Thursday, March 25, 2010

How beautiful the sun is on warm evenings!

How beautiful the sun is on warm evenings! How deep space is! How powerful is the heart! Bending over you, queen of adored ones, I thought I breathed the perfume of your blood. How beautiful the sun is on warm evenings!

Night deepened like a wall, and my eyes in the darkness sensed your eyes, and I drank your breath, O sweetness! O poison! And your feet slumbered in my brotherly hands. Night deepened like a wall.

I know the art of evoking happy moments, and live again my past curled up in your lap. For what is the good of seeking your languorous beauty elsewhere than in your dear body and in your so gentle heart? I know the art of evoking happy moments. [The Balcony. Charles Baudelaire, ca. 1856. trans. Elaine Marks, 1962]

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