The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  of those same uncouth people

  whom Marius split open,

  so much that memory still recalls his deed

  when, thirsty and worn out,

  he drank from streams that were half blood, half water.

  I will not speak of Caesar, who once turned

  the green fields red with blood

  that poured from veins he’d opened with our steel.

  It seems (who knows by what malignant stars)

  the heavens hate us now,

  and thanks to you, to whom so much was trusted.

  Your warring wills lay waste

  the fairest regions that the world can find.

  What fault, what judgment, or what destiny

  makes you attack your neighbors

  and persecute the poor and the afflicted,

  seeking in foreign parts

  to hire mercenaries

  who want to sell their souls and shed some blood?

  I’m trying to speak the truth,

  not out of hate for others or contempt.

  And can’t you see, after so many proofs,

  Bavarian deceit

  that throws its hands aloft and jokes with Death?

  The mockery outweighs the shame of loss.

  But your own blood is shed

  more freely, since these quarrels are your own.

  From dawn to nine o’clock

  please think about yourselves and you will see

  that anyone who holds himself so cheap

  can’t be expected to hold others dear.

  Oh, noble Latin blood,

  throw off these harmful burdens, do not make

  an idol from a name

  that’s empty and all vain;

  and if that savage people from the north

  look smarter than we are,

  that shows our sin, it doesn’t stem from nature.

  “Is this ground not the ground that I touched first?

  And isn’t this my nest

  in which I found myself so sweetly nursed?

  Is not this my own country, which I trust,

  a kind of mother to me,

  the place where both my parents have been buried?”

  By God, let this sometimes

  fill up your mind and let you look with pity

  upon the tears of all the sorry people

  who put their hope in God

  and next in you. If you would demonstrate

  some signs of piety,

  men would arise again

  and take up arms; the battle would be short,

  since ancient valor still

  exists, not dead yet in Italian hearts.

  My lords: consider how time flies with us

  and how our lives, so brief,

  are running past, while Death is at our backs.

  You’re present now, but think of your departure,

  when naked and alone at last,

  your souls must venture on that dangerous path.

  As you pass through this valley,

  suppose you overcome your hate and anger,

  those winds that blow against a peaceful life;

  and take that time you spend

  in giving pain to others and convert it

  to some good action of

  the hand or of the mind,

  some worthy praise, some well-rewarding study:

  down here one can rejoice

  and find the road to Heaven free and open.

  My song, I ask that you

  speak out your message diplomatically,

  because you go among a haughty people

  whose wills are full, I fear,

  of ancient and uncivilizing customs,

  always the enemies of truth.

  But you must try your luck

  among the few who cherish magnanimity;

  say to them: “Who’ll protect me?

  I wander, crying out: Oh, peace, peace, peace!”

  129

  From thought to thought, from peak to mountain peak,

  Love moves me forward, while each beaten path

  I find contrary to a tranquil life.

  If on some solitary slope I find

  a spring or river, or a shady valley

  between two hills, my soul seeks refuge there;

  as Love dictates, it laughs

  or weeps, now fearful, now assured, and then

  my face, which follows as the soul leads on,

  is cloudy and then clear,

  but stays the same for just the briefest moment.

  So anyone who knows of life would say:

  “This man is burning and his state’s erratic.”

  Among high mountains and in tangled woods

  I find some rest; populous places, though,

  are deadly enemies, they hurt my eyes.

  And every step I take gives birth to new

  thoughts of my lady, which can change to pleasures

  the torments that I bear because of her;

  and then I wouldn’t trade

  the bitter sweetness of this life of mine,

  because I say: “It seems that Love preserves you

  against a better time;

  though worthless to yourself, perhaps you’re dear

  to someone else.” I take this thought and sigh:

  “Could that perhaps be true? But how? Or when?”

  Where some tall pine or hillside makes for shade

  I often stop, and staring at a stone

  I try to call her lovely face to mind.

  Then coming to my senses once again

  I find my breast awash with pity, saying:

  “Alas, how came you here? How far she is!”

  But while I can stay fixed,

  my yearning mind on that first thought, and gaze

  at her, and let myself forget myself,

  I feel Love close at hand

  and do not mind the error of my soul;

  she’s all around me, she’s in everything,

  and all I ask is that illusion last.

  I’ve seen her many times (who will believe me?)

  in clearest water, and on greenest grass,

  and in the trunks of birches, seen her living,

  and in a cloud, so white and lovely that

  Leda would say her daughter’s beauty fades

  the way a star does when the sun comes up.

  And when I find myself

  in wilderness or on deserted beaches,

  the thoughts of her are even more amazing.

  But when the truth dispels

  that sweet deception, in that very place

  I sink down cold, dead stone upon live rock,

  a statue which can weep and think and write.

  Up where the shadow of no mountain reaches,

  upon the highest and most open peak

  is where my strong desire seems to draw me.

  There I can use my eyes, surveying all,

  to take the measure of my losses, then

  weep to release my gathered clouds of sorrow,

  because I gaze and think

  of how much air is standing there between us:

  her lovely face, so near and yet so distant.

  I softly tell myself:

  “What do you know, you fool? Perhaps out there

  someone is sighing at your distant absence.”

  And in this thought my soul begins to breathe.

  Oh, song, beyond the Alps,

  where skies are both more happy and serene,

  you’ll see me by a running stream once more,

  where you can sense the breeze

  distilling from a fresh and fragrant laurel;

  that’s where my heart is, with the one who stole it:

  what’s left of me is just a kind of ghost.

  130

  Since Mercy’s road is closed to me, I’ve come

  along a desperate way, far from those eyes

  in which were stored (I kno
w not by what fate)

  the rich reward of all my faithfulness.

  I feed my heart with sighs, that’s all it asks,

  I live on tears, I think I’m born to weep;

  I don’t complain of that, since in my state

  weeping is sweeter than you might believe.

  One image has me rapt, and one not made

  by Zeuxis or Praxiteles or Phidias,

  but by a better craftsman, higher mind.

  What Scythia or what Numidia

  can keep me safe, if Envy, still not sated

  by my rough exile, finds me out in hiding?

  131

  I’d sing of Love in such a novel fashion

  that from her cruel side I would draw by force

  a thousand sighs a day, kindling again

  in her cold mind a thousand high desires;

  I’d see her lovely face transform quite often

  her eyes grow wet and more compassionate,

  like one who feels regret, when it’s too late,

  for causing someone’s suffering by mistake;

  and I’d see scarlet roses in the snows,

  tossed by the breeze, discover ivory

  that turns to marble those who see it near them;

  all this I’d do because I do not mind

  my discontentment in this one short life,

  but glory rather in my later fame.

  132

  If it’s not love, what is it then I feel?

  But if it’s love, by God, what sort of love?

  If good, why kill me with its bitterness?

  If bad, why is each torment then so sweet?

  If I burn willingly, why weep and howl?

  And if against my will, what good’s lament?

  Oh living death, oh you delightful pain,

  how can you rule me if I don’t consent?

  And if I do consent, why then I’m wrong

  thus to complain. Amid contending winds

  I am at sea, and my frail boat is rudderless,

  empty of wisdom, and so prone to error

  that I myself do not know what I want,

  burning in winter, shivering in summer.

  133

  Love sets me up, a target for his arrows,

  like snow in sun, like wax in fire, like clouds

  before the wind; and I’m already hoarse

  begging for mercy, Lady. You don’t care.

  The deadly shot came at me from your eyes,

  nor time nor place protect me from its blow;

  from you alone come forth (you take it lightly!)

  the sun and fire and wind that make me thus.

  Thoughts are the arrows, and your face, the sun;

  passion’s the fire; armed with those weapons

  Love spears me, dazzles me, and melts me down;

  and your angelic song, your very words,

  your own sweet breath (I can’t defend myself),

  these make the breeze that drives my life to flight.

  134

  I find no peace, and yet I am not warlike;

  I fear and hope, I burn and turn to ice;

  I fly beyond the sky, stretch out on earth;

  my hands are empty, yet I hold the world.

  One holds me prisoner, not locked up, not free;

  won’t keep me for her own but won’t release me;

  Love does not kill me, does not loose my chains,

  he’d like me dead, he’d like me still ensnared.

  I see without my eyes, cry with no tongue,

  I want to die and yet I call for help,

  hating myself but loving someone else.

  I feed on pain, I laugh while shedding tears,

  both death and life displease me equally;

  and this state, Lady, is because of you.

  135

  Whatever’s strange and rare,

  existing in whatever wondrous region,

  if truly understood will prove

  to most resemble me: your doing, Love.

  There where the day comes forth

  there flies a bird that all alone, no mate,

  dies willingly and then

  renews itself and comes to life again.

  Thus my desire acts,

  turns to the sun and reaching then the summit

  of its high thoughts, burns itself up again

  and is consumed by fire

  and so reverts to its original;

  it burns and dies and incarnates itself

  and lives again competing with the phoenix.

  There is a stone out there,

  somewhere in the Indian Ocean, that’s

  so bold that it draws iron

  and pulls it out of wood, and ships go down.

  That’s me, among the waves

  of weeping, where that lovely rock

  has pulled me to its hardness

  and brought my life to shipwreck once again.

  Thus a stone has robbed

  my soul (stealing my heart—hard once, it held

  me up, where I now break and scatter),

  a stone more greedy for

  my flesh than iron. Oh, ignoble luck,

  that in my flesh I’m hurried toward the shore

  by that live lodestone of sweet calamity.

  Out in the farthest west

  there is a wild creature who’s more gentle

  and quiet than the rest,

  but sorrow, pain, and death live in her eyes;

  the sight must be most wary

  that turns in her direction; it can see

  the rest of her quite safely

  if it is careful not to meet her eyes.

  But I’m disastrous, heedless,

  I always seem to run straight toward my pain

  and know how much I’ve suffered and will suffer;

  but my desire, greedy thing,

  both blind and deaf, transports me so that her

  charming eyes and holy face will kill me

  this wild beast angelic in her innocence.

  Somewhere in the south

  a fountain gushes (for the sun it’s named),

  a fountain that by nature

  boils at night and is ice-cold by day;

  and it grows colder as

  the sun mounts up and as the light grows stronger.

  That is what happens to me,

  for I’m a fountain occupied by tears:

  I lose that lovely light

  that is my sun, it leaves, I’m sad, alone,

  my eyes are desolate and dark night comes,

  that’s when I burn; but if

  the gold and living radiance of that sun

  appears to me, I change, inside and out,

  and turn to ice so frozen I become!

  Epirus has a spring,

  whereof it’s written that, despite its cold,

  spent torches can

  rekindle there, and flaming ones go out.

  My soul, which had not yet

  been damaged by the flames of love, approached

  to just a little distance

  from the cold one for whom I ever sigh,

  and then burst into flames;

  such pain the stars and sun have never seen,

  it would have moved a marble heart to pity;

  and having caused the blaze,

  then frozen lovely virtue put it out.

  How often she has lit and quenched my heart

  I know, who felt it and it makes me angry.

  Far out beyond our shores

  two springs are in the Fortunate Isles,

  twin fountains; he who drinks

  from one dies laughing, while the other rescues.

  That kind of fortune marks

  my life, because I could die laughing from

  the pleasure that I take

  if cries of sorrow didn’t temper it.

  Love, you who guide me

  even to shades of fame, hidden and dark,

&nb
sp; let us not speak about this spring; it brims

  but has its greatest flow

  when Taurus joins together with the sun:

  my eyes weep always, but they weep the most

  in that same season when I saw my lady.

  If anyone asks, dear Song,

  what I am up to, say: “Next to a huge stone

  in a closed valley where the Sorgue comes forth,

  he sits; there’s no one there to see him,

  except for Love, who never goes away, and

  the image of a person who destroys him;

  he, for his part flees all other company.”

  136

  May fire from Heaven rain down on your tresses,

  oh, wicked one, since evil gives you pleasure;

  once you ate acorns, drank from streams, who now

  grow rich and great from others’ poverty,

  you nest of treason, hatching from yourself

  most of the ills that now afflict the world,

  you slave of wine, of soft beds and of feasting,

  in whom intemperance finds its highest power!

  Young girls and old men chase around your chambers,

  the while Beelzebub, living in their midst,

  brings bellows, fires, and mirrors to their revels.

  You were raised not on pillows, under shade,

  but naked to the winds, barefoot in thorns;

  may your life’s stench rise up until God smells it!

  137

  Rapacious Babylon has stuffed her sack

  with God’s great anger and with wicked vices

  until it’s fit to burst; she’s made her gods

  Venus and Bacchus, not Jupiter or Pallas.

  I wait for justice, struggling, growing weary;

  yet I foresee a sultan who will rule her

  and take his court (not soon enough for me)

  where it belongs, way over there in Baghdad.

  Her idols shall be scattered on the earth,

  her lofty towers, enemies of Heaven,

  burned with their keepers, both outside and in.

  Then lovely souls and virtue’s intimates

  will rule the world; we’ll see a golden age

  and the return of ancient worthiness.

  138

  Fountain of sorrow, dwelling place of anger,

  school of all errors and heresy’s temple,

  once Rome, now false and wicked Babylon,

  on whose account there are such tears and sighs:

  confusion’s forge and foundry, cruel prison

  where good expires, infamy is nourished,

  hell for the living: it’s a great miracle

  that Christ has not shown anger at you yet.

  Begun in chaste and humble poverty,

  you lift your horns against your founders now,

  you shameless whore! Where do you place your hopes?

  In your adulterers, in evil spawned

  from ill-got gains? Constantine won’t return.

  Let the sad realm that holds him take you too!