THE POISON – Poetry by Charles Baudelaire

THE POISON

The wine can play the most sordid hovel, with a marvelous luxury, and raises more than a fabulous porch, in the gold of its red vapor like a setting sun, in a cloudy sky. Open this opium that which has no boundaries, stretches the unlimited, makes deep time, increases pleasure, and pleasures dark and gloomy fills the soul, beyond capacity. This is not equal to the poison flowing from your eyes, from your green eyes, lakes where my soul trembles, and it shows the reverse. My dreams flock to, to quench their thirst in these bitter depths. This is not equal to the terrible wonder of your saliva which corrodes, which drives my soul into oblivion without remorse, and dragged from the vertigo rolls weakened to the shores of death!

(Charles Baudelaire)