A Healing Poem

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I should share this with you - does it comfort you as it does me? It's Beaudelaire. Not long. I've never read anything like this, have you? Tell me!

Meditation
Charles Baudelaire translated by David Yezzi

Take it easy, Sadness. Settle down.
You asked for evening. Now, it’s come. It’s here.
A choking fog has blanketed the town,
infecting some with calm, the rest with fear.

While the squalid throng of mortals feels the sting
of heartless pleasure swinging its barbed knout
and finds remorse in slavish partying,
take my hand, Sorrow. I will lead you out,

away from them. Look as the dead years lurch,
in tattered clothes, from heaven’s balconies.
From the depths, regret emerges with a grin.

The spent sun passes out beneath an arch,
and, shroudlike, stretched from the antipodes,
—hear it, O hear, love!—soft night marches in.

This is lovely, soft, very picturesque. Thanks for posting it.

From "The Galilee Hitch-Hiker" by Richard Brautigan

"Baudelaire went
to the insane asylum
disguised as a
psychiatrist.
He stayed there
for two months
and when he left,
the insane asylum
loved him so much
that it followed
him all over
California,
and Baudelaire
laughed when the
insane asylum
rubbed itself
up against his
leg like a
strange cat."

That's amazing. You sent me off on a poetry binge; it took me a while to find Brautigan. How do you know his work?

"...and Baudelaire
laughed when the
insane asylum
rubbed itself
up against his
leg like a
strange cat."

That puts me in mind of Eliot's Prufrock - is there any kind of link?

"The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep."

Thanks for the poem!

Prufrock was a masterpiece by Eliot.

"See the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo."

Since my retirement, I have taken to thinking, "I am old, I am old, I shall wear my trousers rolled."

Correction:
"I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

I originally found out about Brautigan when my 12th grade English teacher had us celebrate "Richard Brautigan Day." My favorite books of his are Trout Fishing in America, The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster, The Abortion, Rommel Drives on Deep Through Egypt, Willard and His Bowling Trophies, and Revenge of the Lawn.