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| Image by Vandan Desai Photography |
Charles Baudelaire
For the child, in love with globe and stamps
the universe equals his vast appetite
Ah! How great the world is in the light of lamps!
In the eyes of memory, how small and slight!
One morning we set out, minds filled with fire
travel, following the rhythm of the seas,
hearts swollen with resentment and bitter desire
soothing, in the finite waves, our infinites;
Some happy to leave a land of infamies
some the horrors of childhood,
others whose doom is to drown in a woman's eyes,their astrologies
the tyrannous Circe's dangerous perfumes
The ice that stings them, and the scorching sun
slowly erase the marks of their desire
But the true voyagers are those who leave only to move;
hearts like balloons, as light,
they never swerve from their destinies;
and without knowing why, say,always : "Flight!"
Those whose desires take on cloud-likeness
who dream of vast sensualities
the same way a conscript dreams of the guns,
shifting vagueness, that the human spirit cannot name.
