Philothée O'Neddy, "Succubus"

Succubus
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“She was worth a whole seraglio!”
    -Théophile Gautier

“What! you wish to delay the moment of happiness!”
    -Alphonse Brot.
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I dreamed only, last night, storms splendidly endowed,    
Upon the pitching floor of a salon of clouds,       
By terror and love relentlessly contorted,    
With a Bohemian girl slim and lustful there    
    In a waltz danced in the air,    
    Drunk on madness, I was transported.     

As if my arms enclosed her unreal waist! 
And a breast by supple velvet was embraced  
Oh! as if I inhaled her provoking scents!     
And how I was inflamed, when, abrupt and savage,   
    The wind unfurled around my visage    
    Her brown hair hurled in torrents!

Surely there inhered pleasure and poetry    
In the infernal spasm, the chill frenzy,  
Luxurious thrill, corroding it to blight,
Which gnawed, tormented our shuddering souls,         
Twisting so much on the clouds’ pliant folds    
    That underfoot we felt their flight!

Oh! Pity!—I am dying—Pity! my sylph neuralgic!   
Said I in a voice expiring, electric.    

Observe—my whole frame throbbing incandescent—    
Come, come, we’ll scale a star, secrete ourselves inside;        
—And there, shall your beauty unveiled cease to hide 
    From my fervent adolescence!    

Mad laughter grabs her… such discordant laughs,   
Fit to spread over the satanic repast       
—I was convulsed, my teeth were spitting stridence—    
Suddenly, no more sprite of lustful ablution!   
    Naught in my arms but a skeleton  
    Flaunting all her repugnance! 

Oh! Thus your love delights your dancer’s interest!    
Whispered her rasping voice. And her osseous chest       
Panted with her desire, palpitated with lust.     
And always, always then, from cloud to cloud,  
    With her by the torrent endowed
    I was upthrust in my disgust!   

In order to be cleansed of this lasciviousness,    
I fought fruitlessly in the anaemic mist:       
With her angular arms the entanglement fierce     
Became encrusted in my flesh where fever dripped,         
And the sharp kisses of her mouth without lips   
    My cheek and my forehead pierced.  

As if in farewell, in my dark wretchedness,   
Suddenly I cried out the name of my mistress…       
What treasure in that name! what divine amulet!   
The ghost released me from orb to orb to go.         
—And, glad to awaken, I caressed my theorbo,    
    Necromancer’s instrument.


 Translated by Olchar E. Lindsann