Read the poem: “A Hemisphere in a Tress”

by Charles Baudelaire

Extract of The Flowers of Evil

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French Literature – French Poetry – Charles Baudelaire
< < < Venus and the Fool
A Heroic Death > > >

A Hemisphere in a Tress

Let me breathe, long, long, of the odor of your hair, let me plunge my whole face in its depth, as a thirsty man in the waters of a spring, let me flutter it with my hand as a perfumed kerchief, to shake off memories into the air.

If you could know all that I see! all that I feel! all that I understand in your hair! My soul journeys on perfumes as the souls of other men on music.

Your hair meshes a full dream, crowded with sails and masts; it holds great seas on which monsoons bear me toward charming climes, where the skies are bluer and deeper, where the atmosphere is perfumed with fruits, with leaves, and with the human skin.

In the ocean of your hair I behold a port humming with melancholy chants, with strong men of all nations and with ships of every form carving their delicate, intricate architecture on an enormous sky where lolls eternal heat.

In the caresses of your hair, I find again the languor of long hours on a divan, in the cabin of a goodly ship, cradled by the unnoticed undulation of the port, between pots of flowers and refreshing water-jugs.

At the glowing hearth-stone of your hair, I breathe the odor of tobacco mixed with opium and sugar; in the night of your hair, I see shine forth the infinite of the tropic sky; on the downy bank-sides of your hair, I grow drunk with the mingled odors of tar and musk, and oil of cocoanut.

Let me bite, long, your thick black hair. When I nibble your springy, rebellious hair, it seems that I am eating memories.

Translated by Joseph T. Shipley

< < < Venus and the Fool
A Heroic Death > > >

French Literature – French Poetry – Charles Baudelaire

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by Charles Baudelaire

Extract of The Flowers of Evil

A Hemisphere in a Tress

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