Exotic Scent


I close my eyes and the smell of your brown
Breast in the warm fall night takes me away...
I see the sands of an enchanted bay
Emblazoned by a sun that won't go down,

A languid isle of lean and virile men,
Where one needs nothing Nature won't supply,
Whose women look you frankly in the eye,
Astonishingly ignorant of sin.

Impelled by every breath that I inhale
I find a harbor filled with mast and sail,
Exhausted now from fighting waves and winds.

And in my soul a synthesis begins
Of sailor songs and pungent tamarinds,
Whose tantalizing fragrance never ends.

- Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867)