Luminous Decay

The pause when all the world came to a stop.  Your face contains all the beauty of the earthly world.  Your lips, crimson as the ripening fruit, part in pain.  The smile of a corpse.  Now death reaches out a hand to life.  The chain is joined that links the thousands of generations that are dead to the thousands that are to come.

Vampire

Thou who, like death’s deceiving stroke, 
Knocks at my heart’s deep melancholy; 
Thou who, like a troupe of hideous folk
Of demons, wines and maddened Folly, 

Of mine own my Spirit humiliated
Makes thine own bed and thy domain, 
Infamous, by whom I am vitiated
Like the convict fastened to his chain. 

Like to the Gambler with his game reversed, 
Like to the drunkard with his wine-bottle, 
Like to the vermin that the carrion throttle, 
- Be thou for ever and ever accursed! 

I have said to the sword perfidious 
To lavish on me Liberty, 
I have said to the poison insidious 
To shake me from my lethargy. 

Alas! The poison and the sword that crave thee 
Said in disdainful knavery: 
“Thou are not worthy that we should save thee 
From thine accursed slavery. 

Fool! From his empire base and bloody, 
If we deliver thee by our hate, 
Thy kisses shall resuscitate 
Thy Vampire and his buried Body!”

Translated by Arthur Symons

To Dahlia

Lovely whore With your hard black eyes And your soft budding breasts   Shameless flower of the damned Your aroma overwhelms my senses   I am driven to possess you But you scarcely feel my flesh I make no impression   Bland on your bewitching tongue, I have no taste   You exhale my desire like smoke Incense sacrificed to your unyielding beauty   Translated by Walter Wykes   Edvard Munch 1863 - 1944