Charles Baudelaire: “Always be drunk.”

French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

Always be drunk.

That’s it!
The only way!
In order not to feel
Time’s terrible burden
bruising 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 steps of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal solitude of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that is flying,
everything that’s groaning or rolling
or singing,
everything that’s speaking,
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!”