Hair

Oh hair! Curling to the collar
Oh tresses! Oh perfume charged with nonchalance!
Ecstasy! To populate the shaded alcove
With the memories sleeping in this head of hair
I will wave it in the air like a sash

Langourous Asia, and burning Africa
All a world distant, absent, almost gone
Lives in your depth, aromatic forest!
As other spirits sail on waves of music
Mine, oh my love, swims on your perfume

I will go there, where the trees and men, full of sap
Swoon lengthily in the heat of the air
Strong locks, be the swell which lifts me!
You contain, sea of ebony, a blinding dream
Of sails, of rowers, of pennants and of masts

An echoing port where my soul can drink
In great draughts the perfume, the sound and the colour
Where the vessels, which glide in the gold and the silk
Open their vast arms to embrace the glory
Of a pure sky where shimmers the eternal heat

I´ll plunge my head, drunken in love
Into this black ocean, where the other is locked
And my subtle spirit which the rolling caresses
Will know to recall from you, fertile laziness
Infinite cradlings of embalmed leisure

Blue-black tresses, pavilion hung with shadows
You give me the blue of the immense round sky!
On the downy borders of your twisted locks
I ardently bewitch myself with scents confounded
of oil of cocoa, of musk and of tar

Longtime! Always! My hand in your heavy mane
Will seed the ruby, the pearl and the sapphire
So that to my desire you will never be deaf!
Are you not the oasis where I dream, and the gourd
Where I drink, in long draughts, the wine of memory?