giantess - charles baudelaire

Giantess
by Charles Baudelaire (tr. Richard Howard)

Had I been there when primal Nature teemed
with monstrous progeny, I would have tried
to live beside some mammoth girl, the way
a cat will sprawl at the feet of a queen;

loving to watch her ripen (body and soul
growing tremendous with her terrible games),
to guess from rainclouds darkening her eyes
what thunderbolts were gathered in her heart;

scaling the slopes of her enormous knees,
to saunter through the landscape of her lap,
and when the fetid summers made her stretch

herself across the countryside, to sleep
untroubled in the shadow of her breasts
like a peaceful village at the mountain's base.