Name: Seven Old Men
Duration: P00H04M25S
Description: Composed by Chris Schoen to his translation of "Les Sept Vieillards" by Charles Baudelaire.

Seven Old Men

from UNQUENCHED: Music from Baudelaire In A Box, Episode 9 by Theater Oobleck

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about

Composed by Chris Schoen to his translation of "Les Sept Vieillards" by Charles Baudelaire.

lyrics

Swarming city, drenched with dreams
Ghosts grabbing you in plain day, defiant
Mystery coursing through canals and streams
Like sap through the veins of an ancient giant

One morning I was out walking in the sad streets
All the houses were stretched by the gloom
Looking like a sunken fleet
A set dressed for an actor’s doom

A yellow fog flooded around every lamp pole
I steeled my nerves and steadied my feet
I whispered calmly to my shaky soul
While carts rumbled in the cobbled streets

Suddenly, an old man whose yellow hue
Mimicked the color of the rainy sky
I nearly said to him “What can I do--?”
But for the menace which narrowed his eyes

He stood before me
His gaze just sharpening the frosty wind
His pointy beard as stiff as a sword
Jutting forward like Judas’s chin

His mangled back seemed less bent than broken
Against his leg it made a perfect crook
His walking stick completed the joke
Gave him the gait and the awkward look

Of a wounded animal
Through snow and mud he trampled along
His dirty moccasins stamped down the dead
Like all creation had done him wrong

His doppleganger followed behind him
His very double forged in the same hell
Two uncanny ancient twins
Ambling together towards an unknown goal

What evil doings had I happened upon?
What mocking demon made what I had just spied?
I blinked seven times on this cursed dawn
Each time this wicked man had multiplied!

You might laugh at my coming unglued
Maybe you wouldn’t shiver in my stead
But notwithstanding their decrepitude
These seven phantoms were eternally undead

To have endured an eighth apparition
Might be the last thing I would ever do
So to escape my demolition
I turned my back upon this retinue

Exasperated like a drunk seeing double
I rushed home and barred my door against the city
Body in fever and my mind in trouble
Haunted by impossibility

My reason vainly tried to take command
But visions they would not abandon me
So like a mastless ship estranged from the land
My soul just danced on a borderless sea!

(c) 2016 Blooms Unbearable

credits

from UNQUENCHED: Music from Baudelaire In A Box, Episode 9, released May 20, 2017
Chris Schoen: vocal
Emmy Bean: vocal
Angela James: vocal
Ronnie Kuller: accordion
T-Roy Martin: trombone
David E. Smith: clarinet
Joey Spilberg: acoustic bass