The Snake That Dances

Poem by Charles Baudelaire Collection The Flowers of EvilThemes LovePeriod 19th centuryPrint

How I love to see, dear indolent one,
Of your body so fair,
Like a shimmering fabric,
The skin glisten!

On your deep hair
With its pungent perfumes,
Fragrant and wandering sea
With blue and brown waves,

Like a ship awakening
To the morning wind,
My dreamy soul sets sail
For a distant sky.

Your eyes, in which nothing is revealed
Of sweet or bitter,
Are two cold jewels in which mingles
Gold with iron.

To see you walk in cadence,
Beautiful with abandon,
One would say a snake that dances
At the end of a stick.

Beneath the burden of your laziness
Your childlike head
Sways with the softness
Of a young elephant,
And your body leans and stretches
Like a slender vessel
That rolls from side to side and dips
Its yards in the water.

Like a wave swollen by the melting
Of grumbling glaciers,
When the water of your mouth rises
To the edge of your teeth,

I think I drink a Bohemian wine,
Bitter and victorious,
A liquid sky that bespangles
My heart with stars!

Charles Baudelaire

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-the-snake-that-dances-charles-baudelaire/