My favourite poem by Charles Baudelaire

I could not find a single translation that I liked and therefore used the best parts of three different translations. Talking about about being picky and hard to please.

Conversation (Causerie)

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.

— Your hand may stroke my breast, but not console.

What it seeks there is but a hole, deep caverned

By women's claws and fangs, and ransacked whole.

Seek not my heart, on which the beasts have ravened.

My heart is a palace polluted by the mob;

They get drunk there, kill, tear each other's hair!

— A perfume swims around your naked breast!...

O Beauty, ruthless scourge of souls, you want it still!*

You with hot eyes that flash in fiery feasts,

Burn up these meagre scraps spared by the beasts!

  *it refers to the heart, that still desires beauty...

Translations I used:

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

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

— James McGowan, The Flowers of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)

 

More Baudelaire at fleursdumal.org/