36. ‘S’io credesse per morte essere scarco’

If I believed I could free myself, by dying,

from amorous thoughts that bind me to the earth,

I would already have laid these troubled limbs

and their burden in the earth myself:

but because I fear to find a passage

from tears to tears, and one war to another,

I remain in the midst, alas, of staying and crossing

on this side of the pass that is closed to me.

There has been enough time now

for the merciless bow to fire its final arrow

bathed and dyed already with others’ blood:

yet Love does not take me, or that deaf one

who has painted me with his own pallor,

and still forgets to call me to him.