TO A BEGGING REDHEAD

Palish girl with reddish hair

You whose dress’s holes

Expose poverty

And beauty,

For me, weak poet,

Your meek body, speckled

With sickly red freckles,

Is completely sweet

You wear with more charm

Than queens in yarns

Your velvet boots,

Such heavy brutes;

Instead of a shoddy rag’s mess

You’d have a super party dress

With noisy pleats that trail

All the way to your heels

Instead of stocking holes

On your legs: daggers of gold

To blind the suaves

Whose gazes enslave

As a bad knot open lies

Disclosing for our sinning sighs

Two beautiful breasts, radiant

As your eyes;

So that for you to undress

Your arms are pressed to pray

To chase away treacherous play

Of lecher’s fingers

Pearls from the most beautiful waters

Sonnets from the master’s coffers

From your gallants in iron chains

Who make incessant offers

Valets of rime

Dedicating to you their prime

And contemplating your shoes

On a sunset cruise

Many a page caged by chance

Many a haute rage of France

Would vie to deduce

If your price is reduced!

You will count in your bed

More kisses than threads

And will lure under your laws

More than a Louis Quatorze

—In the meantime, you go scrounging

Whatever old debris falls

Outside the door of some

Not so grand Véfour;

You go eyeing, desiring

Some gems worth maybe 29 cents

That still I can’t—forgive me!—

Give you;

Go then, without ornament—

Perfume, pearls, diamond—

Other than your bare nudity,

O, my beauty!

Charles Baudelaire, “À une Mendiante Rousse” (1857)