This week is banned book week, and to celebrate I wanted to pick a poem that has been banned. I never quite understood the whole thought process behind banning - or, more realistically - trying to ban something. Because, more often than not you just give extra incentive for people to acquire the “banned” item to see what all the fuss is about.

I’m speaking from experience here - when I was a teenager, I bought three double length lp albums *- *Ozzy Osbourne’s *Tribute, *Pink Floyd’s *The Wall, *and Rush’s *Exit….Stage Left. *Now, my parents weren’t too incredibly bad in terms of censoring my possessions, but they were caught up in the whole “Ozzy Osbourne = Really Bad” meme that was prevalent in the 80’s. So I was forced to take *Tribute *back to the music store for a refund. Of course, I did what most any teenager would - I made a copy of the album to cassette, labeled it with an innocuous band (I used the Rolling Stones) and just listened to it without their knowledge.

With my own children, I took the route of letting them listen to or read whatever they wanted. However, I did reserve the right to make fun of them. I think it took a few years for the older boy to get over having his father do a dramatic reading of the words to Marilyn Manson’s timeless classic Cake and Sodomy in our living room.

This week we’re going with a poem from Baudelaire entitled To One Who is too Cheerful. This should resonate with everyone who has felt love’s keen sting (as a certain literary character would put it). The reason it was banned? Apparently the censors didn’t like Charles’ use of the word venom which - in their minds at least - meant syphilis.

To One Who Is Too Cheerful
Charles Baudelaire

Your head, your hair, your every way
Are scenic as the countryside;
the smile plays in your lips and eyes
Like fresh winds on a cloudless day.

The gloomy drudge, brushed by your charms,
Is dazzled by the vibrancy
That flashes forth so brilliantly
Out of your shoulders and your arms.

All vivid colors, and the way
They resonate in how you dress
Have poets in their idleness
Imagining a flower ballet.

These lavish robes are emblems of
The mad profusion that is you;
Madwoman, I am maddened too,
And hate you even as I love!

Sometimes within a park, at rest,
Where I have dragged my apathy,
I have felt like an irony
The sunshine lacerate my breast.

And then the spring’s luxuriance
Humiliated so my heart
That I had pulled a flower apart
To punish nature’s insolence.

So I would wish, when you’re asleep,
The time for sensuality,
Towards your body’s treasury
Silently, stealthily to creep,

To bruise your ever-tender breast,
And carve in your astonished side
An injury both deep and wide,
To chastise your too-joyous flesh.

And, sweetness that would dizzy me!
In these two lips so red and new
My sister, I have made for you,
To slip my venom, lovingly!

• Translated by James McGowan