuf les terres inondées,

Où l'eau creuse des trous grands comme des tombeaux.



Et qui sait si les fleurs nouvelles que je rêve

Trouveront dans ce sol lavé comme une grève

Le mystique aliment qui ferait leur vigueur?



— Ô douleur! ô douleur! Le Temps mange la vie,

Et l'obscur Ennemi qui nous ronge le coeur

Du sang que nous perdons croît et se fortifie!



— Charles Baudelaire

The Enemy

My youth has been nothing but a tenebrous storm,

Pierced now and then by rays of brilliant sunshine;

Thunder and rain have wrought so much havoc

That very few ripe fruits remain in my garden.



I have already reached the autumn of the mind,

And I must set to work with the spade and the rake

To gather back the inundated soil

In which the rain digs holes as big as graves.



And who knows whether the new flowers I dream of

Will find in this earth washed bare like the strand,

The mystic aliment that would give them vigor?



Alas! Alas! Time eats away our lives,

And the hidden Enemy who gnaws at our hearts

Grows by drawing strength from the blood we lose!



— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)



The Enemy

My youth was but a tempest, dark and savage,

Through which, at times, a dazzling sun would shoot

The thunder and the rain have made such ravage

My garden is nigh bare of rosy fruit.



Now I have reached the Autumn of my thought,

And spade and rake must toil the land to save,

That fragments of my flooded fields be sought

From where the water sluices out a grave.



Who knows if the new flowers my dreams prefigure,

In this washed soil should find, as by a sluit,

The mystic nourishment to give them vigour?



Time swallows up our life, O ruthless rigour!

And the dark foe that nibbles our heart's root,

Grows on our blood the stronger and the bigger!



— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)



The Ruined Garden



My childhood was only a menacing shower,

cut now and ten by hours of brilliant heat.

All the top soil was killed by rain and sleet,

my garden hardly bore a standing flower.



From now on, my mind's autumn! I must take

the field and dress my beds with spade and rake

and restore order to my flooded grounds.

There the rain raised mountains like burial mounds.



I throw fresh seeds out. Who knows what survives?

What elements will give us life and food?

This soil is irrigated by the tides.



Time and nature sluice away our lives.

A virus eats the heart out of our sides,

digs in and multiplies on our lost blood.



— Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963)



The Enemy



I think of my gone youth as of a stormy sky

Infrequently transpierced by a benignant sun;

Tempest and hail have done their work; and what have I? —

How many fruits in my torn garden? — scarcely one.



And now that I approach the autumn of my mind,

And must reclaim once more the inundated earth —

Washed into stony trenches deep as graves I find

I wield the rake and hoe, asking, "What is it worth?"



Who can assure me, these new flowers for which I toil

Will find in the disturbed and reconstructed soil

That mystic aliment on which alone they thrive?



Oh, anguish, anguish! Time eats up all things alive;

And that unseen, dark Enemy, upon the spilled

Bright blood we could not spare, battens, and is fulfilled.



— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)



The Enemy

My childhood was nought but a ravaging storm,

Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun;

The rain and the winds wrought such havoc and harm

That of buds on my plot there remains hardly one.



Behold now the Fall of ideas I have reached,

And the shovel and rake one must therefore resume,

In collecting the turf, inundated and breached,

Where the waters dug trenches as deep as a tomb.



And yet these new blossoms, for which I craved,

Will they find in this earth — like a shore that is laved —

The mystical fuel which vigour imparts?



Oh misery! — Time devours our lives,

And the enemy black, which consumeth our hearts

On the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives!



— Cyril Scott, Baudelaire: The Flowers of Evil (London: Elkin Mathews, 1909)

L'Ennemi



my youth was all a murky hurricane;

not oft did the suns of splendour burst the gloom;

so wild the lightning raged, so fierce the rain,

few crimson fruits my garden-close illume.



now I have touched the autumn of the mind,

I must repair and smooth the earth, to save

my little seed-plot, torn and undermined,

guttered and gaping like an open grave.



and will the flowers all my dreams implore

draw from this garden wasted like a shore

some rich mysterious power the storm imparts?



— o grief! o grief! time eats away our lives,

and the dark Enemy gnawing at our hearts

sucks from our blood the strength whereon he thrives!



— Lewis Piaget Shanks, Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)



The Enemy



Naught but a long blind tempest was my youth,

Sun-shot at times; the thunder and the rain

Have worked their havock with so little ruth

That in my garden few red fruits remain.



Now have I reached the autumn of my thought,

And shovel and pick must use some soil to save

From out the ruins that the rain hath wrought

Where all around great pits gape like the grave.



Who knows if these last flowers of my dreams

Shall find beneath this naked strand that streams

The mystic substance which their strength imparts?



O misery! misery! Time eats our lives,

And that dark Enemy who gnaws our hearts

Grows by the blood he sucks from us, and thrives.



— Jack Collings Squire, Poems and Baudelaire Flowers (London: The New Age Press, Ltd, 1909)

