Louise Labé
Sonnet II
O beaus yeus bruns, ô regards détournés,
O chaus soupirs, ô larmes espandues,
O noires nuits vainement atendues,
O jours luisans vainement retournez!
O tristes plaints, ô désirs obstinez,
O temps perdu, ô peines dépendues,
O milles morts en mille rets tendues,
O pires maus contre moy destinez !
O ris, ô front, cheveus bras mains et doits!
O lut pleintif, viole, archet et vois!
Tant de flambeaus pour ardre une femelle!
De toy me plein, que tant de feus portant,
En tant d'endrois d'iceus mon coeur tatant,
N'en est sur toy volé quelque estincelle.
trans. Leah Souffrant
Sonnet II
O eyes o beautiful brown o looking away
O black nights o you o my o tears o hot sighs
O in vain I am keeping watch o night
O In Vain day follows day so radiant
And o sad complaints o sad desires and persisting
And o lost time and o my despondent trials
A thousand deaths a thousand times stretched
And the worst comes fated again again
You laugh o face o hair down arms hands fingers
You sad song the strings the bow the voice low lowering
Into flames lowering too low for me I’m languishing
While you filling swelling this what Desire
This o again erupts into me while
You you cool so cool You don’t even spark
Born in Lyon in the 16th century, Louise Labé is a renowned French poet of the Renaissance.
Leah Souffrant is the author of Plain Burned Things: A Poetics of the Unsayable (Collection Clinamen, Presses Universitaires de Liège 2017). She has recent work in Bone Bouquet, Jacket2, Poet Lore, WSQ, and elsewhere. Souffrant is on faculty at New York University. More about her work can be found at leahsouffrant.com. “Sonnet II” is a part of a cycle of re–imagined poems, “Qu’encor Amour”: Shaken Sonnets from Louise Labé, drawn from the poetry of Louise Labé.
More from Vol. 34, Issue 3
To Sing, In Dixie // The Extinct Fresh Water Mussels of the Detroit River // The Ivory Gull Under the Bridge Over the Flint River // Noon in a Corner Café: The Sign
Terry Blackhawk
Saints, Tonguing
Mitchell Glazier
Sonnet II
Louise Labé, trans. Leah Souffrant
Damned // The Last Word
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Poem for the Unborn // Classical Mechanics // Indigenous Plants // Thirteenth Wedding Anniversary
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Summons in the Form of an Invasion // 37 Panoramic Views of Edo
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The Bird Girl
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“The ply of spirits on bodies": Diaspora and Metamorphosis in Donald Revell's “Short Fantasia"
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Morning Quake // Friday's Quake // Sunday's Quake
Jacqueline Lyons
Review of Norman Finkelstein's The Ratio of Reason to Magic: New and Selected Poems
Andrew S. Nicholson