A Long-Coming but Brief Meditation on Baudelaire's Recueillement

 

As daylight wanes
And the light is gently curbed,
So that the radiance of stars,
Hidden from our eyes till then,

Begins to pierce the dark,
Once one has wandered
Far enough away
From busy towns,

Our long and mortal sentences,
In a strange reserved parallel,
Begin to run
Their course as well.

Hearts,
Barred behind their ribs,
Would speak
And sing,

If only they could,
Nothing but a desire
As pure
And as deep
As Arthur Rimbaud's
Bardic vowels.

But then,
As though inevitably,
Someone like Baudelaire
Comes along,

Evoking conscience
Beside lust,
Poverty beside manners,

And, in the City of Light,
Names the Sun
A homeless wanderer,
Sleeping alone
In his shroud
Beneath a roof
That was no roof—

In wisdom
And a lover’s
Voiceless pain.