Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/14

10

in the fields, at times,
 * When you are too tired to speak

And I cease from stringing you rhymes
 * And kissing your mouth and cheek,

When the sun beats down so hot
 * That you lie with half-closed eyes

Drinking in what air’s to be got,
 * I move from your breast, half rise,

And bend o’er your face awhile,
 * My arm round your neck beneath,

And gaze past your lazy smile
 * ’Twixt the even white lines of your teeth,

To your inner mouth and your throat
 * Where, like water-anemones,

Pink mounds and tendrils float
 * In silky salivan seas.

I scarce can believe it true
 * That within that delicate gate

Is the whole strange structure of you
 * So wondrously ornate.

And I marvel that a brain
 * That can think is thereabove,

That below that tiny drain
 * Is a crimson heart that can move—