Venus Anadyomene

Venus Anadyomene

As from a green zinc coffin,
a woman's head with brown hair
heavily pomaded rises out of an old bath,
slowly and stupidly, with its bald patches pretty clumsily hidden;

Then the fat grayish neck, and the broad
and protuberant shoulder-blades;
the short back with its hollows and bulges;
then the curves of the buttocks seem to soar;
the lard beneath the skin appears as flat flakes;

The spine's rather red;
the whole thing has a smell which is strangely disgusting;
one notices especially oddities which should be studied
with a lens… The buttocks bear two engraved words:
CLARA VENUS; and this whole body moves
and then sticks out its broad rump -
hideous bejeweled with an anal ulcer.

Arthur Rimbaud

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