I think it's impossible to get through this veil of tears entirely sober. I'm more like Baudelaire: let me be drunk with wine, with women, with poetry - whatever the thing is.
The Baudelaire reference is to his poem, "Enivrez-Vous" (Poem #581) from Petits Poemes en Prose (Little Prose Poems). An English translation follows and is itself followed by the poem in its original French:
Get Drunk! by Charles Baudelaire
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!
Enivrez-Vous by Charles Baudelaire
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."
The Cohen quote is from "An Interview with Leonard Cohen" by Richard Guilliatt (The Sunday Times Magazine, London. December 12, 1993) and was found at the always intoxicating Speaking Cohen site. The poem by Charles Baudelaire and its English translation were found at The Wandering Minstrels.
The Dharma Master of Love
By Ikkyu, a 15th century Zen Master
Translated by John Stevens
My life has been devoted to love play;
I’ve no regrets about being tangled in red thread from head to foot,
Nor am I ashamed to have spent my days as a Crazy Cloud—
But I sure don’t like this long, long bitter autumn of no good sex!
Follow the rule of celibacy blindly and you are no more than an ass;
Break it and you are only human.
The spirit of Zen is manifest in ways countless as the sands of the Ganges.
Every newborn is a fruit of the conjugal bond.
For how many eons have secret blossoms been budding and fading?
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes –
I wonder if It weighs like Mine –
Or has an Easier size.
I wonder if They bore it long –
Or did it just begin –
I could not tell the Date of Mine –
It feels so old a pain –
I wonder if it hurts to live –
And if They have to try –
And whether – could They choose between –
It would not be – to die –
Emily Dickinson, excerpted from “I measure every Grief I meet” on Easter 2010
What was the most beautiful thing in our marriage was when we weren’t aware that we were going to die. And we just had our routine. You know you look back on it, and you think, ‘Why wasn’t I aware of how blissful that was?’ But if you’d been aware of how blissful it was you would have been dreading losing it.
Poet Donald Hall on his marriage to and loss of his wife and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon. Chosen on the occasion of the birthday of my wife, now dead these ten years. Julie Liked Yellow Roses On Her Birthday
Fine Point
By John Updike
Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,
and not believe a bit of what was taught?
The desert shepherds in their scratchy robes
undoubtedly existed, and Israel’s defeats-
the Temple in its sacredness destroyed
by Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faith
and passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,
from table to table as Christians mocked.
We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tongue reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely - magnificent, that “surely”-
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the sayd of my life, my life, forever.
Written December 22, 2008 - shortly before John Updike's death
The sea is a subject by no means exhausted. I have somewhere a poem which directs attention to one of its most striking characteristics, which hardly any of the poems seem to have observed. They call it salt and blue and deep and dark and so on; but they never make such profoundly true reflexions as the following:
O billows bounding far,
How we, how wet ye are!
When first my gaze ye met
I said, ‘Those waves are wet’,
I said it, and am quite
Convinced that I was right.
Who saith that ye are dry?
I give that man the lie.
Thy wetness, O thou sea,
I wonderful to me.
It agitates my heart,
To think how wet thou art.
No object I have met
Is more profoundly wet.
Methinks, ’twere vain to try,
O sea, to wipe thee dry.
I therefore will refrain,
Farewell, thou humid main.
A. E. Housman, writing to his brother, Laurence. Reading Letters From A. E. Housman For Fun
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