Le Crépuscule du matin

Is it wise to judge my life in these discrete periods of time? June/December was Spleen, January/March was Paris. I could almost feel it in my body, the dramatic shift from hatred to peace. It would not be fair to credit one single thing with this, but to look at it much like a row of dominoes. Only the dominoes are good things that happen to me. Once the mistakes left and took the anger with them I forgot why everything mattered. His freckled shoulders are the empirical proof that life can start again and that settling is not something that has to be done. Not him, just the change he affected. We are both humans. That's why it works.

I now close the Parisian Scenes with a much more stable mind and much more peaceful heart. Oddly enough, Baudelaire chooses to make his last poem in this section about the morning. Where will he go? I don't know.

Morning Twilight
Reveille sang in the yards of the barracks,
And the morning wind blew over the lanterns.

It was the hour when the swarm of wicked dreams
Twist the brown youths on their pillows;
When, like a streaming eye that palpitates and quickens,
The lamp makes a red stain against the day;
When the soul, under the feet of a sour and heavy body,
Imitates the struggles of the lamp and the day.
Like a tearful face that the breezes dry,
The air is full of the shivering of escaping things,
And man is weary of writing and woman of loving.

Houses here and there began to smoke.
Women of pleasure, the pale eyelid,
Mouth open, sleeping their stupid sleep;
Beggar women, dragging their cold and meager breasts,
Blew on their embers and on their fingers.
It was the hour when among the cold and the poverty
Worsening the pains of the women in labor;
Like a sob cut off by a bloody foam
The rooster’s song in the distance tore the hazy air
A sea of fog bathed the buildings,
And the dying ones in the depths of the hospices
Heaved their last moans in erratic hiccoughs.
The debauchers re-entered, broken by their labors.

Dawn shivers in her green and rose gown
Moving slowly along the deserted Seine,
And somber Paris, rubbing his eyes,
Grasped his tools, hard-working old man.

Le Crépuscule du matin
La diane chantait dans les cours des casernes,
Et le vent du matin soufflait sur les lanternes.

C'était l'heure où l'essaim des rêves malfaisants
Tord sur leurs oreillers les bruns adolescents;
Où, comme un oeil sanglant qui palpite et qui bouge,
La lampe sur le jour fait une tache rouge;
Où l'âme, sous le poids du corps revêche et lourd,
Imite les combats de la lampe et du jour.
Comme un visage en pleurs que les brises essuient,
L'air est plein du frisson des choses qui s'enfuient,
Et l'homme est las d'écrire et la femme d'aimer.

Les maisons çà et là commençaient à fumer.
Les femmes de plaisir, la paupière livide,
Bouche ouverte, dormaient de leur sommeil stupide;
Les pauvresses, traînant leurs seins maigres et froids,
Soufflaient sur leurs tisons et soufflaient sur leurs doigts.
C'était l'heure où parmi le froid et la lésine
S'aggravent les douleurs des femmes en gésine;
Comme un sanglot coupé par un sang écumeux
Le chant du coq au loin déchirait l'air brumeux
Une mer de brouillards baignait les édifices,
Et les agonisants dans le fond des hospices
Poussaient leur dernier râle en hoquets inégaux.
Les débauchés rentraient, brisés par leurs travaux.

L'aurore grelottante en robe rose et verte
S'avançait lentement sur la Seine déserte,
Et le sombre Paris, en se frottant les yeux
Empoignait ses outils, vieillard laborieux.
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I will greet you again in April, when the sun is out and the world has thawed.