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LE VIN DE L'ASSASSIN
Published in the U.K. Vanity Fair London, England 31 March 1909
Translated by Aleister Crowley
My wife is dead, and I am free! Now I can drink my whole week’s wage. I used to come home stony—she Tore out my nerves with cries of rage.
I am as happy as a king: The air is pure; the lark’s astir— We had just such another spring The year I fell in love with her.
The dreadful thirst that parches me Craves wine, wine, wine to loose its clutch: Wine, wine enough to brim with glee Her grave—and that is saying much.
I threw her body down the well! The little wall around that ran I pushed upon her as she fell— I will forget her if I can!
By all the oaths of tenderness Whose tendrils nothing may unbind, And to bring back the enchantress Love to the days when she was kind,
I begged of her a darkling tryst One night—a night of wind and rain. She came, poor silly devil! Pist! We are all more or less insane.
She was still beautiful, although So tired. Still sweet! still pale! still shy! I loved her overmuch—and so “Out of this life you go!” said I.
No one can understand me. None Of these dull drunkards could divine In nightmares this that I have done— To make a winding-sheet of wine!
This black invulnerable vice— Engines of iron! towers of stone!— For winter’s blight or summer’s spice True love, true love hath never known—
True love with black inchauntments filled, Its hellish rout of shrieks and groans, Its phials of poison death-distilled, Its rattling chains and skeletons!
Here am I, free, alone—alone! I shall be drunk, dead drunk, to-night. Then I shall slip to the cold stone Without remorse, without affright;
And I shall sleep—yes, like a dog! The lumbering wagon with its weight Of wheel, its load of stone or log, May well come crawling—it is fate!
Crush my curs’d head—cut me in half! The guilty soul, the swinish clod! I laugh at it—laugh as I laugh At the body and the blood of God!
Translated by Aleister Crowley. |