Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1966. She is the author of Domestic Work, which received the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and Native Guard, which received the Pulitzer Prize 2007 for Poetry.


THEORIES OF TIME AND SPACE

You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion – dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp – buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry – tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return


"Theories of Time and Space" from Native Guard: Poems by Natasha Trethewey. Copyright © 2006 by Natasha Trethewey.

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Pierre Baudelaire
April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867
One of the most influential French poets of the 19th century.


ENIVREZ-VOUS

Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c'est l'unique question. Pour ne pas sentir l'horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous.Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d'un palais, sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous réveillez, l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue, demandez au vent, à la vague, à l'étoile, à l'oiseau, à l'horloge, à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est; et le vent, la vague, l'étoile, l'oiseau, l'horloge, vous répondront: «Il est l'heure de s'enivrer! Pour n'être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps, enivrez-vous; enivrez-vous sans cesse! De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise!»

Le Spleen de Paris, Petits Poémes en prose

Translation:

It is essential to be drunk all the time.
That’s all: there’s no other problem.
If you do not want to feel the appalling weight of Time
which breaks your shoulders and bends you to the ground,
get drunk, and drunk again.
What with?
Wine, poetry, or being good, please yourself.
But get drunk.
And if now and then,
on the steps of a palace,
on the green grass of a ditch,
in the glum loneliness of your room,
you come to,
your drunken state abated or dissolved,
ask the wind,
ask the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask all that runs away,
all that groans,
all that wheels,
all that sings,
all that speaks,
what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, will tell you:
‘It is time to get drunk!’
If you do not want to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk, always get drunk!
With wine, with poetry or with being good.
As you please.”

In Le Spleen de Paris, Petits Poémes en prose