The Seekers of Lice, Poem by Arthur Rimbaud

Poem by Arthur Rimbaud Collection PoetryThemes HealthPeriod 19th century

When the child’s forehead, full of red torments,
Implores the white swarm of indistinct dreams,
There come near his bed two charming tall sisters
With fragile fingers and silvery nails.

They seat the child beside a tall window
Wide open where blue air bathes a jumble of flowers,
And in his heavy hair where the dew falls
They run their fine fingers, terrible and charming.

He listens to their timid breaths singing,
Which smell of long vegetal and rosy honeys,
And which sometimes a hissing interrupts, saliva
Resumed on the lip or desires for kisses.

He hears their black eyelashes beating under the perfumed
Silences; and their electric and soft fingers
Make crackle among his gray indolences
Under their royal nails the death of the little lice.

Now the wine of Idleness rises in him,
Sighs of a harmonica that could rave;
The child feels, according to the slowness of the caresses,
A desire to weep welling up and dying without cease.

Arthur Rimbaud

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-the-seekers-of-lice-arthur-rimbaud/