O fleece, which covers her neck like wool!
O curls! O perfume heavy with nonchalance!
Ecstasy! Tonight, in order to people this dark alcove
With the memories sleeping in this hair,
I want to shake it in the air like a handkerchief!
Languorous Asia and burning Africa,
A whole distant world, absent, almost defunct,
Lives in your depths, O aromatic forest!
As other spirits sail on music,
Mine, O my love, swims on your perfume.
I will go there where the tree and man, full of sap,
Swoon for a long time under the ardor of the climate;
Strong tresses, be the ocean swell which carries me off!
You contain, O sea of ebony, a dazzling dream
Of sails and rowers of flames and masts:
A resounding port where my soul can drink
In long draughts perfume, sound and color;
Where ships, gliding in the gold and mixed shades,
Open their vast arms to embrace the glory
Of a pure sky where eternal heat quivers.
I shall plunge my head in love with intoxication
Into that black ocean where she is enclosed;
And my subtle spirit which the rolling surface caresses
Will be able to find you again, O fertile idleness!
Infinite rockings of my embalmed leisure!
Blue hair, tent of stretched darkness,
You give me back the blue of the huge round sky;
On the downy edges of your twisted locks
My ardor grows drunk on the mingled smells
Of coconut oil, of musk and tar.
For a long time! forever! my hand in your heavy mane
Will sow rubies, pearls and sapphires,
So that you will never be deaf to my desire!
Are you not the oasis where I dream, and the gourd
From which I draw in long draughts the wine of memory?