One I Used To Love

The shadow of your tenderness
Hides the sun, the moon,
The stars
And the Milky Way itself!


O my Beloved,
The sounds of your lute
Hardly more curved than your rump,
Reach me
As I lie on a bed of roses,
On the rooftop of my house!
And, while breathing in the smoke
From my lighted pipe,
I dream of your fundament,
More fiery than my pipe,
And where, once, each night anew,
I was baptised in the fire of your voluptuousness,
This voluptuousness which today once more
I surprise myself in missing,
After so many years have gone by,
And although more than half of my life
Is already over
And although my youth
Has gone up in smoke!


O dear one,
Do you remember
Our innocent games
Where you lay belly down
On a bed of white lotus flowers,
Beside a little river,
While I,
My body upright above you
With my naive hands
Around your slim waist,
Enjoyed your body,
Crisper than a doughnut
Hardly out of the fire
And more supple than the most slender
Coconut palm?


Yet, you seem to me today,
I who have renounced life,
Not much stranger than the sun
And the whole vault of stars!


And, more than the pleasures of yesteryear,
I miss the warmth of your armpits
Redolent of clove oil
Or nutmeg
And the frontiers of your vagina
Wherein it was so good to be enraptured!



Translated from the French of Théo Crassas
March 2011
From the collection of poems "Dragon de Lumière"
published by Encres Vives on January 2011

FROM THE COLLECTION OF POEMS "DRAGON DE LUMIERE"

PUBLISHED BY ENCRES VIVES ON JANUARY 2011