Charles Baudelaire - Poet

The Fountain

BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY HECHT

My dear, your eyes are weary;
Rest them a little while.
Assume the languid posture
Of pleasure mixed with guile.
Outside the talkative fountain
Continues night and day
Repeating my warm passion
In whatever it has to say.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.

Thus your soul ignited
By pleasure’s lusts and needs
Sprays into heaven’s reaches
And dreams of fiery deeds.
Then it brims over, dying,
And languorous, apart,
Drains down some slope and enters
The dark well of my heart.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.

O you, whom night enhances,
How sweet here at your breasts
To hear the eternal sadness
Of water that never rests.
O moon, o singing fountain,
O leaf-thronged night above,
You are the faultless mirrors
Of my sweet, bitter love.

             The sheer luminous gown
                           The fountain wears
             Where Phoebe’s very own
                           Color appears
             Falls like a summer rain
                           Or shawl of tears.


Source: Poetry (September 2011).



This poem originally appeared in the September 2011 issue of Poetry magazine.