La Cloche fêlée

It was not my problem but now I am making it mine. This is unhealthy. I get these odd mini-panic attacks when I think of what could happen. This is not so much over the situation itself but more with respect to the overwhelming, gut-wrenching fear that it will turn itself into a encore of the fantastic mess that A. caused. I don't care about B. that much. Sure. Cute. Rather, beautiful. But I don't adore him like I did the other one. One's beauty was internal, the other has it out for show. Fuck. What is to be done? Ignore, ignore, ignore. But this is hard to do when one pays no mind in the first place. Drink some more perhaps, or just focus on bettering oneself. This is not new, this is stupid.

Baudelaire's imagery is shifting. He has gone from the summer references in things like "Une Charogne" to the portraits of fall in "Chant d'Automne" and "Causerie" into the blatant references to winter that are coming with this poem. The languor and the phantasmagorical stumbling over one's words and the swimming of passion through the soggy humid air...it's no longer there. Bells cannot sound as clearly in the humid air, whether they be broken or not.

I started this in summer and it will be winter soon enough. It doesn't matter if the weather refuses to budge.

The Cracked Bell
It is bitter and sweet, through the nights of winter,
To listen, by the fire that flutters and that smokes,
To the distant memories slowly rising
At the sound of the bells that sing in the mist.

Blessed is the bell with the vigorous throat
Which, despite its age, is lively and in good health,
Faithfully throws its religious cry,
Like an old soldier who watches from under the tent!

Me, my soul is cracked, and when in her ennuis,
She wants to populate the cold night air with her songs,
It often happens that her faded voice

Resembles the heavy groan of an injured man one forgets
At the edge of a lake of blood, under a great pile of the dead
And who dies, without movement, in immense effort.

La Cloche fêlée
II est amer et doux, pendant les nuits d'hiver,
D'écouter, près du feu qui palpite et qui fume,
Les souvenirs lointains lentement s'élever
Au bruit des carillons qui chantent dans la brume.

Bienheureuse la cloche au gosier vigoureux
Qui, malgré sa vieillesse, alerte et bien portante,
Jette fidèlement son cri religieux,
Ainsi qu'un vieux soldat qui veille sous la tente!

Moi, mon âme est fêlée, et lorsqu'en ses ennuis
Elle veut de ses chants peupler l'air froid des nuits,
II arrive souvent que sa voix affaiblie

Semble le râle épais d'un blessé qu'on oublie
Au bord d'un lac de sang, sous un grand tas de morts
Et qui meurt, sans bouger, dans d'immenses efforts.