To a Malabar Girl, Poem by Charles Baudelaire

Poem by Charles Baudelaire Collection The Flowers of EvilThemes PoliticsPeriod 19th century

Your feet are as delicate as your hands, and your hip
Is broad enough to make the loveliest white woman envious;
To the pensive artist your body is sweet and dear;
Your great velvet eyes are blacker than your skin.

In the hot blue lands where your God made you born,
Your task is to light your master’s pipe,
To fill the bottles with cool water and perfumes,
To drive from the bed the prowling mosquitoes,
And, as soon as morning makes the plane trees sing,
To buy pineapples and bananas at the bazaar.
All day long, wherever you wish, you lead your bare feet
And hum softly old unknown tunes;
And when evening descends in its scarlet cloak,
You gently lay your body on a mat,
Where your drifting dreams are full of hummingbirds,
And always, like you, graceful and flowered.

Why, happy child, do you want to see our France,
That too-populated land mown down by suffering,
And, entrusting your life to the strong arms of sailors,
Bid a long farewell to your dear tamarinds?
You, half-clad in frail muslins,
Shivering over there beneath the snow and hail,
How you would weep for your sweet and simple leisure,
If, the brutal corset imprisoning your flanks,
You had to glean your supper from our mire
And sell the perfume of your strange charms,
Pensive-eyed, and following, through our dirty mists,
The scattered ghosts of absent coconut trees!

Charles Baudelaire

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