The Dancing Serpent

How I adore, dear indolent,     Your lovely body, when     Like silken cloth it shimmers     Your sleek and glimmering skin!     Within the ocean of your hair,     All pungent with perfumes,     A fragrant and a wayward sea     Of waves of browns and blues,     Like a brave ship awakening     To winds at break of day,     My dreamy soul sets forth on course     For skies so far away.     Your eyes, where nothing is revealed,     The bitter nor the sweet,     Are two cold stones, in which the tinctures     Gold and iron meet.     Viewing the rhythm of your walk,     Beautifully dissolute,     One seems to see a serpent dance     Before a wand and flute.     Your childlike head lolls with the weight     Of all your idleness,     And sways with all the slackness of     A baby elephant's,     And your lithe body bends and stretches     Like a splendid barque     That rolls from side to side and wets     With seas its tipping yards.     As when the booming glaciers thaw     They swell the waves beneath,     When your mouth's water floods into     The borders of your teeth,     I know I drink a gypsy wine,     Bitter, subduing, tart,     A liquid sky that strews and spangles     Stars across my heart!