6. The Flowers of Evil
illustrations, 2022
Tools：Dip pens
When, sullen beauty, you will sleep and have
As resting place a fine black marble tomb,
When for a boudoir in your manor-home
You have a hollow pit, a sodden cave,
When stone, now heavy on your fearful breast
And loins once supple in their tempered fire,
Will stop your heart from beating, and desire,
And keep your straying feet from wantonness,
In a rich land, fertile, replete with snails
I'd like to dig myself a spacious pit
Where I might spread at leisure my old bones
And sleep unnoticed, like a shark at sea.
I hate both testaments and epitaphs;
Sooner than beg remembrance from the world
I would, alive, invite the hungry crows
To bleed my tainted carcass inch by inch.
I am an artist that a mocking God
Condemns, alas! to paint the gloom itself;
Where like a cook with ghoulish appetite
I boil and devour my own heart,
Poet ：Charles Baudelaire
Illustrator ：Hazel Xing