Galas Diamanda Heauton Timoroumenos (self Tormentor)
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)