A Daily Countdown to 700 Years with the “colpi d’Amor”
“Benedetto sia ‘l giorno, et ‘l mese, et l’anno, / et la stagione, e’l tempo, et l’ora, e ‘l punto…” — Rvf 61
“Blessed be the day, and the month, and the year, and the season, and the time, and the hour, and the moment…”(Kline).
S’io credesse per morte essere scarco
del pensiero amoroso che m’atterra,
colle mie mani avrei già posto in terra
queste mie membra noiose, et quello incarco;
ma perch’io temo che sarrebbe un varco
di pianto in pianto, et d’una in altra guerra,
di qua dal passo anchor che mi si serra
mezzo rimango, lasso, et mezzo il varco.
Tempo ben fôra omai d’avere spinto
l’ultimo stral la dispietata corda
ne l’altrui sangue già bagnato et tinto;
et io ne prego Amore, et quella sorda
che mi lassò de’ suoi color’ depinto,
et di chiamarmi a sé non le ricorda.
If I believed I could free myself, by dying,
from amorous thoughts that bind me to the earth,
I would already have laid these troubled limbs
and their burden in the earth myself:
but because I fear to find a passage
from tears to tears, and one war to another,
I remain in the midst, alas, of staying and crossing
on this side of the pass that is closed to me.
There has been enough time now
for the merciless bow to fire its final arrow
bathed and dyed already with others’ blood:
yet Love does not take me, or that deaf one
who has painted me with his own pallor,
and still forgets to call me to him.