12 Angry Readers

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Apr 07: As Simple As Snow poem revealed

Diane kindly translated the Baudelaire poem from the book:

You should always be drunk. Everything is there:
it's the only question. To not feel the terrible
burden of Time, which breaks your shoulders and bends
you toward the earth, you must always get drunk
without respite.

But from what? From wine, from poetry, or from
virtue; as you wish. But get drunk.

And if sometimes on the stairs of a palace, on the
green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your
bedroom, you wake up and the drunkenness has already
diminished or disappeared, as the wind, the wave, the
bird, the clock anyone that flees, anyone that groans,
anything that rolls, anything that sings, anyone who
speaks, ask what time it is, and if the wind, the
wave, the star, the bird, the clock responds: It
is time to get drunk! To not be slaves martyred by
Time, get drunk, get drunk without stopping! From
wine, from poetry, or from virtue, as you wish.

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