The Caress

My hot hands, bathe them please

In your own... Naught can calm

As love itself undulating

The passages of a mere palm.

Familiar to me as they are

Your rings with their cooling stones

Melt into the shiver rare

That makes the eyelids tightly close.

And ill stretches out so far,

As a paving stone gets polished,

One caress extends it there

Even unto melancholy.

Paul Valéry