“I’ potre’ anzi ritornare in ieri”
Odds are better to return to yesterday
and find Becchina’s affection all restored,
or grind a diamond into finest flour,
or see some friars accept the pauper’s way,
or grow a potbelly like Mino Pieri,
or happily suck on a chicken foot,
than for extended fever to take him out—
that devil called the elder Angiolieri.
For if either Galen or Hippocrates
were living, each could diagnose (or try)
my father less surely than Donatus,
that grammar guy. So how could this man die,
who knows what’s what, whose constitution’s thus,
who like an ostrich can digest iron straight?
Links:
[1] https://www.ablemuse.com/digital-books-17/v17/digital edition/Complete Digital Version of -/Able Muse, Print Edition (Number 17), Summer 2014