La fermière nu (The Naked Farmgirl) is the only known poetry collection by Louis-Charles Royer (1885–1970), a Parisian writer who specialised in popular erotic literature with titles like Love Camp, La maîtresse noire, Unrepentant Sinners, L’amour en Allemagne, The Redhead from Chicago, The Harem, La danseuse de Singapour, African Mistress, and L’amour chez les Soviets. On average he churned out one or two a year, from 1928 to the early 1960s, and some were regularly reprinted in both French and English.

In this cycle of fourteen linked poems, ‘ardent Elodie’ and her friend Martine appear first very innocently on a swing in the orchard, but as their farmyard experience expands to an awareness of eligible farmhand Jean-Louis so the clothes gradually become detached from the nubile bodies. Carlègle’s pastel illustrations are a perfect match for Royer’s text.

Here are two first two poems, La Balançoire (The Swing) and Caboulot (The Watering Hole):

     A petits coups de leurs reins brusques
     Elles montent dans l’air d’avril
     de chute
     en chute
     entre deux flls
     Du bas noisette au linge frais
     La chair claire comme une flamme
     jaillit, et dans le vent léger
     Déjà,
     Je ne sais quelle odeur de femme

With small, sudden thrusts of their hips
They rise in the April air
from fall
to fall
between two girls
From hazel stockings to fresh linen
Flesh, clear as a flame
springs forth, and in the light wind
Already,
Some nameless scent of woman lingers

     Nous sommes montés dans la chambre close
     Où etaient venus tant d’autres soldats;
     Nous avons fermé les vieux rideaux roses;
     Nous avons couché sur le lit étroit.
     On buvait en choeur dans la salle basse:
     ‘A la santé des hommes de la classe!’
     Dans l’escalier, tu m’as embrassé;
     Ton fichu sentait le civet de lièvre;
     Et j’ai conservé, au coin de mes lèvres,
     Le goût de tes seins lourds, chauds et sucrés.

We went up to the secret room
Where so many other soldiers had come;
We drew the old pink curtains;
We lay down on the narrow bed.
We drank together in the lower room:
‘To the health of the working classes!’
On the stairs you kissed me,
Your scarf smelled of hare stew;
And at the corner of my lips I retained
The taste of your heavy breasts, warm and sweet.