Get Drunk

a great poem by Charles Baudelaire



The song at the end was just part of this clip, but even if you don't like Irish folk music, it does give that jolly vibe of having a pint and a laugh with mates at a cosy Irish pub, does it not? There are other versions of people reciting this but this is the one prefer and which I learnt by heart from listening to a Makem and Clancy casette tape when I was 14 (and not drinking but into poetry). The words below are someone else's translation - not exactly what's on the video; the original poem is in French.


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!"