Baudelaire. "Get Drunk"

Baudelaire. "Get Drunk"

From Google Images

I came across this poem many years ago on a "Makem and Clancy" album and it's one of those poems that tends to stay with you over the years but maybe that's because it was Liam Clancy doing the recitation and he  really gets into it. Anyway most people in this neck of the woods wouldn't need much urging where the above is concerned. Baudelaire is regarded as "The earliest and finest poet of modernism in French" (Encyclopedia Britannica) and that would seem to be self evident. He lived as he wrote and died at only 46 years of age. A little too close to the sun!

Get Drunk

One should always be drunk

That's all that matters;

That's our one imperative need.

So as not to feel Time's horrible burden

Which breaks your shoulders

And bows you down 

You must get drunk without cease.

But what with?

With wine, poetry, or virtue

As you chose.

But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on the steps of a Palace

Or in the green grass of a ditch

In the bleak solitude of your room,

You are wakening

And drunkenness has already abated

Ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the clock,

All that which flees,

All that which groans,

All that which rolls,

All that which sings,

All that which speaks,

Ask them , what time it is?

And the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,

They will reply:

"It is time to get drunk!"

So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,

Get drunk, get drunk,

And never pause for rest!

With wine, poetry, or virtue,

As you choose!

Charles Baudelaire

1821-1867. 

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