(after Saint-Amant)
Mastered by laziness and melancholy,
I dream in bed like a boneless hare en croûte
stewing in its own juice, a delicate brute,
or like old Don Quixote in his holy
rage. I don’t care a hoot for the latest cause,
the count palatine and his royal descent,
but consecrate a hymn to the indolent
mood in which my soul’s interred, these rare languors.
Such is seclusion’s blissful sweetness, it seems
the action I spurn will be repaid in dreams –
already they’re distending this paunch of mine –
yet I loathe work so much that, with one blue eye
still closed and one hand beneath the sheets, friend, I
was barely able to reach my final line.
