The Stupra

The Stupra

The ancient beasts bred even on the run,
their glans encrusted with blood and excrement.
Our forefathers displayed their members proudly
by the fold of the sheath and the grain of the scrotum.

In the middle ages, for a female, angel or sow,
a fellow whose gear was substantial was needed;
and even a Kleber, judging by his breeches -
which exaggerate, perhaps, a little -
can't have lacked resources.

Besides, man is equal to the proudest mammal;
we are wrong to be surprised at the hugeness of their members;
but a sterile hour has struck:
the gelding and the ox have bridled their ardours,
and no one will dare again to raise his genital pride
in the copses teeming with comical children.

*

Our buttocks are not theirs.
I have often seen people unbuttoned behind some hedge;
and, in those shameless bathings where children are gay,
I used to observe the form and performance of our arse.

Firmer, in many cases pale, it possesses striking forms
which the screen of hairs covers;
for women, it is only in the charming parting
that the long tufted silk flowers.

A touching and marvellous ingenuity such as you see only
in the faces of angels in holy
pictures imitates the cheek
where the smile makes a hollow.

Oh! for us to be naked like that,
seeking joy and repose,
facing one's companion's glorious part,
both of us free to murmur and sob?

*

Dark and wrinkled like a purple pink, it breathes,
nestling humbly among the still-damp froth
of love that follows the gentle slope
of the white buttocks to its crater's edge.

Filaments like tears of milk have swept
in the cruel South wind which pushes them
back across little clots of reddish marl
to lose themselves where the slope called them.

My dream has often kissed its opening;
my soul, jealous of physical coitus,
has made this its fawn-coloured
tear-bottle, its nest of sobs.

It is the rapturous olive and the wheedling flute,
the tube from which the heavenly burnt
almond falls, feminine Canaan
enclosed among moistures.

Arthur Rimbaud

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