The Woman Who Passed Me

(after Charles Baudelaire) Around me hurled and roared Place Madeleine: and you were tall and svelte, in funeral dress, majestic in your grief. One deft caress set your hem dancing. And I knew it then. Such elegance! Those legs, so statue-like! I drank you, like a furious alcoholic: that brow of yours, where tempests breed and frolic! The sweetness which enchants, before it strikes! A lightning flash ... then night. Elusive beauty who, with one look, gave me my life anew, will we not meet again in all eternity? Elsewhere? Far off? Too late? Let's face it, never. I lost you in the crowd. The thread was severed. I really could have loved you. And you knew.