Cats cultivate the body and the mind,
Attracted both to silence and the dark;
(The nether world could have put them to work
As couriers, had they been so inclined.)

Bemused, their attitudes evoke the style
Of sphinxes lost in thought beside the Nile,
Absorbed into a dream that never ends.
Sparks coruscate all down their fertile thighs

And golden particles, like desert sands,
Scintillate in transcendental eyes…

Extract from ‘Cats’ by Charles Baudelaire, published in ‘Charles Baudelaire: The Complete Works’, translated by Walter Martin, p.133