Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Pipe

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Poems and Baudelaire Flowers
by Charles Baudelaire, translated by John Collings Squire
2672907Poems and Baudelaire FlowersJohn Collings SquireCharles Baudelaire

THE PIPE

An author’s favourite pipe am I,
My Kaffir woman’s countenance
Tells the beholder at a glance
My master smokes incessantly.

If he is mournful or in pain
I smoke as does the ploughman’s cot
When the good wife prepares the pot
Before her spouse comes home again.

I bind his soul and rock her well
In the blue twisting skein which slips
And rises from my fiery lips,


And weave a very potent spell
Which soothes his heart in its distress
And heals his spirit’s weariness.