“Exotic Perfume/Parfum Exotique” read by Jennifer Barber
From the new edition of The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Aaron Poochigian.
When, on a warm fall evening, I breathe in,
eyes shut, the perfume of your balmy breast,
I see a happy stretch of coast
lit by the fires of an unsubtle sun:
a lazy island on which Nature grows
peculiar trees and fruits that taste like bliss,
sinewy males whose limbs are vigorous
and females flashing candor from their eyes.
Led by your fragrance to this charming place,
I see a wharf with ships and rigging still
worn out from riding on the ocean swell;
meanwhile the scent of verdant tamarind,
swelling my nostrils, riding on the breeze,
mixes with sailors’ chanteys in my mind.’
From THE FLOWERS OF EVIL by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Aaron Poochigian. Translation copyright © 2022 by Aaron Poochigian. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Quand, les deux yeux fermés, et un soir chaud d’automne,
Je respire l’odeur de ton sein chaleureux,
Je vois se dérouler des rivages heureux,
Qu’éblouissent les feux d’un soleil monotone;
Une île paresseuse où la nature donne
Des arbres singulaier et des fruits savoureux;
Des hommes dont le corps est mince et vigoureux,
Et des femmes dont l’oeil par sa franchise étonne.
Guidé par ton odeur vers charmants climats,
Je vois une porte rempli de voiles et de mâts
Encor tout fatigués par la vague marine,
Pendant que le parfum des verts tamariniers,
Qui circule dans l’air et m’enfle la narine,
Se mêle dans mon âme au chant des mariniers.
From THE FLOWERS OF EVIL by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Aaron Poochigian. Translation copyright © 2022 by Aaron Poochigian. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Jennifer Barber’s new collection, The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made, is forthcoming this year from The Word Works. Her poems have appeared recently in the Paris Review, Lily Poetry Review, and Broadsided, and her books are Works on Paper (The Word Works, 2016), Given Away (Kore Press, 2012), and Rigging the Wind (Kore Press, 2003). She is the current poet laureate of Brookline and the founding editor of the literary journal Salamander, for which she served as editor in chief from 1992 to 2018.