Poem of the Week: "Brumes et Pluies" by...

[Le Noir Faineant]

...Charles Baudelaire!

Boohooo! This is one of world's most creepy and twisted authors of all time, in my honest opinion, and one of the best poets I've ever read. Since I know that here dwell some French and Canadian mist-wanderers, I put the original version as well.

Surely, there's more to come from Baudelaireto comfort your darkest thoughts...

Until next week,

Rafael


Brumes et Pluies
no date of publication found

Ô fins d'automne, hivers, printemps trempés de boue,
Endormeuses saisons! je vous aime et vous loue
D'envelopper ainsi mon coeur et mon cerveau
D'un linceul vaporeux et d'un vague tombeau.

Dans cette grande plaine où l'autan froid se joue,
Où par les longues nuits la girouette s'enroue,
Mon âme mieux qu'au temps du tiède renouveau
Ouvrira largement ses ailes de corbeau.

Rien n'est plus doux au coeur plein de choses funèbres,
Et sur qui dès longtemps descendent les frimas,
Ô blafardes saisons, reines de nos climats,

Que l'aspect permanent de vos pâles ténèbres,
— Si ce n'est, par un soir sans lune, deux à deux,
D'endormir la douleur sur un lit hasardeux.

— Charles Baudelaire

Mist and Rain

O ends of autumn, winters, springtimes drenched with mud,
Seasons that lull to sleep! I love you, I praise you
For enfolding my heart and mind thus
In a misty shroud and a filmy tomb.

On that vast plain where the cold south wind plays,
Where in the long, dark nights the weather-cock grows hoarse,
My soul spreads wide its raven wings
More easily than in the warm springtide.

Nothing is sweeter to a gloomy heart
On which the hoar-frost has long been falling,
Than the permanent aspect of your pale shadows,

O wan seasons, queens of our clime
— Unless it be to deaden suffering, side by side
In a casual bed, on a moonless night.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

[alhoon]

It seems decent enough to me. Not twisted or creepy.

[Le Noir Faineant]

The AUTHOR is twisted and creepy. the poem, while a bit meancholic, isn't. I piked this one because I think it's very pictoresque.