The Gladly Dead

by Charles Baudelaire

In a soil thick with snails and rich as grease

I've longed to dig myself a good deep grave,

There to stretch my old bones at ease

And sleep in oblivion, like a shark in a wave.

Wills I detest, and tombstones set in rows;

Before I'd beg a tear of anyone,

I'd rather go alive and let the crows

Bleed the last scrap of this old carrion.

O worms! Black comrades without eye or ear,

Here comes a dead man for you, willing and gay;

Feasting philosophers, sons born of decay,

Come burrow through my ruins, shed not a tear;

But tell me if any torture is left to dread

For this old soulless body, dead as the dead?