The Poetry Corner

Burial

By Charles Baudelaire

If on some woebegone night A generous Christian soul Behind an old garbage-dump, might Drop your proud corpse in a hole, When the chaste stars are nodding their heads And closing their eyes to the earth, There the spider will weave her web, While the viper is giving birth; You will listen the whole long year Above your cursed bones To wolvish howls, and then To starving witches' moans, Frolics of dirty old men, Plottings of black racketeers.