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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ivocaliban" data-source="post: 1949500" data-attributes="member: 17596">A great collection so far, but a few of my favourite poets have yet to be mentioned. Most notably Charles Baudelaire:Be DrunkenBe drunken, always. That is the point; nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weigh you down and crush you to the earth, be drunken continually. Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, or on the green grass in a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkeness half or entirely gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that sighs, of all the moves, of all that sings, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please."-Charles Baudelaire (trans. by Arthur Symons)Metamorphoses of the Vampire Meanwhile, from her red mouth the woman, in husky tones,Twisting her body like a serpent upon hot stonesAnd straining her white breasts from their imprisonment,Let fall these words, as potent as a heavy scent:"My lips are moist and yielding, and I know the wayTo keep the antique demon of remorse at bay.All sorrows die upon my bosom. I can makeOld men laugh happily as children for my sake.For him who sees me naked in my tresses, IReplace the sun, the moon, and all the stars of the sky!Believe me, learned sir, I am so deeply skilledThat when I wind a lover in my soft arms, and yieldMy breasts like two ripe fruits for his devouring-bothShy and voluptuous, insatiable and loath-Upon his bed that groans and sighs luxuriouslyEven the impotent angels would be damned for me!"When she drained me of my very marrow, and coldAnd weak, I turned to give her one more kiss-behold,There at my side was nothing but a hideousPutrescent thing, all faceless and exuding pus.I closed my eyes and mercifully swooned till day:Who seemed to have replenished her arteries from my own,The wan, disjointed fragments of a skeletonWagged up and down in a new posture where she had lain;Rattling with each convulsion like a weathervaneOr an old sign that creaks upon its bracket, rightMournfully in the wind upon a winter's night.-Charles Baudelaire (trans. by Edna St. Vincent Millay)</blockquote>

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