Erotic Poem

It will be this year as it was in the year past — as in other years past.

We will wander, You and I, snuggled together, the trails of a forest, the paths of a wood. I am not certain where this wood or forest will be located. But there Your little feet will certainly tread a carpet, a soft carpet of dead leaves.

Perhaps I will not know Your name and doubtless You will not be the same as in the year past. But what does Your name matter, or where You come from or where You are going? You will be there, at my side, so close against me that I will feel Your heart beat. Tu You will let Yourself go, which is to say You will be natural. Untroubled by Your situation, whether social, legal or moral. Indifferent to everything that is not the present moment.

As in the year past — as in other years past. We will probably not have much to say. We will look, we will feel and we will admire. Oh! This gold and purple felt in which our footsteps will sink! This carpet whose surface quivers like ocean waves in the autumn breeze! Time will pass and we will not say a word. There will be absence and ecstasy in Your gaze. Like those that I have already led along this path, or others like it, You will grasp my hand with a bit more force. And that will be the only sign of tenderness that we allow ourselves.

And as in the year past — as in other years past. And beset by the same anticipations. A moment will come when I break the silence and when I express my thoughts. In this or some related form: “Do you know,” — I might, for example, say to you — “what images are aroused in my by these trees that the wind is in the process of stripping of their foliage?” And like those that I have already led along this path, or others like it, You would reply in the tone of one awakened from a dream: “Oh! I beg you, no mournful thoughts today!”

And I would go on. And I would tell You that the trees that the wind strips of their yellowing leaves conjure up no melancholy idea in me. That they make me think of right now. Of this evening. Of the exquisite, delicate, unique, feverish moment, when your clothes, your last bit of clothes fall. I would feel you in my hands and beneath my lips. Beneath my kisses and caresses. Your body naked, warm, filled with emotion, supple, quivering, elastic.

And like those that I have already led along this path, or others like it, You would draw yourself more tightly againist me. Your hand would grasp mine with more languor. And I would feel your heart beat fast, faster.

And it will seem to me that this is the first time that I have conceived of such a vision. And that You are the first whose veiled body exhales so many voluptuous promises.

15 Octobre 1923.

E. Armand