Even when she walks

Even when she walks she seems to dance! 
    Her garments writhe and glisten like long snakes 
    obedient to the rhythm of the wands 
    by which a fakir wakens them to grace.

    Like both the desert and the desert sky 
    insensible to human suffering, 
    and like the ocean’s endless labyrinth 
    she shows her body with indifference.

    Precious minerals are her polished eyes, 
    and in her strange symbolic nature
    angel and sphinx unite,
    where diamonds, gold, and steel dissolve into one light,
    shining forever, useless as a star, 
    the sterile woman’s icy majesty.

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)