I like, winter nights, to find in a heat lamp That beats and fumes, old memories Rising in the banging Of church bells through snow spray.

Blessed be the bell of liberty That, ancient, keeps trying to ring, Tossing out his faithful cry Like an old soldier in his bunker

On the eve of battle. My soul’s broken, And when I want songs of trouble, It often happens that his voice weakens

Like the death rattle of a forgotten man By a lake of blood, under a pile of the dead, Who dies, without moving, in struggle.

(after Baudelaire’s “La Cloche Fêlée”)