Get Drunk!

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!"

- Charles Baudelaire