1223. Elevation - Charles Baudelaire

Translated from the French by Timothy Donnelly

Over gutters and over parking lots,

    over rooftops, fountains, cloud banks and the bay,

beyond the sun, beyond the medium that fills

    unoccupied space, beyond the confines of the known

universe, ghost, you slip out of me

    with the ease of a swimmer

at one with the waves, furrowing the deep

    with a pleasure we can’t articulate

as we fly from the contagion

    of the world, bathing in vibrations

shed in silence from the stars, drinking up

    the cold clear fire that purifies our emptiness.

Only when you ferry us

    here, beyond the tedium and despair

that weigh us down, can we be happy, only when

    animate wings beat through the haze of life and lift

up into the luminous do our thoughts like birds

    trace patterns in the pearl-gray sky

and hover over life, understanding without effort

    the lexicon of flowers, the syntax of all that will die.

Elevation - Charles Baudelaire

    Translated from the French by ???

Above the ponds, above the valleys,

The mountains, the woods, the clouds, the seas;

Beyond the sun, beyond the ether,

Beyond the borders of the starry spheres,

My spirit, you move so deftly,

And, like a good swimmer reveling in the sea,

You surge joyfully through deep immensity

With virile, inexpressible pleasure.

Fly far away from this unhealthy air

And bathe yourself in a higher atmosphere;

Drink like a potion, pure and divine,

The lucid fire that fills cosmic emptiness.

After the troubles and vast sadness

Which thicken the fog that darkens existence,

Happy the one who has strong enough wings

To soar toward lands, bright and serene!

The one whose thoughts are like larks,

Freely rising into morning skies,

Glides above life and understands effortlessly

The language of flowers and all voiceless things

https://fleursdumal.org/poem/102