The Dancing Snake (tr. Baudelaire)

I care much to see
My careless
How that voluptuous
Skin of yours can
Spin like a top!

Through tresses in a fog
Of incense,
Ocean odorous
And vagabond, floods
Of brown over purple
Folds,

As a sleeping ship shifts
In the scents of
Spring,
My daydreams
Drift above the ceiling
Of the sky.

Your eyes that shroud
Neither succour nor sin
Are two cold ornaments
That glint with gold
And iron tints.

The way you fly at rhythm,
Bold in your abandon,
One could liken to a snake’s
On twirling baton.

Under langorous load your
Head keeps the dainty
Tread of an elephant’s
Child on a

Fence and your tense
Form stretches like a little
Sloop slips
From side to side and wets
Its canvas.

Like a flood inflamed
By the flutes of grating
Glaciers, when the tide
Of your lips climbs back
Above the teeth I dream

I’m strung on Bohemian
Vines in a bitter
Conquest, a liquid
Limit whose floods arrest
My heart in the milk
Of stars.