English+Translation


 * To a Passing Woman**

The deafening street screamed around me. Long, thin, in widow’s black, such majestic pain, A woman passed, with one neat, delicate hand Holding up the petticoats of her long dress;

Nimble and dignified, with her white sculpted leg. Me, I was drinking in, anxious like a lunatic, The sky blue of her eye with its hint of storm, That sweetness which can fascinate, that pleasure which can kill.

A lightning bolt…then blackness!—Fugitive beauty Whose glance into my eyes has made me suddenly reborn, Will I never see you again, except in the hereafter?

Besides, that is so far from now! Too late! //Never// maybe! For I don’t know where you are running to, you don’t know where I am going, O you who I could have truly loved, O you who surely knew it!

--//Charles Baudelaire//