Sorrows of the Moon

from Baudelaire

Tonight the moon dreams in utmost repose;
Like a beauty atop numerous rests,
Who, with an absent touch, about to doze,
Caresses the contour of her breasts,

She surrenders, dying, to a long fainting spell
On the satin backs of soft avalanches,
And her eye roams over visions which swell
White in the azure like flowering branches.

When in her languor, sometimes, onto this world,
She lets drip a tear, furtive, pearled,
And iridescent as opal one for one,

A pious poet, enemy of sleep,
Palms this pale tear and places it deep
In his heart, far from the eyes of the sun.