THE TOUCH

The trees have kept some lingering
sun in their branches,
Veiled like a woman, evoking another time,
The twilight passes, weeping.My fingers climb,
Trembling,provocative, the line of your haunches.
My ingenious fingers wait when they have found
The petal flesh beneath the robe they part.
How curious, complex, the touch, this subtle art--
As the dream of fragrance, the miracle of sound.
I follow slowly the graceful contours of your hips,
The curves of your shoulders, your neck, your
upappeased breasts.
In your white voluptuousness my desire rests,
Swooning, refusing itself the kisses of your lips.

RENEE VIVIEN (1877 - 1909)

Renee Vivien was a British poet who wrote in the French language. She took to heart all the mannerisms of Symbolism, as one of the last poets to claim allegiance to the school. Her compositions include sonnets, hendecasyllabic verse, and prose poetry.

In Paris, Vivien's dress and lifestyle were as notorious among the bohemian set as was her verse. She lived lavishly, as an open lesbian, and carried on a well-known affair with American heiress and writer Natalie Clifford Barney. She also harbored a lifelong obsession with her closest childhood friend and neighbor, Violet Shillito – a relationship that remained unconsummated. In 1900 Vivien abandoned this chaste love, when the great romance with Natalie Barney ensued. The following year Shillito died of typhoid fever, a tragedy from which Vivien, guilt-ridden, would never fully recover.

After a long, turbulent relationship with writer Natalie Barney ended, she received an admiring letter from Kerime Turkhan Pasha, wife of a Turkish diplomat. This launched an intensely passionate correspondence. The relationship ended in 1908 when Kérimé moved with her husband to Saint Petersburg.

Vivien was terribly affected by these losses and accelerated into a psychological downward spiral, already in motion. She turned increasingly to alcohol, drugs, and sadomasochistic fantasies. Always eccentric, she began to indulge her most bizarre fetishes and neuroses. Mysterious sexual escapades would leave her without rest for days. She would entertain guests with champagne dinner parties, only to abandon them when summoned by a demanding lover. Plunged into a suicidal depression, she refused to take proper nourishment, a factor that would eventually contribute to her death. In 1909, Vivien died  from pleurosy, complicated by anorexia and alcoholism.

The great French writer Colette, who was Vivien's neighbor from 1906 to 1908, immortalized this aberrant period in "The Pure and the Impure," a collection of portraits showing the spectrum of sexual behavior. (www.amazon.com/Pure-Impure)Written in the 1920s and originally published in 1932, its factual accuracy is questionable; Natalie Barney reportedly did not concur with Colette's characterization of Vivien. Yet it remains a rare glimpse of the poet's dissipated life, written by one of her contemporaries.

For full bio see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renee_Vivien

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