The Flowers of Evil

I have put out a new translation of Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil. Here are three of my favorites.

Evening Harmony

Now comes the time when, trembling on its stem,
Every flower fumes like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air:
Melancholy walz, languid vertigo!

Every flower fumes like a censer;

The violin trembles like a tormented heart:

Melancholy waltz, languid vertigo!

The sky is sad and lovely, a vast altar.

The violin trembles like a tormented heart,

A tender heart that loathes the black void!

The sky is sad and lovely, a vast altar;

The sun has drowned in its congealing blood.

A tender heart that loathes the black void

Gathers every vestige of the luminous past!

The sun has drowned in its congealing blood . . .

Your memory in me glows like communion.

The Giantess

In those times when Nature with her powerful spirit

Was giving birth daily to monstrous children,

I would have liked to live beside a young giantess

Like a lazy cat at the feet of a queen.

I'd have liked to watch her body blossom in tandem with her soul

And grow unfettered in her terrifying frolics;

To know by the damp mists floating in her eyes

If her heart harbored a smoldering flame;

To explore at my leisure her magnificent form,

Climbing the slopes of her enormous knees;

And sometimes in summer, when the scorching sun

Forced her to stretch out across the countryside,

To sleep without a care in the shadow of her breasts,

Like a peaceful town at the foot of a mountain.

Autumn Song

I.

Soon we'll plunge into the chilly darkness;

Farewell, clear brightness of too-short summers!

Already I hear the dreary drumbeat

Of firewood clattering on the cobbles of the courtyard.

All of winter will enter my being—fury,

Fear, hatred, horror, terrible forced labor—

And, like the sun in its polar hell,

My heart will be nothing but an icy red block.

Each toppling log sends a shudder through me;

The raising of a gallows wouldn't sound as grim.

My spirit is like a tower that succumbs

To the heavy blows of a tireless battering ram.

Rocked by these monotonous blows, I feel

That somewhere they're hastily nailing a coffin shut.

For whom? —Yesterday it was summer; this is autumn!

The mysterious noise rings like farewell.

II.

I love the green light in your long eyes,

Sweet beauty, but today all is bitter to me,

And nothing, not your love, your boudoir, or your hearth,

Is worth the sun shining on the sea.

But love me, gentle heart! Be a mother

Even for an evil and ungrateful man;

Lover or sister, be the fleeting sweetness

Of a glorious autumn or a setting sun.

Brief task! The tomb awaits; it's famished!

Ah, with my head in your lap, let me

Savor the last sweet amber rays of autumn

While I mourn the white heat of summer!