Les Chercheuses de Poux - Arthur Rimbaud

The Seekers of Lice

When a child's forehead, filled with red vexations,
Implores a white swarm of vague dreams,
His two lovely older sisters come to the side of his bed
With delicate fingers and silvery nails.

They seat the child before a window
Wide open where the blue air bathes a jumble of flowers,
And in their heavy hair where falls the dew
Walk their thin fingers, dreadful and seductive.

He listens to their timid breaths sing
Which bloom long and honeyed, green and rosy
And which sometimes interrupt a whistle, salivating
Resumes on the lips or desire to kiss.

He can hear their black lashes batting in the perfumed
Silence; and their fingers, electric and soft
Crackle among their grey sluggishness
Under their royal nails comes the death of little lice.

Here, the wine of Sloth which mounts in him,
The sigh of the babbling harmonica;
The child feels, from the slowness of the caresses,
A desire to cry-- welling up and dying without cease.

...

The English translation of the poem Les Chercheuses de Poux by Rimbaud-- a poem which is at the same time beautiful and unsettling.

The translation is my own.