How I love, dear indolent, to see Your exquisite form, your skin Undulant, shimmering, lovely Like swaying satin. Your luxuriant hair, fragrant With deep-stung bitterness, Is like a perfumed and vagrant Sea, its waves a polychrome of tresses, On which my dreaming soul casts Off for the distant sky, As a ship, anchorless and fast, Before a morning wind might fly. Like strange jewels blending gold And steel, your eyes glitter, Yet reveal nothing, their cold Flash bereft of the sweet and bitter. To see your rhythmic prancing, So radiant, your inhibitions gone, Reminds one of a serpent dancing At the end of a magic wand. Under the burden of your laziness Your child's head half Sways with the loose finesse Of an elephant calf, And your body leans and lunges Like a fine vessel that elegantly Rolls from side to side and plunges Its yard arms in the sea. When the water of your mouth rises To the edge of your teeth Like a stream swollen by A glacial melt, I believe I am drinking a Bohemian brew, Triumphant and tart, A liquid sky that strews Stars about my heart.
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THE DANCING SERPENT