The Poetry Corner

Clouded Sky

By Charles Baudelaire

One would say your gaze was a misted screen: your strange eyes (are they blue, grey or green?) changeable, tender, dreamy, cruel, and again echoing the indolence and pallor of heaven. You bring me those blank days, mild and hazy, that melt bewitched hearts into weeping, when twisted, stirred by some unknown hurt, our over-stretched nerves mock the numbed spirit. Often you resemble the loveliest horizons lit by the suns of foggy seasons.... how splendid you are, a dew-wet country, inflamed by the rays of a misted sky! O dangerous woman, o seductive glow, will I someday adore your frost and snow, and learn to draw, from implacable winter sharp-edged as steel or ice, new pleasure?