A few tidbits exhibiting why this stuff is so good.
Perhaps this could expand your likings...
She was a Greek lyricist around the late 7th century BC.
She lived on Lesbos.
Like the Very Gods in My Sight Is He
Like the very gods in my sight is he who
sits where he can look into your eyes, who listens
close to you, to hear the soft voice, it sweetness
murmur in love and
laughter, all for him. But it breaks my spirit;
underneath my breast all the heart is shaken.
Let me only glance where you are, the voice dies,
I can say nothing,
but my lips are stricken to silence, under-
neath my skin the tenuous flame suffuses;
nothing shows in front of my eyes, my ears are
muted in thunder.
And the sweat breaks running upon me, fever
shakes my body, paler I turn than grass is;
I can feel that I have been changed, I feel that
death has come near me.
In the Desert
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: -Is it good friend?-
-It is bitter - bitter,- he answered;
-But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.-
This piece seems to me like a reference to the judgement of the dead in Egypt. If the deceased heart was not lighter than the feather of ma'at, a creature would devour it. This would seem to be autopsychostasy.
A Man Feared...
A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.
from The Divine Comedy, Canto III (The Vestibule of Hell)
I am the way into the city of woe.
I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way into eternal sorrow.
Sacred justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
Primordial Love and Ultimate Intellect.
Only those elements time cannot wear
were made before me, and beyond time I stand.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
How could one not love the suffocation of this piece.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and every where
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passion and intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
I would guess that some would find Baudelaire offensive, overbearing or even a bit blunt to even vile. But you have got to look passed that harsh surface to love the beauty of it. Even though he comes across as somewhat "anti-Christian" or obssessed with death, I still love him. You do not have to accept things for yourself to truly love them.
Most of my favorite pieces are too long to put here, but you must read The Voyage, To the Reader and Flowers of Evil (of which the previous poem is the intro).
I have included one poem.
If you do not like brutal imagery (?), stop here.
Remember, my love, the item you saw
That beautiful morning in June:
By a bend in the path a carcass reclined
On a bed sown with pebbles and stones;
Her legs were spread out like a lecherous whore,
Sweating out poisonous fumes,
Who opened in slick invitational style
Her stinking anf festering womb.
The sun on this rottenness focused its rays
To cook the cadaver till done,
And render to Nature a hundredfold gift
Of all she'd united in one.
And the sky cast an eye on this marvelous meat
As over the flowers in bloom.
The stench was so wretched that there on the grass
You nearly collapsed in a swoon.
The flies buzzed and droned on these bowels of filth
Where an army of maggots arose,
Which flowered like a liquid and thickening stream
On the animate rags of her clothes.
And it rose and fell, and pulsed like a wave,
Rushing and bubbling with health.
One could say that this carcass, blown with vague breath,
Lived in increasing itself.
Like babbling brooks and the breeze,
Or the grain that a man with a winnowing-fan
Turns with a rhythmical ease.
The shapes wore away as if only a dream
Like a sketch that is left on the page
Which the artist forgot and can only complete
On the canvas, with memory's aid.
From back in the rocks, a pitiful bitch
Eyed us with angry distaste,
Awaiting the moment to snatch from the bones
The morsel she'd dropped in her haste.
-And you, in your turn, will be rotten as this:
Horrible, filthy, undone,
Oh sun of my nature and star of my eyes,
My passion, my angel in one!
Yes, you will be, oh regent of grace,
After the rites have been read,
Under the weeds, under blossoming grass
As you molder with bones of the dead.
Ah then, oh my beauty, explain to the worms
Who cherish your body so fine,
That I am the keeper for corpses of love
Of the form, and the essence divine!
The Garden of Arcane Vanity