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The Spike or Victoria University College Review 1945

Obsession

Obsession

I fear you, forests, as I fear a church:
Your moan is like the organ's: our cursed hearts,
Chambers of mourning where death rattles sigh,
Echo your De Profundis' solemn notes.
I hate you, ocean: all your storms and swells
My heart can mirror: and the hollow laugh
Of vanquished man, its tears and mockery,
Ring in the boundless laughter of the sea.
How I could love you, night, without those stars
Whose light speaks in a language too well-known!
It is the dark I seek, the bare, the void.
But shadows are themselves a tapestry
Where beings in thousands, rising in my sight,
Live on, though vanished long from other eyes.

Catherine Crosse. Translated from Charles Baudelaire.