Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Pipe

by Charles Baudelaire

THE PIPE

An author’s favourite pipe am I,
My Kaffir woman’s countenance
Tells the beholder at a glance
My master smokes incessantly.

If he is mournful or in pain
I smoke as does the ploughman’s cot
When the good wife prepares the pot
Before her spouse comes home again.

I bind his soul and rock her well
In the blue twisting skein which slips
And rises from my fiery lips,


And weave a very potent spell
Which soothes his heart in its distress
And heals his spirit’s weariness.