Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs, <br />pale, eyebrows blacked, eyes ‘tender’, ‘fatal’, <br />simpering still, and from their skinny ears <br />loosing their waterfalls of stone and metal: <br />Round the green baize, faces without lips, <br />lips without blood, jaws without the rest, <br />clawed fingers that the hellish fever grips, <br />fumbling an empty pocket, heaving breast: <br />below soiled ceilings, rows of pallid lights, <br />and huge candelabras shed their glimmer, <br />across the brooding brows of famous poets: <br />here it’s their blood and sweat they squander: <br />this the dark tableau of nocturnal dream <br />my clairvoyant eye once watched unfold. <br />In an angle of that silent lair, I leaned <br />hard on my elbows, envious, mute, and cold, <br />yes, envying that crew’s tenacious passion, <br />the graveyard gaiety of those old whores, <br />all bravely trafficking to my face, this one <br />her looks, that one his family honour, <br />heart scared of envying many a character <br />fervently rushing at the wide abyss, <br />drunk on their own blood, who’d still prefer <br />torment to death, and hell to nothingness!<br /><br />Charles Baudelaire<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-game-66/
