Happy Birthday, Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was born on this day in 1823..

Be always drunken.

Nothing else matters:

that is the only question.

If you would not feel

the horrible burden of Time

weighing on your shoulders

and crushing you to the earth,

be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?

With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.

But be drunken.

And if sometimes,

on the stairs of a palace,

or on the green side of a ditch,

or in the dreary solitude of your own room,

you should awaken

and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,

ask of the wind,

or of the wave,

or of the star,

or of the bird,

or of the clock,

of whatever flies,

or sighs,

or rocks,

or sings,

or speaks,

ask what hour it is;

and the wind,

wave,

star,

bird,

clock will answer you:

"It is the hour to be drunken!”

Charles Baudelaire