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).
Quando giugne per gli occhi al cor profondo
l’imagin donna, ogni altra indi si parte,
et le vertú che l’anima comparte
lascian le menbra, quasi immobil pondo.
Et del primo miracolo il secondo
nasce talor, che la scacciata parte
da se stessa fuggendo arriva in parte
che fa vendetta e ‘l suo exilio giocondo.
Quinci in duo volti un color morto appare,
perché ‘l vigor che vivi gli mostrava
da nessun lato è piú là dove stava.
Et di questo in quel dí mi ricordava,
ch’i’ vidi duo amanti trasformare,
et far qual io mi soglio in vista fare.
When through my eyes the image of my lady
enters my heart’s depths, she banishes all others,
and the power my spirit radiates
leaves my limbs, leaves them inert weights.
And often a second miracle is born
from the first: what was driven away,
fleeing from itself, arrives in a place
where it takes vengeance and delights in exile.
So a deathly pallor appears in two faces,
since the vigour that showed them as living,
is no longer where it used to be in either.
And I recalled this on the day I saw
two lovers undergo that transformation,
and look as pale as I used to look.