Dark and wrinkled like a violet carnation,
Humbly crouched amid the moss, it breathes,
Still moist with love that descends the gentle slope
Of white buttocks to its embroidered edge.
Filaments like tears of milk have wept
Under the savage wind that drives them off
Through little clots of russet earth
To disappear where inclination led them.
Oft did my dream suck at its vent;
My soul, envious of physical coitus, made it
Its musky dripstone and its nest of sobs.
'Tis the swooning conch, the fondling flute,
The tube from which the heavenly praline drops,
A female Canaan cocooned in muggy air.
Arthur Rimbaud et Paul Verlaine, 1871
