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For She Who Is Too Gay Your head, your gestures, your manner,
Are as beautiful as a beautiful countryside;
Laughter plays on your face
Like a fresh wind in a clear sky.
The gloomy passerby you brush against
Is dazzled by your health,
Which gushes forth like light
From your arms and your shoulders.
The sonorous colors
With which you strew your gowns
Thrust into the minds of poets
The image of a ballet of flowers.
Those mad dresses are the emblem
Of your gaudy spirit;
Madwoman who maddens me,
I hate you as much as I love you!
Occasionally, in a beautiful garden
In which I was dragging about my debility,
I have felt, like an irony,
The sun tearing my breast;
And the Spring and the greenery
So humiliated my heart,
That I punished a flower
For the insolence of Nature.
In the same way, I would like, one night,
When the hour of voluptuous revels sounds,
To crawl noiselessly toward the treasures
Of your body, like a coward,
To chastise your joyous flesh,
To bruise your pardoned breast,
And to make in your astonished flank
A large, deep wound,
And -- giddy delight! --
Into those new lips,
More sparkling and more beautiful,
To infuse my venom, my sister!
Original French
(All translations by Cat Nilan © 1999, 2004) |