A Translation of Baudelaire, poorly done.

Inspired by the work of Matt Mason

Macabre Dance
To Ernest Christophe

Fire, so important that one lives, in a noble way
With his huge bouquet, his moustache and his pants
She is the calm and the truck
Of a hammer that has extravagant haughtiness.

One never lives in a ball, a cut very small?
Her exaggerated jacket, and her exaggerated nobility,
She writes with abandonment that a foot dries the pliers
A shoe bobbles, happy like a flower.

The hive with its playing on top of clavicles,
Like a philosopher sailor that is full of bone,
Defending the predicaments that ridicule raids
The meals of a surgeon that she relies on to hide.

These profound eyes are of life and of darkness,
And his amplification, of artistic flower hairdos,
Wobbling softly with their frilled backbones,
O charm, nothing but a crazy habit.

No one asks for your caricature,
Who doesn't understand, friends sit in the chair,
The elegance without the name of the human armchair.
You respond, big skeleton, in my way more dear!

You find yourself in trouble, with your mean lagoon face,
The party of one's life? or some desire of your parents.
Crazy again your lively carcass,
You eat some soup, you are gullible, on the Sabbath of pleasure?

In the chant of the violins, in the fingers of the nobility,
You aspire to chase your mocking ocean chair,
And you come to ask for a torrent of orgies
Of bright, refreshing light in the center?

Dying pools of idiots and of their need!
Of the antique sword eternally ambling!
To work the fence often at the coasts
I see, vagrant again, the sex-hungry gelatin meat-mold.

For truth, I amplify that your hammer
Does not work a grand design of their efforts
Who, of these mortal heads, tends to the railroad?
The charms of the horror does not envy the forts!

The pupils of your eyes, have terrible thoughts,
Exhale the vertigo, and the shy dancers
will not think about anything disgusting
The everlasting smile of thirty-two teeth.

Although, who does not have mountains in their bones,
And who is not nourished with the choices of beautiful land?
Who imports the perfume, the habit of the toilet?
Who does the digging of mountains that grow beautiful.

Baby bears without noses, irresistible poking,
You say of some dancers with orphans:
"Cute fire, the ugly art of cosmetics
You send all the dead! Oh muscular skeletons,

Nobody flattering, mushy-faced dandies,
Vernacular dead people, cherub love lace,
The universal ideals of the macabre dance
You entrust in the place of the person who is not going to survive!

Some cold places on the Seine with burning boards of the Ganges,
Pan frying the figurative mortal and his potato, without seeing
In a truth of the plum, the prostitute of the angels
Sinisterly bending the person who is a black trombone.

In all climates, for all suns, the dead admire you
And your contortions, raising humanity
And often, like you, her perfume is made of mirth,
Bringing together her irony and your insanity!"





Note: The author does not speak French.

You can find the side-by-side comparison of the original poem, the William Aggeler translations, and my translation below: