February 6: Poet of the Week, Arthur Rimbaud, "The Seekers of Lice"

Okay, I have to say this:  I am in love with Arthur Rimbaud and his poems.  I don't know why.  Recently, I have been reading a Rimbaud biography, sort of digesting his life and words.  He sort of fills some empty part of my heart at the moment.

This poem is good a example of why I love him.  It's strange and heartbreaking and lovely.  Two sisters taking care of their little brother, picking lice out of his hair.  Probably something that was done quite frequently in Rimbaud's days.  Not so much any more.

Saint Marty wants everybody to love Rimbaud as much as he does.

The Seekers of Lice

by:  Arthur Rimbaud

When the boy’s head, full of raw torment,
Longs for hazy dreams to swarm in white,
Two charming older sisters come to his bed
With slender fingers and silvery nails.

They sit him at a casement window, thrown
Open on a mass of flowers basking in blue air,
And run the fine, intimidating witchcraft
Of their  fingers through his dew-dank hair.

He listens to their diffident, sing-song breath,
Smelling of elongated honey off the rose,
Broken now and then by a hiss: saliva sucked
Back from the lip, or a longing to be kissed.

He hears their dark eyelashes start in the sweet-
Smelling silence and, through his grey listlessness,
The crackle of small lice dying, beneath
The imperious nails of their soft, electric fingers.

The wine of Torpor wells up in him then
— Near on trance, a harmonica-sigh —
And in their slow caress he feels
The endless ebb and flow of a desire to cry.