“Spleen (II)” read by Haolun Xu

From the new edition of The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Aaron Poochigian.

More memories than if I'd lived a thousand years!

A massive chest of drawers crammed with lines of verse, 
court summonses, love letter, novels, balance sheets
and locks of ample hair rolled up in old receipts
hides fewer secrets than my melancholy brain,
which is a pyramid, a mound that must contain
more dead than pits where thousands have their final home.
A graveyard hated by the moon--that's what I am,
a potter's field where always, like remorse, a host
of worms is gnawing on the flesh I love the most.
I am an old boudoir perfumed with withered roses, 
a room extravagant in antiquated dresses,
where only sad pastels and pale Bouchers’ inhale
the fragrance emanating from an opened vial.

Nothing can move more slowly than the limping hours
when, under the oppressive drifts of snowy years,
ennui, the fruit of melancholy lethargy,
takes on the magnitude of immortality. 
From now on, living matter, you are nothing more
than granite that, fenced in by enigmatic fear,
is sleeping in a dim Saharan desertscape,
or a primeval sphinx that, stricken from the map,
lost to the careless world, with an indignant frown
sings only in the long light of the setting sun.  

From THE FLOWERS OF EVIL by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Aaron Poochigian. Translation copyright © 2022 by Aaron Poochigian. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Haolun Xu is a poet and filmmaker born in Nanning, China. His writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Narrative, Gulf Coast, jubilat, and more. His upcoming short film, Long Beach, is in pre-production.