My impoverished muse, alas! What have you for me this morning? <br />Your empty eyes are stocked with nocturnal visions, <br />In your cheek's cold and taciturn reflection, <br />I see insanity and horror forming. <br />The green succubus and the red urchin, <br />Have they poured you fear and love from their urns? <br />The nightmare of a mutinous fist that despotically turns, <br />Does it drown you at the bottom of a loch beyond searching? <br /> <br />I wish that your breast exhaled the scent of sanity, <br />That your womb of thought was not a tomb more frequently <br />And that your Christian blood flowed around a buoy that was rhythmical, <br /> <br />Like the numberless sounds of antique syllables, <br />Where reigns in turn the father of songs, <br />Phoebus, and the great Pan, the harvest sovereign. <br /> <br /> <br />Translated by William A. Sigler <br /> <br /> <br />Submitted by Ryan McGuire<br /><br />Charles Baudelaire<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-sick-muse/
