Get Drunk!

Baudelaire may have felt that this worked best in prose form, and maybe it does in the French, but I think at least my translation is better this way.

Get Drunk!

One should always be drunk.
That's all that matters:
it is the only question.
So as not to feel the horrid burden of Time
which breaks your back and
bows you down to the ground,
you must get drunk without ceasing.

But with what?
With wine,
with poetry,
or with virtue
as you please.

But get drunk.

And if at times,
on the steps of a palace,
or in the green grass of a ditch,
or in the dismal solitude of your room,
you are waking up,
with drunkenness diminished and disappeared, ask

of the wind,
of the wave,
of the star,
of the bird,
of the clock,
of all that which flees,
of all that which groans,
of all that which rolls,
of all that which sings,
of all that which speaks,

ask what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the star,
the bird, the clock will reply:

"It is time to get drunk!
So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time,
get drunk;
get drunk without ceasing!
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue as you please."