Carefully, with one hand, she opened her tunic and tendered me her breasts, warm and sweet, just as one offers the goddess a pair of living turtle-doves.
"Love them well," she said to me, "I love them so! They are little darlings, little children. I busy myself with them when I am alone. I play with them; I pleasure them.
"I flush them with milk. I powder them with flowers. I dry them with my fine-spun hair, soft to their little nipples. I caress them and I shiver. I couch them in soft wool.
"Since I shall never have a child, be their nursling, oh! my love, and since they are so distant from my mouth, kiss them, sweet, for me."
From The Songs of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs, translated by Alvah C. Bessie, illustrated by Willy Pogany (1926) via The Internet Sacred Text Archive
6 comments:
You do have a reputation to uphold...
Great choice!
(are they so far out of her mouth? are they sagging?)
Well, maybe they're just petite!
"Songs of Bilitis" was so much the thing when I was in college. I had forgotten all about it until I happened upon that Sacred Texts site. That's the big problem with getting older--you forget so much good stuff ;-)
Ah, Chansons de Bilitis...
Remembering it fondly.
You went to one of the Seven Sisters , didn't you, sweetness ?
That explains that, lol.
What the hell is MY excuse ?
Pure, unadulterated geekdom, I suppose.
That, and surviving the hostile environment of nursing education, administered in the Crimean War mode [ I kid thee not- MGH was the third, and last, school founded by dear Florence...and our uniforms resembled almost IDENTICALLY her outfit during that war, no lie!].
Brutal.
If it weren't for poetry, sex, and the Gardner Museum, I would have hanged myself.
It's so sweet! :-D
And I'd never heard of "Songs of Bilitis." I'll go look it up directly.
Well, your memory certainly isn't failing, Ida--yes, I'm a Mount Holyoke alumna. Your all-female schooling--I assume it was--sounds much tougher than mine. We had a pretty good time, even if it was the heyday of Reagan.
Great line drawing.
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