Saturday 6 October 2012

Day 106: Get Drunk



Good advice from Charles Baudelaire! Get drunk and stay drunk - on wine, poetry, whatever. 

(And poetry is a permanent state of drunkenness I think - intoxicated with inspiration, aware and in awe of the world.)

Get Drunk - Charles Baudelaire

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.

And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;

and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

3 comments:

  1. Bonjour Siobhan, j'avais onze ans quand j'ai rencontré les poèmes magiques de Baudelaire mais aussi son esprit; sa lucidité et son ironie jamais cynique m'accompagne toujours dans mes lectures d'écrivains contemporains.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bonjour Thige! Et bienvenue de mon Poéme-par-Jour!
    Je dois admettre que je ne connais pas Baudelaire bien, sauf 'Les Fleurs du Mal'... mais j'ai l'intention de lire plus de lui dorénavant!

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