THE ENEMY by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

My youth was no more than a dark, looming storm
Made bright here and there by transitory suns;
Thunder and rain have made such havoc of its form
That my garden scarcely shows what red fruits it had once.

So at last I have come to the Autumn of ideas,
And I must make use of the spade and the rakes
To restore the flooded ground till its form reappears
Where hollows great as tombs the delving water makes.

And who knows if the new flowers that dreaming I see
Will discover in this soil washed like sand on a bay
The mystic nutriment that would set their force free?

-O sorrow! O sorrow! Time eats life away
And the Enemy in hiding who gnaws at our side
On the blood we are losing grows and is fortified.

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