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31

You have the love of everyone who used to love me, people who I supposed were deadbecause I didnt have their love anymore. Love reigns in your heartboth everything

belonging to love and all those friends who I thought were dead and buried. How many

tears of devoted love have I shed at funerals, in payment to the dead, when now it appears

they had only gone to hide in your heart. Youre like a grave where dead lovers comealive again, decorated with mementos of those lost loves who gave you all the love I

owed to each of them. All the love I owed to many is now yours alone. I see these lovers

in you, and you, who contain everyone I have ever loved or was loved by, have all of me.

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If I were made of thought instead of slow, dull flesh, this wicked distance between us

wouldnt keep me from where I wanted to be. No matter the distancefrom the farthest

possible regionsI would bring myself to where you are. It wouldnt matter that my feetwere standing on the spot on earth farthest from you: Thought is nimble enough to jump

over both sea and land as quickly as it can think about the place it wants to be. But, ah,

its killing me to think that Im not made of thought and cant leap over the many miles

when you are gone. Instead my body is made of so much earth and waterthat I have tofill the long time without you with my moans. The leaden, deep earth and slow, wet water

of which I am made give me nothing but heavy tears.

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What is your true essence, what are you made of, that there should be millions of

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reflections of you? Every person has only one image, but you, though youre only one

person, lend something to everyone elses image. If an artist tries to depict Adonis, hell

wind up creating an inferior imitation of you. If he were to paint Helen as beautifully aspossible, he would again wind up with a picture of you, decked out in Greek costume.

Praise the spring and the abundant harvest seasonbut the spring is only a faint shadow

of your beauty, and the fall a faint imitation of your abundance. We recognize you inevery blessed sight that we see. You are part of every beautiful thing, but youre not like

any of themyoure incomparablein the constancy of your heart.

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In the olden days, dark complexions werent considered attractive or, if they were, no onecalled them beautiful. But now darkness is officially accepted as beautiful, and the fair

complexions that used to be called beautiful have gotten a bad reputation. For sinceeveryone has seized the power to make themselves beautiful (which used to belong tonature), and ugly people can be beautiful by artificial means, no one can legitimately be

called beautiful. Beauty has no special home but is commonplace or even lives in

disgrace. Therefore my mistresss eyes are as black as a raven, well suited to todaysfashion, and in their blackness they seem to be lamenting those people who were born

ugly but make themselves beautiful, giving beauty a bad name by faking it. But her black

eyes lament so beautifully that everyone now says all beautiful eyes should look like

hers.

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I swear, I dont love you with my eyes: They notice a thousand flaws in you. Rather, its

my heart that loves what my eyes despise; despite what you look like, my heart dotes onyou. Nor are my ears delighted by the sound of your voice. Nor do I want to abuse my

delicate sense of touch by groping you. Nor do my sense of taste or smell want to be

invited to any feast of the senses in which youre the main course. But neither my brainnor my five senses can dissuade my foolish heart from being your servant. My body

stands here like an empty shell with no one to control it, while my heart goes off to be

your slave and wretched property. I gain one thing from being plagued with love for this

woman: The same woman whos making me sin rewards me with pain.

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I love two people. One comforts me and the other makes me despair. Like two spirits

both constantly point me in different directions. The better angel is a beautiful, fair-hairedman. The bad one is an evil-looking woman. To help put me in hell sooner, my evil

female tempts my angel away from my side. She hopes to make my saint into a devil,seducing him to impure acts in her foul and self-assured way. And though I can suspect

him, theres no way I can tell directly whether my angel has turned into a fiend. But sincethe two of them are away from me and friendly with each other, Im guessing that one

angel is inside the otherand in hell with her. Yet Ill never know this for sure, instead

living in doubt until my bad angel fires the good one out of hell.