The Flask (Le Flacon)

Some perfumes are so strong that they will pass 
Through any substances, including glass.
When opening up some oriental box,
Which screams resentment from its rusty locks,

Or, in some empty house, a cupboard dusty,
Full of time’s acrid odors, black and musty,
See! an old flask, with memory’s scents imbued,
From which a soul leaps out to life renewed.

A thousand thoughts were sleeping, pupae enshrouded,
Fragilely quivering, in their sleep beclouded,
Which now take flight, their tender wings unrolled,
Dyed in blue, iced in pink, and leafed in gold.

A blinding Memory flutters to and fro
In eddying air. Eyes close, and Vertigo
Forces the yielding spirit with both fists
Toward a crater lost in man-made mists,

And downs it on the age-old crater's lip
Where, Lazarus-like his odorous shroud to rip,
The spectral corpse is seen to awake and move
Of an old rancid, sweet, sepulchral love.

When I stand, lost from human memory
In some ill-favored cupboard's secrecy,
On some dark shelf, an old flask worn and specked,
Dusty and filthy, greasy, cracked, abject,

Kind Plague, I'll be your coffin and your flask,
Labelled to show your strength and fatal task,–
Dear poison that the angels have distilled,
By whose sweet, deadly burns my heart is thrilled!