Un Hémisphère dans une Chevelure(A Hemisphere in Her Hair)

By baudelaire

Let me breathe in for a long, long time the scent of your hair,
let me plunge my entire face into it, like a thirsty man into the water of a spring,
and let me wave it in my hand like a scented handkerchief, to shake memories into the air.

If you could only know all that I see!
All that I feel! All that I hear in your hair!
My soul voyages upon perfume just as the souls of other men voyage upon music.

Your hair contains a dream in its entirety, filled with sails and masts;
it contains great seas whose monsoons carry me toward charming climes,
where space is bluer and deeper,
where the atmosphere is perfumed by leaves and by human skin.

In the ocean of your hair, I glimpse a port swarming with melancholy songs,
with vigorous men of all nations,
and with ships of all shapes silhouetting their refined
and complicated architecture against an immense sky in which eternal warmth saunters.

In the caresses of your hair, I find again the languors of long hours passed upon a divan,
in the cabin of a beautiful ship, rocked by the imperceptible rolling of the port,
between pots of flowers and refreshing jugs.

In the ardent hearth of your hair, I breathe the odor of tobacco mixed with opium and sugar;
in the night of your hair, I see the infinity of tropical azur resplendent;
on the downy shores of your hair I get drunk on the combined odors of tar, of musk, and of coconut oil.

Let me bite into your heavy black tresses for a long time.
When I nibble at your elastic hair, it seems to me that I am eating memories.