Get Drunk! -- Charles Baudelaire

Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian:

(Poem #581) Get Drunk! 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!" -- Charles Baudelaire

A wonderful celebration of the fact of being alive, shot through with
excitement and exhilaration and sheer unbridled joy: it _is_ good to get off
the wagon and get drunk, all right - especially if you drink of life the way
Baudelaire does. I used to think that Keats' "the blushful Hippocrene" in
Skylark was the epitome of getting drunk poetically, but this is even better
- it's not merely a longing for joy (as Keats' poem was) but a gorgeous
expression thereof...

Suresh.

PS. Credits to Deepa Balakrishnan for suggesting this poem to me.

[thomas adds]

I wasn't able to find a completely satisfying translation of this poem on
the Web; this version is the best of a distinctly average lot. Here's the
original, for the French-speakers among you:

 'Enivrez-Vous'

 Il faut être toujours ivre.
 Tout est là:
 c'est l'unique question.
 Pour ne pas sentir
 l'horrible fardeau du Temps
 qui brise vos épaules
 et vous penche vers la terre,
 il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
 Mais de quoi?
 De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu, à votre guise.
 Mais enivrez-vous.
 Et si quelquefois,
 sur les marches d'un palais,
 sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé,
 dans la solitude morne de votre chambre,
 vous vous réveillez,
 l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue,
 demandez au vent,
 à la vague,
 à l'étoile,
 à l'oiseau,
 à l'horloge,
 à tout ce qui fuit,
 à tout ce qui gémit,
 à tout ce qui roule,
 à tout ce qui chante,
 à tout ce qui parle,
 demandez quelle heure il est;
 et le vent,
 la vague,
 l'étoile,
 l'oiseau,
 l'horloge,
 vous répondront:
 "Il est l'heure de s'enivrer!
 Pour n'être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps,
 enivrez-vous;
 enivrez-vous sans cesse!
 De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise."

        -- Charles Baudelaire

Another translation, with an interesting visual, is available at
[broken link] http://www-as.phy.ohiou.edu/~rouzie/fall153/final_projects/final_project/absolut.html