Exotic Perfume

        “Parfum Exotique”

When, with closed eyes, on a warm autumn night,
I breathe in deep the fragrance of your breast,
I see unrolling happy shorelines, blessed
With dazzling fires of an unchanging light—

An isle of indolence that nature supplies
With unfamiliar trees and fruits of rare
Savor; the men are lean and rugged there;
The women shock one with their brazen eyes.

Led by your scent into enchanted climes,
I see a harbor filled with sails and masts
Still worn out by the ocean’s waves and blasts,

Meanwhile, the smell of bright green tamarinds
Is carried to the nose by circling winds
And merges in my soul with sailors’ rhymes.

_________________
Translator’s Note:

“Exotic Perfume” was dedicated by Baudelaire to his mistress, Jeanne Duval, a Haitian dancer and actress with whom he maintained a relationship for two decades. The sonnet appeared in his magnum opus, Les Fleurs du mal, which was published in 1857.

—Ryan Wilson