Enivrez-vous sans cesse!

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I give you - a French poem!

It's Baudelaire's Be Drunk (Enivrez-vous), in a translation used, appropriately enough for today, by the late, great balladeer Liam Clancy, in a recitation during a classic Makem & Clancy concert recording. It's one of my favorites.

One should always be drunk - that’s all that matters.

So as not to feel time’s horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing.

But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose - but get drunk.

And if at some time on the steps of a palace, or in the green grass of a ditch, or in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness is already abated, ask the wind, a wave, the star, the bird, the clock - all that which flees, all that which rolls, all that which groans, all that which sings, all that which speaks - ask them what time it is.

And the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: "It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of time, get drunk! Get drunk and never pause for rest - with wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose."