The Enemy

'My youth was nothing but a lowering storm
occasionally lanced by sudden suns;
torrential rains have done their work so well
that no fruit ripens in my garden now.

Already the autumn of ideas has come,
and I must dig and rake and dig again
if I am to reclaim the flooded soil
collapsing into holes the size of graves.

I dream of new flowers, but who can tell
if this eroded swamp of mine affords
the mystic nourishment on which they thrive...

Time consumes existence pain by pain,
and the hidden enemy that gnaws our heart
feeds on the blood we lose, and flourishes!'
- Charles Baudelaire. Translation by Richard Howard (1982).