Conversation

Charles Baudelaire

Conversation (Flowers of Evil)
Causerie (Les Fleurs du Mal)

You are a lovely autumn sky, clear and rosy!
But sadness rises in me like the sea,
And as it ebbs, leaves on my sullen lips
The burning memory of its bitter slime.

— In vain does your hand slip over my swooning breast;
What it seeks, darling, is a place plundered
By the claws and the ferocious teeth of woman.
Seek my heart no longer; the beasts have eaten it.

My heart is a palace polluted by the mob;
They get drunk there, kill, tear each other's hair!
— A perfume floats about your naked breast!...

O Beauty, ruthless scourge of souls, you desire it!
With the fire of your eyes, brilliant as festivals,
Bum these tatters which the beasts spared!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)