Old Chaos

My favorite translation of my favorite poem by Charles Baudelaire.

**De Profundis Clamavi**

*(From the Depths I Cried)*

Have pity, you alone whom I adore

From down this black pit where my heart is sped,

A sombre universe ringed round with lead

Where fear and curses the long night explore.

Six months a cold sun hovers overhead;

The other six is night upon this land.

No beast; no stream; no wood; no leaves expand.

The desert pole is not a waste so dead.

Now in the whole world there's no horror quite

So cold and cruel as this glacial sun,

So like old Chaos as this boundless night;

I envy the least animals that run,

Which can find respite in brute slumber drowned,

So slowly is the skein of time unwound.