Correspondances

A translation of "Correspondances," by Charles Baudelaire

Nature is a forest through whose trees
A confused wind sometimes stirs;
We walk alongside these
Strangely familiar murmurs,

Distant echoes which ferment
And in the dark unite,
Lucid and intense like the colors,
Sounds, and scents of night—

Fresh as the skin of infants,
Soft as oboes, green as grass—
The fragrances of summer,

Luxurious, triumphant,
Through whose dense hedges pass
Both the spirit and the sense.

August 17th, 2022
Rosebud