Baudelaire [English translation]

How I love to see my languorous love

On your beautiful body

Like a shimering fabric

Your skin glistening

On your hair heavy

With bitter scents

A Sea fragrant and wild

With blue and brown waves

Like a ship that awakes

With the morning wind

My dreaming spirit emerges

For a far off sky

Your eyes revealing nothing

Gentle or bitter

Are two cold jewels blending

Gold and iron

Seeing you walking in rhythm

With complete abandon

Puts me in mind of a snake dancing

At the end of a stick

Under the weight of your laziness

Your childlike head

Swings limply like that of

A young elephant

And your body bends and stretches

Like a fine vessel

Rolling from side to side and plunging

Its yards in the water 1

Like a stream swelled by the melting

Of rumbling glaciers

When you mouth is watering

Right up to your teeth

I feel I am drinking a bohemian wine

Bitter and triumphant

A liquid sky that scatters

My heart with stars

1. Part of the rigging