The Enemy|Charles Baudelaire

My youth was nothing but a black storm

Crossed now and then by brilliant suns

The thunder and the rain so ravage the shores

Nothing's left of the fruit my garden held once

I should employ the rake and the plow

Having reached the autumn of ideas

To restore this inundated ground

Where the deep grooves of water form tombs in the lees

And who knows if the new flowers you dreamed

Will find in a soil stripped and cleaned

The mystic nourishment that fortifies

—O Sorrow—O Sorrow—Time consumes Life

And the obscure enemy that gnaws at my heart

Uses the blood that I lose to play my part