orchids

[incandescens]

A poem for today, as there's little about work to tell, and little that I want to rant or diatribe or babble about.

THE DEVIL'S BLOSSOMS

Hanns Heinz Ewers

(translation by Stephen E. Flowers)

When the Devil was a woman,
When Lilith wound
Her ebony hair in heavy braids,
And framed
Her pale features all'round
With Botticelli's tangled thoughts,
When she, smiling softly,
Ringed all her slim fingers
In golden bands with brilliant stones,
When she leafed through Villiers
And loved Huysmans,
When she fathomed Maeterlinck's silence
And bathed her Soul
In Gabriel d'Annunzio's colors,
She even laughed-
--
And as she laughed,
The little princess of serpents sprang
Out of her mouth.
Then the most beautiful of she-devils
Sought after the serpent,
She seized the Queen of Serpents
With her ringed fingers,
So that she wound and hissed,
Hissed, hissed
And spit venom.
In a heavy copper vase;
Damp earth,
Black damp earth
She scattered upon it.
Lightly her great hands caressed
This heavy copper vase
All around,
Her pale lips lightly sang
Her ancient curse-
Like a children's rhyme her curses chimed,
Soft and languid
Languid as the kisses,
That the damp earth drank
From her mouth,
But life arose in the vase,
And tempted by her languid kisses,
And tempted by those sweet tones,
From the black earth slowly there crept,
Orchids -
--
When the most beloved
Adorns her pale features before the mirror
All 'round with Botticelli's adders,
There creep sideways from the copper vase,
Orchids-
Devil's blossoms which the ancient earth,
Wed by Lilith's curse
To serpent's venom, has borne to the light
Orchids-
The Devil's blossoms-
---