Charles Baudelaire
RECUEILLEMENT (Translated by Will Wells)
Stick a sock in it, Sadness, and don’t wet your pants.
You begged for nightfall, so it comes. Here it is
enfolding us all in a fogbank of trance.
It bears peace to some, to others, remorse.
Pleasure, that pitiless sadist, takes out its whip
to thrash the surging mob of human hope
in its Mardi Gras on a Carnival ship.
Sweet sadness, take my hand, come to me, slip
lightly away from them. Let the past hang
over us from its skyline balcony,
flyblown in faded old clothes. Let regret spring
upwards, relentless as a fountain’s spray.
Let the sun curl up like a bum beneath a bridge.
Listen up, sweetheart, step lively to dark’s dull trudge.
