Barefoot

Her shoes pulled off, her hair let down,
she lay back under the leaning rushes, barefoot.
I stopped on the path, as if possessed, and said:
Would you like to walk with me into the fields?

 

She turned to me, supremely calm
as beauty is in its triumph, and I said:
If you like—it is the time of year for lovers—
we could walk under the trees. Would you like that?

 

She wiped her feet on the grass bank,
looking a second time in my face,
and frowning, pretending to be undecided.
Oh! how the birds sang in the deep woods!

 

The stream caressing its banks! And I watched her
step through the tall green rushes to meet me,
a young farmwoman, shy, and fierce, her hair
in her eyes, her cracked lips open, laughing.