To always retreat within oneself, so gloomy!
Like a heavy cloth, unadorned by flowery prints.

To retreat, to get bogged down and to settle
And still, in dark and checkmated corners, to break.

So gloomy! and always to refrain from the desire
To cut into strips the fabric of one's life.

To hide between the folded pleats in terrible anger
And in resentment, with one's pains, and one's errors.

With neither silky shivers, nor melting moire,
But to pin oneself up with burning pins.

Oh! the package which you push or throw away,
So gloomy and heavy, in a section of a bazaar.

Already to taste one's mouth, acrid with mold
Gluing up, and stains spreading in their teeth.

To waste away, completely swaddled by ennui;
To be ennui [itself] that curls up in the night.

While slowly, in the warps of wool,
From one side to the other, the worms of illness chew their way.