Poems and translations

Chapter 39: LAURA WAITS FOR HIM IN HEAVEN

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About This Book

The collection gathers lyric and ballad-like poems that portray rural landscapes, local speech, and vivid characters through dark humor, elegy, and plainspoken lyricism; many pieces are concise narratives or monologues about love, death, loss, and social life, while others register mythic or meditative moods. A substantial section offers translations and adaptations from Petrarch, Villon, Leopardi, and medieval lyricists, varying between literal and free renderings. A prefatory essay frames the poet's interest in mixing exalted feeling with the material of ordinary life. The sequence balances songful rhythms with austere images and an abrupt, colloquial voice.

LAURA WAITS FOR HIM IN HEAVEN

The first day she passed up and down through the Heavens, gentle and simple were left standing, and they in great wonder, saying one to the other:

“What new light is that? What new beauty at all? The like of herself hasn’t risen up these long years from the common world.”

And herself, well pleased with the Heavens, was going forward, matching herself with the most perfect that were before her, yet one time, and another, waiting a little, and turning her head back to see if myself was coming after her. It’s for that I’m lifting up all my thoughts and will into the Heavens, because I do hear her praying that I should be making haste for ever.