WOMAN

Published in the U.K. Vanity Fair

London, England

11 April 1909

(page 472)

By Charles Baudelaire

Translated by Aleister Crowley

The whole wide world is meat-of-murderess

For thee, foul woman, cruel from idleness.

To whet thy teeth at this ferocious play

Thy rat-trap needs a man’s heart every day.

Thine eyes, lit up like shops or booths that flare

When all the world keeps holiday, still glare,

Using a borrowed power with insolence,

Ignoring beauty’s law that lent them sense.

Blind wheel and deaf, of Hell in travail curled!

Brave tool that drinks the blood of all the world!

Hast thou no shame? and hast thou no alarm

Whose mirror shows thee thy decaying charm?

Hath not the vastness of the evil thing

Thou think’st thee wise of sent thee shuddering

When Nature—grand, persistent, tenebrous—

Uses thee, woman, thee, princess of pus,

Vile animal!—to slay a genius?

O golden mire! fame ignominious!

Translated by Aleister Crowley.