The Journey

Charles Baudelaire

I

For the child, adoring cards and prints

The universe fulfils its vast appetite.

Ah, how large is the world in the brightness of lamps,

How small in the eyes of memory!

We leave one morning, brains full of flame,

Hearts full of malice and bitter desires,

And we go and follow the rhythm of the waves,

Rocking our infinite on the finite of the seas:

Some happy to escape a tainted country

Others, the horrors of their candles; and a few,

Astrologers drowned in the eys of a woman,

Some tyrannical Circe of dangerous perfumes.

So not to be transformed into animals, they get drunk

On space and light and skies on fire;

The biting ice, the suns that turn them copper,

Slowly blot out the brand of kisses.

cont'd