Baudelaire [English translation]

8.How I love to see, languid dear,

5.Of your fine body,

8.The skin, shimmer so bright and clear,

5. Cloth so flickery !

8. Your deep hair create anew

5. With its acrid scents

8.A sea, vagrant and odorant

5.Of waves brown and blue.

8.Just like a ship that gets awake

5.With morning wind,

8.My dreamy soul gets under way

5.To reach the welkin.

8.Your eyes, where nothing gets revealed

5.Sweet or bitter:

8.Two cold jewels where get mingled

5. The gold and pewter.

Seeing you walk and sway and swing,

Submissive beauty,

You look just like a snake dancing

Around a stick.

With the weight of your laziness

Your child's head aslant

Sways itself with all the softness

(of) a young elephant.

And your body leans and stretches,

Like a slim schooner

Which, rolling side to side, plunges

Its yards in water.

Just like a stream swelled by the thaw

Of rumbling glaciers,

When the water deep in your throat

Rises to your teeth,

I feel I drink a Bohemian wine

Victorious and tart,

A liquid sky sprinkling from up high

Stars onto my heart.