Sonnets

Indicates life¹s essential brevity,
unexpected and with suffering, assaulted by death

Yesterday a dream; tomorrow dust!
Nothing, just before; just after, smoke!
And I plot out ambitions, and can claim
not one point on the siege that circling looms!
The briefest skirmish in a pressing war,
I bring great peril to my own defence;
while I consume myself with my own arms,
my body less gives lodging than entombs.
Yesterday's no more; tomorrow's late;
today moves on, and is, and was, with steps
that send me, headlong, down into death's cave.
The hour and the moment are mere spades
which, for the wages of my grief and woes,
now excavate in my life my own grave.


Surrender of an exiled lover
to the power of his own sadness

These are now and will be the very last
tears that, with all the strength of living voice,
I shall lose in this fountain's fleeting stream,
which carries them to slake the thirst of brutes.
I'm fortunate if, on some far-off shore,
while nourishing so much elusive pain,
I find a death that's merciful, and fells
such flimsy structures built on weakened roots!
A spirit thus stripped bare a lover pure,
upon the sun I'll burn, and my cold flesh
in dust and earth will keep Love's memory.
to travellers I'll be an epitaph,
since my face, lifeless, will declare to them:
"It was Love's triumph to make war on me."

Francisco de Quevedo
(1580- 1645)