L'heautontimoroumenos Songtext

von Diamanda Galas

By Charles Baudelaire
No rage, no rancor: I shall beat you
As butchers fell an ox,
As Moses smote the rock in Horeb-

I shall make you weep,
And by the waters of affliction
My desert will be slaked.
My desire, that hope has made monstrous,
Will frolic in your tears
As a ship tosses on the ocean-
In my besotted heart
Your adorable sobs will echo
Like an ecstatic drum.
For I - am I not a dissonance
In the divine accord,
Because of the greedy Irony
Which infiltrates my soul?
I hear it in my voice - that shrillness,
That poison in my blood!
I am the sinister glass in which
The Fury sees herself!
I am the knife and the wound it deals,
I am the slap and the cheek,
I am the wheel and the broken limbs,
Hangman and victim both!
I am the vampire at my own veins,
One of the great lost horde
Doomed for the rest of my time, and beyond,
'to laugh - and smile no more'
(Taken from Les Fleurs du Mal, translated by Richard Howard)