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I have not to my mistress a
lioness of fame;
The beggarly wench borrows from my soul her flame.
Invisible to the mocking universe's regard,
Her beauty only blossoms in my saddened heart.
To get herself a pair of
shoes she bartered her soul;
But the good Lord would laugh if next that wretched hole
I were to play judging Tartuffe, and ape the haughty,
I who sell my brainwork, and would join the literati.
Much more serious vice, she
wears a wig on her head.
Her beautiful black hair from her white nape is fled;
Which does not prevent the kisses of love ever
Being showered on her brow though balder than a leper.
She squints, and the effect
of that regard strange,
Shadowed by black lashes longer than an angel's,
Is such that all the looks for which men give up paradise
Are not worth for me her Jewish dark-ringed eyes.
She is only twenty; her
bosom—already low
Hangs on either side like a gourd,
And still drawing me onto her body each night,
Like a very newborn, I suck at it and bite—
And though she often lacks so
much as a guilder
To rub her skin withal or to anoint her shoulder—
I lick her in silence with a greater fervor,
Than the Magdalene on fire the two feet of the Savior.
The sorry poor creature from
pleasure out of breath
Has with raucous hiccoughs a swelling of the chest,
And I harking to the sound of her breathing brutal divine
She has eaten hospital bread many and many a time.
Her large anxious eyes
throughout the cruel night
Believe they have two other eyes beside them in their sight—
For having opened up her heart to too many guests,
She fears without the light and believes there must be ghosts.
For which reason on her
tallow she must spend
More than old scholars who night and day on their books bend
And dread so much the less the sufferings of hunger
Than the apparition of her now-dead lovers.
If you happen to meet her,
bizarrely all decked out,
On the corner of a far street dodging about,
With her head and eyes down—like a pigeon ailing—
Through the gutters one heel barefoot trailing,
Gentlemen, refrain from
spitting filth and curses
Upon the farded visage of this poor impure person
Whom of a winter's eve the goddess Famine made
Lift into the air her skirts and petticoats unstaid.
That Bohemia there is my all,
my only riches,
My pearl, my jewel, my queen, my duchess,
She who has rocked me on her vanquishing lap,
And in her own two hands my heart warmed up.
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