red red wine

A Pagan's Prayer

Ah! do not dampen your ardor;
Warm my numb heart again,
Pleasure, torture of souls!
Goddess! hear me, I beseech you!

Goddess who permeates the air,
Flame in our underground cavern!
Grant the prayer of a soul bored utterly,
Who offers you a brazen hymn.

Pleasure, be my queen forever!
Put on a siren's mask
Fashioned of flesh and of velvet

Or pour on me your heavy sleep,
In wine, formless and mystical,
O Pleasure, elastic phantom!


-Baudelaire