This is the title of a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, some twenty lines long, about two of his aunts, seated in chairs beside him, picking lice out of his seventeen year old, bushy hair as he is on a visit to them, half-way to Paris, to another poet, Paul Verlaine, who has seen some of his poetry in letters and is dying to meet him. An unannounced escape from home.
Who could write a poem on this subject and make it one of the most beautiful gifts in any language, a delicacy, a marvel of rhythms and sounds and unexpected, undreampt hints that add nuances to our reality and open new worlds of meaning for humankind's imagination. This little boy gave all of us such a gift of insight into his own rich world of imagination. We all owe him an inestimable debt we can never repay because he died alone and forgotten before his poetry was recognized.
Les chercheuses de poux Arthur Rimbaud
Quand le front de l’enfant, plein de rouges tourmentes,
Implore l’essaim blanc des rêves indistincts,
Il vient près de son lit deux grandes sœurs charmantes
Avec de frêles doigts aux ongles argentins.
Elles assoient l’enfant auprès d’une croisée
Grande ouverte où l’air bleu baigne un fouillis de fleurs
Et, dans ses lourds cheveux où tombe la rosée,
Promène leurs doigts fins, terribles et charmeurs.
Il écoute chanter leurs haleines craintives
Qui fleurent de longs miels végétaux et rosés
Et qu’interrompt parfois un sifflement, salives
Reprises sur la lèvre ou désirs de baisers.
Il entend leurs cils noirs battant sous les silences
Parfumés ; et leurs doigts électriques et doux
Font crépiter, parmi ses grises indolences,
Sous leurs ongles royaux, la mort des petits poux.
Voilà que monte en lui le vin de la Paresse,
Soupir d’harmonica qui pourrait délirer :
L’enfant se sent, selon la lenteur des caresses,
Sourdre et mourir sans cesse un désir de pleurer.
Arthur Rimbaud.
Red with white torments, the child’s forehead
begs the swarm of vague dreams for respite.
Two large, charming sisters come to his bed
whose frail fingers’ nails flash dull silver light.
They sit him in front of a wide-open window
where a tangle of flowers wafts in from the blue
and their spindly fingers flirtatiously winnow
his hair, heavy and matted with dew.
Fearful, their breaths lull him with singing
and flower with vegetal honeys. A hiss
penetrates their rosy sighs, clinging
to the lips with saliva, or a desire to kiss.
Their black eyelids beat in the silent haze
of perfume; their fingers, electric, precise,
make crackle all about his tipsy daze
the death, under their nails, of little lice.
And so lazy wine fills him up to excess,
delirium brought by a harmonica’s sigh.
The child feels stir under each slow caress
the ebb and flow of a longing to cry.
