"L'Horloge" (The Clock)
a prose poem by Charles Baudelaire [translated by David Lehman]
– for a lady
How do the Chinese tell time? By looking at the eyes of their
cats. Here’s how.
A lost missionary, afoot in a sleepy suburb of Nankin, had
forgotten his watch and asked a little boy what time it was.
After a moment’s hesitation, this street urchin of the celestial
Empire said: ‘‘Wait, I will tell you.’’ A few seconds later, he
reappeared with a very fat cat in his arms, looked into the
whites of her eyes, and said, ‘‘It is almost but not quite noon.’’
Which was the case.
As for me, if I favor my beautiful Feline, so felicitously named –
the honor of her sex, the pride of my heart, and the perfume
of my spirit, day and night, rain or shine – in the depths of her
adorable eyes I can always tell what time it is, and it is always
the same time, an hour vast, solemn, limitless as space undivided
into minutes and seconds – a lingering hour no clock observes,
soft as a sigh, swift as a glance.
And if an intruder came to disturb my study of this enchanting dial,
if some malevolent genie, some demon of ill fortune, were to address
me as a vain and idle mortal and say: ‘‘What are you staring at?
What are you looking for in the eyes of that creature? Is time told there,
and can you tell it?’’ I would reply without hesitation. ‘‘I know what time
it is; it is Eternity.’’
Madame, is not this a most meritorious bagatelle, and as full of vain
self-regard as your high and mighty self? Frankly, my dear, it has given me
so much pleasure embroidering this pretentious piece of puffery that I ask
nothing of you in return.
from the Summer 2019 issue of The Yale Review, in which four other prose poems by Charles Baudelaire appear.
Visit our website at poetsonline.org
from Poets Online blog https://ift.tt/36rBoqP
No comments:
Post a Comment