IN RESPONSE TO MY ILSA*'S POSTING OF HER POEM IN SPANISH, I too am posting a poem of my own. In French not Spanish. And she wrote hers but I didn't write this. Baudelaire did. I don't write anymore. My kinda guy, this Baudelaire. He was, after all, a Poe booster. From his "Fleurs de mal" or "Flowers of Evil":

• "Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle
• Sur l'esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,
• Et que de l'horizon embrassant tout le cercle
• II nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits;
• Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,
• Où l'Espérance, comme une chauve-souris,
• S'en va battant les murs de son aile timide
• Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;
• Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées
• D'une vaste prison imite les barreaux,
• Et qu'un peuple muet d'infâmes araignées
• Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux,
• Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie
• Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,
• Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie
• Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.
• — Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,
• Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l'Espoir,
• Vaincu, pleure, et l'Angoisse atroce, despotique,
• Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir."

Want some help? Probably my favourite translation is from 1936 by my good bud Edna St. Vincent Millay:

• "When the low, heavy sky weighs like the giant lid
• Of a great pot upon the spirit crushed by care,
• And from the whole horizon encircling us is shed
• A day blacker than night, and thicker with despair;
• When Earth becomes a dungeon, where the timid bat
• Called Confidence, against the damp and slippery walls
• Goes beating his blind wings, goes feebly bumping at
• The rotted, moldy ceiling, and the plaster falls;
• When, dark and dropping straight, the long lines of the rain
• Like prison-bars outside the window cage us in;
• And silently, about the caught and helpless brain,
• We feel the spider walk, and test the web, and spin;
• Then all the bells at once ring out in furious clang,
• Bombarding heaven with howling, horrible to hear,
• Like lost and wandering souls, that whine in shrill harangue
• Their obstinate complaints to an unlistening ear.
• — And a long line of hearses, with neither dirge nor drums,
• Begins to cross my soul. Weeping, with steps that lag,
• Hope walks in chains; and Anguish, after long wars, becomes
• Tyrant at last, and plants on me his inky flag."