"Baudelaire: The Skeleton Navvy (II.)

Navvies, funereal and resigned,
From the tough ground with which you tussle
With all the effort that can find
Filleted spine or skinless muscle--

O grave-snatched convicts, say what strange
Harvest you hope from such a soil
And who the farmer is whose grange
You would replentish with this toil.

Mean you to show (O evil-starred
Exponents of too stark a doom)
The promised sleep may yet be barred,
Even from us, beyond the tomb;

That even extinction may turn traitor,
And death itself, can be a lie;
And that perhaps, sooner or later,
Forever, when we come to die,

In some strange country, without wages,
On stubborn outcrops delving holes,
We'll push a shovel through the ages
Beneath our flayed and bleeding soles?"

--tr Roy Campbell


Nina Simone, 1969. (via Metafilter)


Puni Puni Poemy.


The Young Visiters.