I was the height of a folio, my bed just <br />backed on the bookcases’ sombre Babel, <br />everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust <br />jumbled together: novel, science, fable. <br />Two voices spoke to me. One, firmly, slyly, <br />said: ‘The Earth’s a cake filled with sweetness: <br />I can give you (and your pleasure will be <br />endless!) an appetite of comparable vastness.’ <br />The other said: ‘Come! Come voyage in dream, <br />beyond the known, beyond the possible!’ <br />And that one sang like the ocean breeze, <br />phantom, from who knows where, its wail <br />caressing the ear, and yet still frightening. <br />You I answered: ‘Yes! Gentle voice!’ My <br />wound and what, I’d call my fatality, begins <br />alas, from then. From behind the scenery <br />of vast existence, in voids without light, <br />I see the strangest worlds distinctly: <br />ecstatic victim of my second sight, <br />snakes follow me striking at my feet. <br />Since then, like the prophets, I greet <br />the desert and the sea with tenderness: <br />I laugh at funerals, I cry at feasts, <br />wine tastes smooth that’s full of bitterness: <br />and, eyes on the sky, I fall into holes, <br />and frequently I take facts for lies. <br />But ‘Keep your dreams!’ the Voice consoles, <br />‘Madmen have sweeter ones than the wise!’<br /><br />Charles Baudelaire<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-voice-32/
