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"22"
in the original Italian of Petrarch
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For any creature who inhabits Earth,
Except the handful who despise the sun,
The time for laboring is during day;
But when the sky illuminates its stars,
Some come back home while others nest in woods
So they may rest at least until the dawn.
And I, when glimpsing hints a gorgeous dawn
Has scattered shadows all around the earth
And stirred the animals in all the woods,
Still sigh and don’t surrender to the sun;
Then while I watch the incandescent stars,
I wander crying and desiring day.
When evening chases out the brilliant day,
and our gloom has produced another’s dawn,
I stare intently at the heartless stars
that once had fashioned me from conscious earth,
and curse the day on which I saw the sun,
which makes me seem like one raised in the woods.
I do not think there grazed in any woods
so cruel a creature in the night or day
as she for whom I cry in gloom and sun,
and I don’t weaken with first sleep or dawn,
for though I am the mortal flesh of earth,
my firm desire comes down from the stars.
Before I turn to you, radiant stars,
or stumble into the romantic woods
to leave my body pulverized to earth,
I long to sense her pity, since one day
might still restore the years, and before dawn
enrich me through the setting of the sun.
I yearn to join her in the ebbing sun,
and let no one observe us but the stars
for just one night, and let there be no dawn
and no transforming her into green woods
as she escapes my arms, just like the day
Apollo followed her down here to Earth!
But I will lie beneath earth in dry woods,
and the day will be filled with tiny stars
before the sun arrives at that sweet dawn.
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