Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Joan E. Borrelli / Ciro di Pers
The author, troubled by kidney stones
So then, they’ve taken shape inside my kidneys
infesting my life now, these hardened rocks,
molesting me each hour of the clock,
to point me to the ending of my days?
If blessèd days a man with white stones marks,
I mark with these my most distressed of days;
rocks serve to build, fabricate things, not these,
born with an aim to deconstruct my fabric.
Ah, well may I describe my luck as hard
if it’s of rock! And seemingly has nature
begun to stone me from my very innards.
I know that Death seizes her weapons, grinds
them sharp upon these stones in my bowels where
marble is born to shape my sepulchre.
To sleep
O sleep, placed justly with the best from Heaven
of gifts bestowed on miserable mortals,
placid, you lay siege to the anxious soul
and proffer truce to embattled emotion.
Sprinkling on hearts your soft oblivion,
you sweeten all the hurt, suspend what ails,
you give rest and restore senses made frail,
shades of night shorten, hastening the dawn.
Consort are you of lovely Pasitea, 14
and son of Astrea, 15 so in you run
as equals lavish luck and slavish fortune;
yet what makes you to me even more dear
is that, to face abhorrent death, its horror,
I, with your ways, accustoming, thus learn.
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