Tu mettrais l'univers entier dans ta ruelle (You Would Take The Whole World To Bed With You)
Machine aveugle et sourde, en cruautés féconde!
Salutaire instrument, buveur du sang du monde,
Comment n'as-tu pas honte et comment n'as-tu pas
Devant tous les miroirs vu pâlir tes appas?
La grandeur de ce mal où tu te crois savante
Ne t'a donc jamais fait reculer d'épouvante,
Quand la nature, grande en ses desseins cachés
De toi se sert, ô femme, ô reine des péchés,
— De toi, vil animal, — pour pétrir un génie? Blind, deaf machine, fecund in cruelties!
Remedial instrument, drinker of the world's blood,
Why are you not ashamed and why have you not seen
In every looking-glass how your charms are fading?
Why have you never shrunk at the enormity
Of this evil at which you think you are expert,
When Nature, resourceful in her hidden designs,
Makes use of you, woman, O queen of sin,
Of you, vile animal, — to fashion a genius? You'd take the entire universe to bed with you,
I think, just out of boredom, you lecherous, idle shrew!
You need, to keep your teeth sound, exercise your jaws,
Daily, for dinner, some new heart between your paws!
Your eyes, all lighted up like shops, like public fairs,
How insolent they are! — as if their power were theirs
Indeed! — this borrowed power, this Beauty, you direct
And use, whose law, however, you do not suspect. Unwholesome instrument for health, O deaf machine
And blind, fecund in tortures! — how is it you have not seen,
You drinker of the world's blood, your mirrored loveliness
Blench and recoil? how is it you feel no shame? confess:
Has never, then, this evil's very magnitude
Caused you to stagger? — you, who think yourself so shrewd
In evil? — seeing how Nature, patient and abstruse —
O Woman, Queen of Sins, Vile Animal, — has made use
Of you, to mould a genius? — employed you all this time?