POETRY FRIDAY

EVENING HARMONY

Charles Baudelaire

Now comes the hour when stirring on its stem
Each flower exhales like a censer
Sounds and perfumes swirl in the evening air
Melancholy waltz and languidly sensuous vertigo!
Each flower exhales like a censer
The violin quivers like a heart distressed
A melancholy waltz and languidly sensuous vertigo!
The sky is sad and splendid like a great altar.
The violin quivers like a heart distressed,
A tender heart, that hates the void vast and dark!
The sky is splendid and sad like a great altar’
The sun has drowned in its own congealing blood.
A tender heart, that hates the void vast and dark,
Gathers each trace of the luminous past!
The sun has drowned in its own congealing blood…
The memory of you shines within me like a monstrance!

Why I like it:
Beauty and emotion with so few words.
A poetry teacher may offer that this is a ‘pantoum’ and that there are only ten original lines with the other six repeating –blah blah blah. I like the words. I like the match of sensuous with vertigo, the violin, and the agonizing descriptions of the sky. I love that this short poem makes me FEEL.

Making sense of life:
I think our present emotional state colors how we see the world. This poem beautiful captures those emotions.
I once heard an editor at a conference offer this advice: “Look at the people you see each day, people you know and strangers too, really look at them and describe them in your writing. But remember, not to describe them as you see them; write about how they see themselves.”