to a passer-by

the street about me roared with a deafening sound.
tall, slender, in heavy mourning, majestic grief,
a woman passed, with a glittering hand
raising, swinging the hem and flounces of her skirt;

agile and graceful, her leg was like a statue's.
tense as in a delirium, i drank
from her eyes, pale sky where tempests germinate,
the sweetness that enthralls and the pleasure that kills.

a lightning flash... then night! fleeting beauty
by whose glance i was suddenly reborn,
will i see you no more before eternity?

elsewhere, far, far from here! too late! never perhaps!
for i know not where you fled, you know not where i go,
o you whom i would have loved, o you who knew it!


- charles baudelaire, translated by william aggeler