Withdrawal (5)

Enough o my Sorrow calm down
You wanted evening: here it is
Folding the city into its obscurity
Peace for some worries for others.

Now, while the crowd is laying up
Remorse under the pitiless
Lash of the hangman Pleasure
Give me your hand my Sorrow, come

Away. Look at all the extinguished Years
Leaning from the sky's balconies in fusty gowns
Grinning Regret bobbing up from the riverbed

The old Sun crashing out under a bridge
And like a winding sheet unrolling from the east
Hear, child, hear sweet Night's approaching tread.

[Free translation/reduction of 'Receuillement', from Charles Baudelaire Nouvelles Fleurs du Mal (1866), orig. Revue Européenne November 1861]