September 12th, 2003

Cats

by Charles Baudelaire

Fevered lovers and austere thinkers

Love equally, in their ripe season

Cats powerful and gentle, pride of the house

Like them they feel the cold, like them are sedentary

Friends of science and sensuality

They seek the silence and the horror of the shadows

Erebus had taken them for its funeral coursers

Could they to servitude incline their pride.

Dreaming, they take on noble postures

Great sphinxes stretched out in the depths of emptiness

Seeming to fall asleep into an endless dream.

Their fertile loins are full of magic sparks

And nuggets of gold like fine sand

Vaguely bestir their mystic pupils.