Get drunk.

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!"

The above poem is by one of the greatest French poets, Charles Baudelaire. I completely admit my ignorance as to the poet until I read Eugen O'Neil's play, "Long Day's Journey into Night" in college. I wrote some lines of this poem on my English notebook. I had long forgotten my notebook full of scratchings until I saw the play in Galway on my recent trip. I will do a post regarding the play specifically (it was the most uncomfortable, most agonizing, most painfully wonderful play I have ever seen and to see it on stage in Galway with those actors was a more than a blessing) but I just needed to read the lines of the poem again to relight some things in my head. There are many different translations of this on the web from the original French so this one may be slightly different than the EONeil one or others you may have read.

Get drunk my friends, get drunk, stay drunk, and taste your lives fully! Get drunk on whatever your heart craves and whatever is your passion. Get drunk today!

(by the way, a fardel is a burden- had to look it up myself. now we are one word smarter.)