<h1>Anguish</h1>

Nature, nothing in you moves me, not the fruitful

Fields, not the roseate echo of the pastorales
Of Sicily, not the grandeur of the dawns,
Not the solemn ruefulness of sunsets.

I laugh at Art, I laugh at Man too, and at songs,
At verse, at Greek temples and the spiraled towers
Cathedrals spread across the empty sky,
And I see good men and evil with identical eye.

I do not believe in God, I deny and abjure
All thought, and as for Love, that old
Irony, would I might hear of it no more.

Weary of living, fearing to die, like
A lost barque a plaything of the tides,
My soul to dread disaster seems to ride.

Edvard Munch: The Scream

Paul Verlaine

Translated by Kate Flores