To Each His Own Chimera

Beneath a broad, grey sky, upon a broad, dusty plain, without trails, without grass, without a thistle or a nettle, I met several men who walked bent over.

Each one of them carried upon his back an enormous Chimera, as heavy as a sack of flour or coal, or the gear of a Roman foot-soldier.

But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight; on the contrary, it enveloped and oppressed the man with its powerful, elastic muscles; it clasped itself to the chest of its mount with its two vast claws; and its fabulous head covered the man's brow, like one of those horrible helmets with which ancient warriors hoped to increase the terror of their enemy.

I questioned one of the men, and I asked him where they were going like that. He answered that he didn't know anything at all -- neither he nor the others; but that they were obviously going somewhere, for they were urged on by an invincible need to walk.

A curious thing to note: none of these travelers seemed irritated with the ferocious beast hanging from their neck and glued to their back; you might have said that they considered it to be a part of themselves. All of these fatigued and serious faces showed no evidence of despair; beneath the splenetic cupola of the sky, their feet plunged in the dust of a ground as desolate as the sky, they made their way with the resigned expression of those who are condemned to hope always.

And the train of men passed beside me and disappeared into mist of the horizon, at that place where the rounded surface of the planet conceals itself from the curiosity of the human gaze.

And for several instants I persisted in my desire to understand this mystery; but soon irresistible indifference battened upon me, and I was more heavily overwhelmed than they were themselves by their crushing Chimeras.

Ref. Charles Baudelaire, Small poems on prose, 1862
The story above is the sixth poem, there are 50 poems in all, in the French book called “Le spleen de Paris” by Baudelaire. They have been translated into English in an excellent way. Enjoyable reading I would say.
http://www.piranesia.net/baudelaire/spleen/

See also http://www.aesopfables.com/