by David Young
to sweetness, and still steer my weary ship
using the tiller of her natural mercy;
don’t let her change, but still be as she was
when I could do no more
(for I had lost myself
and have no more to lose):
it does great harm to overlook such loyalty.
I didn’t say it, and indeed I could not
for gold or cities or for castles, no;
let truth prevail, still seated in its saddle,
let falsehood fall, all beaten, to the earth!
You know, Sir Love, what’s in me; if she asks
tell what you should of me;
I’d say myself that he
who has to suffer is
more blessed, three-, four-, sixfold, if he dies first.
I’ve served for Rachel, not for Leah, could
not live with any other;
I would be ready, sure,
if Heaven called us both,
to go with her upon Elijah’s chariot.
207
I thought by now perhaps that I could live
as I have lived these past few years, without
new studies and without new stratagems;
but now that I don’t have the help I’m used to,
my lady’s aid, perhaps you’ll understand
where you have led me, Love, teaching such art.
I don’t know if I should
be angry that you’d make me, at my age,
go steal her lovely light,
without which I would live in dreadful pain.
I wish I’d learned in youth
the style I must try to take on now,
because there is less shame in youthful failings.
Her gentle eyes, which nurtured me with life,
were so forthcoming to me at the first
with their divinity and lofty beauty,
that I was like a man of little wealth
who’s greatly helped by secret patronage;
I did no harm to them, and none to others.
Now, to my own distress,
I have become importunate and nasty;
a beggar who is starving
is capable of actions that he’d hate
in anybody else.
If Envy’s made a fist of Pity’s hand
my weakness and love’s hunger should be blamed.
For I have tried a thousand ways to find
if any mortal thing could help me live
a single day without them. But my soul,
because it can find respite nowhere else,
still hurries after those angelic sparks,
and I am made of wax and seek the fire;
I try to reckon where
what I desire most is least well guarded,
and like a bird that is
most quickly caught where he is least afraid,
so at her lovely face
I steal a glance, and then another glance,
and by them I am nourished but inflamed.
I feed on my own death, and live in flames:
strange feast, and most amazing salamander!
But it’s no miracle, just someone’s will.
I bleated with his flock a little while,
a happy lamb, but at the end, it seems,
both Love and Fortune treat me like the rest:
violets and roses in spring,
and in the winter lots of ice and snow.
Thus if I try to snatch
some food with which to nourish my short life,
she should not call it theft,
so rich a lady surely should not mind
if someone lives on what is hers, unmissed.
Who does not know what I live on, and have
since that first day I saw those lovely eyes
that made me change my life and change my ways?
Who understands the ways and means of men
from searching earth and sea and every shore?
Along a river one man lives on scent
as I by fire and light
nourish and soothe my weak and starving spirits.
Love (I have to tell you),
it doesn’t suit a lord to be so stingy.
You’ve arrows and a bow,
so kill me by your hand and not by yearning:
a decent death can crown a life with honor.
A covered flame is hottest; as it grows
it can’t be hidden long and it will out.
I know this, Love, I feel it at your hands;
you saw it well when I blazed silently;
my own cries pain me now, and I go round
annoying others near and far away.
Oh, world, oh, senseless thoughts,
oh, my strong fate, where do you carry me?
oh, such a lovely light,
that made a steady hope live in my heart
and bind it and oppress it,
and give her strength to lead me to my death!
The fault is yours, while mine’s the loss and pain.
For loving well my gift has been this torment,
I’m asking pardon for another’s crime;
for mine, I guess, because I should have turned
my eyes from too much light and stopped my ears
against the sirens; and I can’t repent
because my heart is brimming with sweet poison.
I wait for him to shoot
the final shot, who hit me with the first one:
and if I understand,
he can show pity if he kills me quickly,
since he’s not going to treat me
in any way that’s different from now;
escape from sorrow makes a good death welcome.
My song, I will stand firm
upon this field, since fleeing is dishonor;
and I reproach myself
for my complaints because my fate is sweet,
my sighs and tears and death.
Love’s servant, you who read these lines, know this:
this world contains no good to match my ill.
208
Swift river, coming from your Alpine source,
gnawing your way (from which you get your name),
by night and day, descending in your passion
to where I’m led by Love, you just by Nature:
go on your way; no sleep or weariness
can check your course; before you meet the sea
and pay him homage, gaze around you where
the grass is greener and the air more clear.
There is that sweet and living sun of ours
adorning and beflowering your left bank;
my being tardy bothers her (I hope!).
Then kiss her foot, her white and lovely hand;
tell her (as if your kiss could turn to speech):
“The spirit’s willing, but the flesh is weak.”
209
The sweet hill country where I left myself
when I departed what I can’t depart from,
is all around, before me as I go; behind
is that sweet burden Love’s assigned to me.
Inside myself, I marvel at myself,
the way I move and yet can’t move away from
the sweet yoke I have tried to shake in vain;
the more I distance it, the more it’s with me.
The way a deer can have a poisoned arrow
fast in its side: it feels its pain still more
as it runs faster, trying to escape:
so I, that arrow in my left-hand side
that somehow pains me and delights me too,
am hurt by sorrow, worn out by this fleeing.
210
Not from the Spanish river Ebro to
the Hydaspes in India, each slope,
each shore, Red Sea and Caspian, Heaven
and earth, is there but one—a single phoenix.
Crow on my right, raven o
n my left, who
sings my fate? Which of the Parcae spools it?
For I alone find pity deaf as asps,
a man of misery wishing to be happy.
I do not want to speak of her; who sees
her feels his heart fill up with love and sweetness,
she has so much, bestowing it on others,
and then, to make my sweetness turn to bitter,
pretends she doesn’t care, and doesn’t notice
my temples blooming white before their time.
211
Desire spurs me on, Love guides and escorts,
Pleasure cajoles me, Habit is my transport;
Hope flatters me and flirts and reaches out
with her right hand to help my weary heart;
the poor fool grasps it and will not be shown
how blind and treacherous is this guide of ours;
the senses are in charge, and reason’s dead;
each hot desire’s going to breed another.
Virtue and honor, beauty, noble bearing,
and words too sweet have brought me to these branches,
and gently caught my heart upon this birdlime.
In 1327, at precisely
the day’s first hour, April 6, I entered
this labyrinth, and I’ve found no escape.
212
Blessed in sleep and languishing, contented,
embracing shadows, chasing summer breeze,
I swim a sea that has no shore or bottom,
plow water, build on sand, write on the wind;
and I gaze yearning at the sun that has
destroyed my sight already with his brightness,
and thus pursue a wandering, fleeing doe,
hunt with an ox that’s lame and sick and slow.
Blind and worn out to everything except
my harm, which I seek trembling day and night,
I cry to Love, my lady, and to Death;
thus twenty years of hard and heavy labor,
have gained me only tears and sighs and sorrow:
under this star I took the bait and hook!
213
Graces that bounteous Heaven grants to few,
virtues too rare among the human race,
under blond hair a mind of wise old age,
a godlike beauty in a humble lady,
a charm both singular and most uncommon,
and singing that you feel caress your soul,
celestial walk, a lovely, ardent spirit
that breaks up hardness and makes pride bow down,
and those great eyes that can turn hearts to stone
and light up the abyss, turn night to day,
move souls from bodies, passing them to others,
and conversation full of sweet, high insights
and sighs that sweetly interrupt themselves:
by these magicians I have been transformed.
214
A soul had been created in a place
three days before, to find what’s high and new
and learn to scorn the things that many prize;
this soul, uncertain of her fated course,
alone and thoughtful, young and very free,
came in the springtime to a lovely wood.
A tender flower was born within that wood
the day before, and rooted in a place
that could not be approached by souls still free;
for there were snares there of a form so new
and so much pleasure hastening one’s course
that losing freedom there seemed like a prize.
Dear, sweet, and high, and most fatiguing prize,
that took me quickly into that green wood,
used to diverting travelers from their course!
I’ve searched the world since then from place to place
to see if verses, gems, or herbs of new
concoction mixed could make my mind feel free.
But now, alas, I see my flesh will free
itself from that one knot for which it’s prized
before the medicines, old ones or new,
can heal the wounds I took on in that wood
so thick with thorns; because of them my place
is hobbling lame, when once it was swift course!
All filled with thorns and brambles is the course
I must complete, just when a light and free
foot is what’s needed, sound in every place.
But you, dear Lord, who can be said to prize
pity, extend your right hand in this wood:
may your sun conquer this strange shadow new.
Protect my life from these distractions new
that have dislodged my life from its true course
and left me dwelling in a shadowed wood:
release me, if you can, and make her free,
my wandering consort; yours be the prize
if I find both of you in better places.
Behold in place my conflict rare and new:
Am I worth prizing? Have I run my course?
Is my soul free, or captive in the wood?
215
In noble blood a quiet, humble life,
a lofty intellect and a pure heart,
the fruit of age within the flower of youth,
a happy soul within a thoughtful face—
all gathered in this lady by her planet,
or by the King of stars—and the true honor,
well-deserved praises, merit, and great worth
such as would tire any godlike poet.
For Love has joined with chastity in her,
with natural beauty and most comely ways,
and gestures that are eloquent in silence,
and something in her eyes, I know not what,
that lights the night and makes the day grow dark,
embitters honey, even sweetens wormwood.
216
All day I weep; and then at night when most
miserable mortals find repose, I find
myself in tears and all my pains redoubled;
that’s how I seem to spend my life, just weeping.
I’m wearing out my eyes with this sad humor,
my heart, as well, with sorrow; I’m the most
pitiful animal, since these love arrows
keep me forever exiled from my peace.
Alas, that from one sunrise to the next,
one night upon another, I have run
already through this death which we call life!
I grieve for someone else’s fault as well;
for living pity and my faithful rescue
have watched me burn in fire and won’t help.
217
I wanted once to shape such just laments,
using such fervent rhymes, that I would start
a fire of pity, felt in her hard heart
that’s frozen solid in midsummer’s heat,
and with the wind of my inflaming words
disperse the cloud that cools it and obscures it,
or maybe make her hateful to the world
who hides the lovely eyes she melts me with.
No hate for her, no pity for myself, now;
I’m not vindictive and I’m far past pity;
it was my star, it was my rugged fate.
I’ll sing her beauty, though, since it’s divine,
and when I have departed from this flesh
the world will understand my death was sweet.
218
However many lovely, graceful ladies
she finds herself among, she with no equal
anywhere in this world, she does to them
what day does to the host of lesser stars.
Love seems to whisper in my ear, explaining:
“As long as she is seen here on the earth,
life will be good; after, it will be dark,
virtues will die, and with them goes my kingdom.
“If Nature took away the sun and moon,
took wind from air, took grass and leaves from earth,
took words and intellect away from man,
“fish from the sea, even the ocean’s waves:
in that same way things will grow dark and empty
if Death should ever close and hide her eyes.”
219
New song and weeping by the birds at daybreak
make all the valleys echo with their sound,
as do the liquid crystal murmurings
of shining, fresh, and rapid brooks and rivers.
She of the snow-white face and golden hair
in whose great love no flaw or lie exists
awakes me now with her own loving dance
combing her aged husband’s whitened fleece.
Thus I awake, and thus salute the dawn,
the sun as well, still more that other sun
who dazzled me in youth and does so still.
I’ve seen them rise together certain days
as in a single moment he puts out
the stars, and then, in turn, she makes him vanish.
220
Out of what mine did Love extract the gold
to make those two blond tresses? From what thorns
plucked out that rose? And in what meadow found
the fresh and tender frost, the pulse and breath?
And where the pearls with which he breaks and checks
sweet words, both chaste and inconceivable?
Where did he get the many godlike beauties
that grace that forehead, brighter than the skies?
Which of the angels, from what sphere was sent
that heavenly singing, song which melts me so
that by this time there’s little left to melt?
What sun provided that high, kindly light
to those great eyes that give me war and peace,
that freeze and burn my heart in ice and fire?
221
What destiny of mine, what force, what trick,
returns me to the field without a weapon
and sees me vanquished, always? If I’m saved,
I’ll marvel; if I die, why, that’s my loss.
Not loss at all, but gain; the sparks and lightning
endure so sweetly in my heart, still dazzling,
still tormenting, that I blaze anew, I have
been burning now for, oh, these twenty years.
I hear the messengers of death when I
can see her eyes flash lightning from afar;
and if she comes up close and turns to me
Love wounds me and anoints my wound with sweetness;
I can’t recapture it, I can’t express it;
my skill and tongue come nowhere near the truth.
222
“Happy and pensive, in company, alone,
you ladies who go chatting as you pass,
where is my life, who is my death as well?
Why is she not among you, as is usual?”
“We’re happy at the memory of that sun,
