Je t’adore à l’égal de la voûte nocturne

A poem by Charles Baudelaire

I adore you, the nocturnal vault’s likeness,
o vast taciturnity, o vase of sadness:
I love you, my beauty, the more you flee,
grace of my nights, the more you seem,
to multiply distances, ah ironically,
that bar my arms from the blue immensity.

I advance to the attack, climb to the assault
like a swarm of worms attacking a corpse,
and I cherish, o creature cruel, and implacable,
your coldness that makes you, for me, more beautiful!