Burial

A poem 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.