Laura

Inspired by Francesco Petrarca’s courtly love poems to Laura de Sade

I
And ever since the day you died, my Laura,
my heart is an empty deserted grieving tomb.
I dreamed about you in lonely bachelor nights,
my feverish body pained by roses’ thorns.

It was in Church Good Friday Midnight Mass,
your face in dimly light, my heart forever lost.
At seventeen already another man’s wife!
I was and would remain a chaste church-man!

I followed you for three years, then transferred
as Pope’s adapted Canon for many long years.
I wrote about you hundreds courtly love poems.

Meanwhile, you gave birth to eleven children.
At age thirty-eight, Black Death took you away.
I wanted you and all I got was mourning you.

II
The after-world calls me the first modern man,
I was an absent scholar, serious Latin author.
My fame which rest on my pure love to Laura
was only idle poems about sinful desires.

A worldly man in deeds, a church-man in faith.
My daily life one, my soul another and thirdly,
my weak flesh: two out-of-wedlock children.
And Laura’s tragic death eased my longing pain.

I dedicated you, Laura, to coming readers.
Life could never deprive you of your beauty
or your virtue, nor my love: ”pure literature”.

When Lady Corona or Black Death creates fear,
as given scholars’ rhymes, insulation and strangers,
then nothing will ease but loved one’s presence care!