The Enemy, Poem by Charles Baudelaire

Poem by Charles Baudelaire Collection The Flowers of EvilThemes TimePeriod 19th century

My youth was nothing but a dark storm,
Pierced here and there by brilliant suns;
The thunder and the rain have wrought such havoc,
That in my garden but few vermilion fruits remain.

Behold, I have reached the autumn of ideas,
And I must use the shovel and the rakes
To gather anew the flooded earth,
Where the water digs holes as large as tombs.

And who knows if the new flowers I dream of
Will find in this soil washed like a shore
The mystic nourishment that would give them vigor?

– O sorrow! O sorrow! Time eats life,
And the dark Enemy who gnaws our heart
Grows and strengthens on the blood we lose!

Charles Baudelaire

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