Metamorphoses of the Vampire

From her strawberry mouth the woman though,

Writhing like a serpent on the coals,

And kneading her breasts upon the steel of her corset,

Let flow imbued all through with musk these words:

—“I’ve moistened lips, and I know the science

Of losing deep in bed the ancient conscience.

I dry all tears upon my breasts triumphant,

And make old men laugh the laugh of infants.

I take the place, seen naked and sans veils,

Of moon, and sun, the heavens and the stars!

I am, my dear savant, so learned in pleasure,

When in my fearsome arms a man I smother,

Or when I abandon unto nibbles my bust,

Timid and libertine, fragile and robust,

That on these mattresses which swoon with feeling,

Impuissant angels have damned themselves for me!”

When she’d from my bones sucked all the marrow,

And languidly I turned myself toward her

To give her again a kiss of love, I saw but this,

A wineskin gummy-flanked, all full of pus!

I closed my eyes, in my cold frightfulness,

And when I opened them, to living brightness,

Beside me, instead of the puissant mannequin

That had seemed of blood to make its provision,

Pieces of a skeleton shook indistinctly,

Which of themselves gave out a weathervane’s scream

Or a sign’s, on the tip of its rod of iron,

That’s swung by the wind alone on winter nights.

Charles Baudelaire